My Favorite (Derby) Things - Part 2

Long time no entry? Right you are, but life happened. So here is part two of my favorite Derby things.

 
Team Entry
In Roller Derby, the score board usually shows the time to bout counting down. No need to check your watch or be anxious you might miss the start when leaving your seat for a beer or some snacks. 

#27 Hot Tamaule - Roller Girls of the Apocalypse (Kaiserslautern)

Around 10 minutes before the bout starts the teams enter the arena. Every team has usually picked some special music to accompany the entry. Sometimes especially for their opponent. 

Players are announced, flags are being waved, the occasional glitter cannon sets off and the teams are greeting each other.




First Whistle
Together with the teams, the photographers look for their places. (I'll probably make another blog entry about "what and where") All goes suddenly quiet on the track, NSO's are getting ready, focussed on their job and the game. The players take a last deep breath, remember the strategy or simply having a look at their opponents. What's their shape? Do they look like they hit hard, skate fast? 

The first jam is setting usually setting the tone for the first 10 minutes of the game. Just like an opening move does in Chess. 

A Jammer is through the Pack

When a jammer finally managed to get through the pack (or around), it is the slip-second after which I like. Depending on the effort to get through or the physical exhaustion you get deeply emotional pictures (if the jammer is looking up. Around 30% of all jammers I encountered are looking down for the first 2-3 meters.)

Power Jam
A Power Jam is when the opponent jammer is in the penalty box and only the remaining one can score (a total of 5 points because players in the penalty box count to the score). Depending on the game situation this can be a real nail biter or a triumphal procession. And of course they are exhausting for the remaining jammer. Trying to get as many points as possible can be a tough job.

Let me quote the Guiness Book of records:  
"The most points scored in a WFTDA Roller Derby power jam by an individual is 50 and was achieved by Megan Lazorski aka Slim Skatey (USA) for FoCo Girls vs Castle Rock at the First Bank Center, Broomfield, Colorado, United States on 27 April 2013."  

That was before the penalty time was reduced from 60 to 30 seconds in March 2014. There might never be someone able to break that record.  

The Wall

Not that I like seeing someone to be hurt, but also one of my favourite thing is the wall that fellow players, refs and/or NSO build when a player can't get up again and is being treated by the medics. It is considered inappropriate to shoot and publish pictures of such an incident. I asked a few times, it has always been denied. If I happened to take pictures of the incident, then I reach out to the injured player and offer them the pictures.

"The wall" is to give the injured player a little bit of privacy and of course to avoid some gazers to take pictures with their mobiles and spread them. A lot of times I have seen that the team from the injured player is also taking a knee and it gives me shivers every time.

The Honours

Game is over, everybody loved, cried, took their emotional share out of that. What follows is one of the greatest things I have ever watched in a sport.

The viewers are invited onto the track, they line up on on side and both teams are fan-hand-slapping while rolling by. The occasional butt slapping might occur also.  Sometimes there is a "player-tunnel" where the teams are rolling through and sometimes the teams take a knee to thank the game officials.

After all settles down stray groups of friends and family remain, celebrating what had just happen.

The picture editing
You say "But it is work?" and yes it is. But when scrolling through the hundreds of pictures at least I have a constant smile on my face because I recall all the great moments, see all the great people and it is like being back there.

These are not all of my favorite things of course but quite a lot of them. So thank you for joining me here and yes, I'm smiling again recapturing these moments.

Take care...

My Favorite (Derby) Things - Part 1

Julie Andrews, from the movie "The Sound of Music" (1965)

The venue
A new location or a well known location, everything about arriving or even driving there excites me. I know 75% what I'm up to and I'm mildly nervous about the upcoming three hours. I'm looking forward to meet friends and to make new ones. I can't wait for an after bout beer and sometimes I buy some merch and/or donate a few bucks to  organisations like the St. Baldrick's Foundation to conquer childhood cancer.

Usually I arrive as early as possible. For most events that is one hour before the bout, right when the doors are opening. I'm looking for a place where I can leave my gear, maybe locking it to a set of wall bars. 

First thing (when the lights are on) is to set the white balance and make one or two shots with the colour reference card. Then making some test pictures when the teams are warming up on the track, maybe some shots of Derby people and taking group pictures of the refs and the NSO team. 
  

The People

Derby people are best people. If you look around at an event you see a skaters family with homemade posters, the wolf pack (aka close friends) with some embarrassing DIY posters or toys, some fellow skaters from other leagues and Derby newbies.  

Be prepared, there might even be a hilarious mascot or some male cheerleaders (Vienna Fearleaders). 

You will meet people in all shapes, colours and sizes because Derby people accept you, no matter who you are or who you want to be. Not everyone, not every time even Roller Derby is not Shangri La. But I experienced it many times that Derby is giving a "home" to people that aren't accepted elsewhere.

The first time I met people who follow the "Derby Circus" I was a little concerned about all the tattoos and body modifications. But now I can honestly say that I know more idiots in a suit than ones with tattoos/mods. 

Relax, be open minded, talk to each other and have fun! 

 

At a game last year there was a group of refugees (FreedomSkaters) including family and friends attending the bout. They all seemed to like it considering the amounts of selfies that were taken. ;)

Derby Love to the Karlsruhe RocKArollers for that support. Please check the Freedom Skaters FB page and maybe leave a "Like"?

Sisyphos or How to deal with all the work

LuckyLu #69 (Prague City Roller Derby)

Get organized
A key to reducing stress is to get organized. How much you organize depends on yourself. Some need just a simple guideline or a list while others are fine with in-depth check-lists etc. 

Managing pictures
I use Adobe Lightroom to manage/process my pictures. I created a separate catalog for Roller Derby so it doesn't mix with other topics and the amount of pictures is smaller. In general all pictures are contained in date sorted folders grouped by year. I don't have an additional layer for months because events are usually at the weekends so there can be 2 per weekend making it up to round about 100. I cannot attend that much so i have usually 10-12 events per year +extra shootings. That's fine.


Add. Tools
I purchased the ColorChecker Passport from X-Rite to help with colours and white balance. You take pictures with it on location and a) can set the camera white balance directly from the picture with the greycard and b) from the pictures with the colour card a program can create a camera profile later which you can use in Lightroom. I can highly  recommend this.

My Workflow
A Derby Bout usually means roundabout 1,000-1,200 pictures. After the import (in which I create 1:1 previews although this takes up to three times longer) I get rid of all out of focus pictures, pictures that show people in unfortunate situations, double/triple shots of the same situation, etc. This usually drops the amount to around 800 pictures. 

Next step is to check for the pictures I want to "develop". I create a target collection and add all that catch my eye. This ends up with around 250-300 pictures for a closer look.

If you have set your whitebalance on location you should not have to change anything. If you have just taken a picture of a grey card, use the tool from lightroom to get the colour temperature and set this on all pictures.

Same for the colours. If you have created a profile, apply it to all pictures.

Then business as usual: exposure, crop, straighten, sharpen and at the end maybe apply a personal "look" to your pictures.

I publish directly from Lightroom after I tried to export and upload them normally. It's a step that I can save.

The goal is to get the bout pictures ready as soon as possible. It is not an art project, it is more like a schooltrip and everyone wants pictures quick and after say 2 weeks almost nobody is checking them anymore.

Don't bite off more than you can chew
You should ensure that you can process your pictures in a reasonable amount of time. It may be flattering to get invited to a bout on Saturday and another one on Sunday. But if you don't have the time to get the work done the following week, it might not be a good idea to attend both.

If it isn't a part of the solution it is part of the problem.
Check your gear! Do you take a tripod with you every time? Do you have just one bag for all your shootings? Do you really need that flash/extra lens? Load the batteries, have extra batteries, sync the time if you have more than one camera.

Know your gear! Bringing the lens/camera to a shooting that you received the evening before shooting can cause frustration when the pictures aren't what you want.

Take only the gear that gets the job done! Do not take gear that might be useful like that heavy manual portrait lens or that 600mm zoom you look super-pro with. You are in dark, (sometimes) smelly locations. The track is 18.3 meters long, add maybe 10 more and the longest shot might be 30 meters. That gives you a field of view (full format sensor) of 2.40x1.60 meters. You don't want to shoot portraits across the track, do you? 

Don't try to shoot Derby with your f5.6-6.3 Kit lens! You might end up disappointed because the small monitor on your camera might not show enough details to spot blurry pictures right away. I take a f2.8, 24-70, a f2.8, 70-200, a 1.4 or 2.0 converter and a f2.8, 40mm pancake because it weighs almost nothing.

Sometimes an APS-C camera does the job, but a full format DSLR gives you that extra light on the sensor for higher speeds and/or lesser grain.

Simplify the shooting itself
After some spying on a professional photographer (Hello Olivier^^) I use manual exposure settings. Indoor light is more or less stable. Measure once and go with it. I usually start with f3.2, 1/320s, ISO 3200 and adapt. f3.2 gives you nearly 2 meters depth of field at 20 meters distance and 200mm focal length. 

I don't recommend AUTO-ISO if it isn't limited. Especially not when using AV or TV settings. You might end up with more grain than you want.

And don't check the camera monitor after each picture. There are more than enough game breaks to go through the recent pictures.
-

Manual? What Manual? (A bit of tech talk)

So, I had a portrait shooting the other day. Can you imagine the horror when almost all things went south during the shooting? 

The Camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark III) was set to AV to ensure the amount of depth of field I wanted; a single remote flash was set up on a tripod (45° front). I tried it at home, it worked reasonably well there. Everything was set up nicely, I was only slightly nervous and then disaster struck.

Shutter speed was too low, resulting in streaks and blurry pictures.

What had happened? Canon decided to have the 5D react different when set to AV. Quote from another site: "

The flash exposure will be added-into the overall exposure, to create a "slow-sync" situation. The shutter speed will be chosen independently of the flash exposure, so if you're shooting in a dark restaurant, you may have 1 second exposures, creating lots of streaking. Sometimes you may want that, but most of the time I expect you don't.

I surely did not want that. What the heck, Canon? In all other programs and other (Canon) cameras this works different. 

I told the people to remain steady in their poses but this for sure isn't a proper solution every time. At the end I made some pictures with flash and some without just to be sure. The worst thing was to hide my dismay so that the people remained relaxed. I'm not sure that this worked all the time. The manual has at least an indicator on that situation but does not warn the photographer about what might happen:

Canon EOS 5D Mark III manual page excerpt.

So yes, my camera was set to "AUTO" because I lack experience in flash photography. Do I read the manual? Only when a special problem occurs. Do I own a book that explains things further? Now I do.

Lessons learned:

• Read the Manual
• Nothing beats Experience
• If you don't have experience, look for sources on the internet that explain things
• And get help if you're stuck. Most photographers are really nice and helpful guys.

Despite of that, I managed to get one or the other ok-ish picture from the shooting. Here's a sneak peek:

Becky Messer

First Light

First Light (sic!)

"Do you have a website?" was probably the most asked question when it comes to my Roller Derby Photography attempts. And here it is now, a small Blog in which I show some of my work and write about my experiences with the Sport and the Art. I do not earn any money with shooting Derby. There simply is no money to make. It's all about the love for Derby and wanting to help the teams.

Starting with an AGFAmatic pocket camera when I was ten or eleven, up to today's DLSR's. Some of them are still in a class cabinet in the living room. 

How did you get into Roller Derby?

I'm old enough to remember "Disco Rollers" from the 70's. Back then it was mostly associated with dancing and music like in this Trailer (YT). I also remember the film Rollerball (1975) and as a big fan of Eliot Page it was only a matter of time that I watched Whip It!. 

After that I googled all about Roller Derby, found a team near my hometown (RocKArollers) and discovered that a new team directly in the neighborhood was freshly founded (Rhein-Neckar Delta Quads).

Before I even watched my first Bout in Karlsruhe, the DeltaQuads took part in an event along the Neckar river (Lebendiger Neckar). So I geared up with a vest and asked if I could take some pictures. 

Same for the first bout, I just showed up and asked. Luckily another photographer explained a lot, e.g. told me the do's and don'ts. (Marcus, I still owe you one.)

RocKArollers vs. Zürich City Roller Girls - 19.07.2014 (Juergen Ziegler, CC by SA 4.0)