Day 2: US Club Soccer Regionals

[jorgemonkey]

OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS! LAS VEGAS IS HOOOOOTTTTT!!!

So I get off the plane in Las Vegas at 12am Sunday night. We get the usual spiel from the flight attendents, "Welcome to Las Vegas. The current time is 12:03am, and the temperature is 84 degrees. Now I am wishing for the 84 degrees again!

We got to the hotel & to sleep at about 2:30am. Woke up at 5:30, and were at the fields by 6:30 to get ready for the start times of 7am. The games started at 7am, and were spaced 2 hours apart, with the last game being at 1pm. The teams take a break, then the games start up again at 6pm, so the players miss the worst of the heat. Still though, I was going through 4-5 cups of water about every hour or so to stay hydrated.

Temps were only around 100, but getting very little shade just made it worse. Luckily that was the longest day of shooting. The next few days are easier, including selling photos.

Speaking of photos, here is a few from Monday. I'm going to try to do one thread for each day I was able to shoot, but depending on if/where I get internet access I may end up posting a few once I get home Sunday, and I'll space them out by day.

1. Boys (or Mens should I say) U19


2. Always love a good celebration


3. As rough as these guys were, there were no reds, and only one or two yellows


4.


5. I love gettin a good closeup of an individual


6. Um Ref, can he stop grabbing my shorts?


7.

8. And some late night, high ISO (1600 or 3200, I can't remember)

[livin4lax09]

that 2x really wreaks havoc with the bokeh, and its a shame to see (though it may be the heatwaves in this case, but I have yet to see a 2x with smooth blur). maybe it's not the 2x, but something in this case really downgraded the quality of these photos, may just be jpg compression though. You really captured peak action with a lot of these shots. Watch that horizon line on a couple (as much as I hate to say it because it's so oversaid). What ICC profile do you have on these? I ask because just like the last photos the colors look very flat. Do you convert them to sRGB before posting?

[jorgemonkey]

Yea, I have to agree its something with the jpeg compression, since the originals are waaaay sharper.

I've got some other tweaks on these to do, but waking up at 5:15am, and going to bed at 1-1:30am each day for the past few days is taking its toll on me, I can't think straight anymore

These are actually posted in sRGB, but I think most of the washed out colors is caused by having to shoot at 10-1 or 2pm, in that straight down boring sunlight. The ones that I have had come out the best every time have either been early morning games (aka 7am start time) or the late afternoon games. It has been so hot out here, they had to change all the 1pm games to a different field, because the artificial turf gets soo hot, my feet were literally burning while just walking across it!