It Was Another Fine Night

Saturday was miserably hot. Luckily for everyone it wasn't as hot as the first predictions. Still, it was hot enough to make everyone cranky and miserable. It was still near 90°F when Young Man and his team began their warm up at 6:30 p.m. As the sun went down, the temperature dropped to much more tolerable levels. At the beginning of the game, the boys still seemed a little slow. They were playing well, but both teams seemed a little off. Discussions with the parents revealed that nearly half of Young Man's team had been up very late Friday evening. That, coupled with the heat, slowed everything down. Happily, the boys seemed to perk up after a few minutes of play. Unlike the past few weeks, this game wasn't exactly a nail biter. In fact, it was very difficult to get any action pictures of Young Man and his fellow defensemen. I had to resign myself to a few very distant pictures and some posed shots.

The action last night was with our offense. They scored 7 unanswered goals before the opposing team managed to get on the scoreboard! The final score was 7-2 after a few very good shots by the opposing team late in the fourth quarter. Young Man played the entire game and came home extremely happy. His parents were very happy for him and enjoyed watching him keep his head in the game and stay alert all night.

I really love my camera, a Nikon D40. I have raved about it to many people. Still, I am already finding its limitations. When I picked this camera, I wanted it for action shots so I picked up a nice VR lens. I never imagined that I would be trying to take pictures under the lights at night and I had no idea what I should have been looking for to accomplish this. Now I find myself craving a much faster lens and Mr. Engineer isn't stopping me, but he has remarked that I need a faster camera before I pop for the fancy (and very expensive) new lens. He's right. For now, I am finding ways to stretch my nighttime photography as far as I can and I'm learning as much as I can with the equipment I have. There may be more serious research happening before next spring's season. Who knew that the photo bug would bite this hard? Then again, with subjects like this, how can I resist?