Thoughts on volleyball, sports ...

For years as a young photographer I thought there was only way to do some things. Case in point, high school volleyball. I've shot a lot of it and usually always the same way — with a long lens, from one side of the net, facing the team I was covering, looking for action at the net. And though thankfully in more recent years I've come to shoot a lot of sports in a different way — shooting more with wide lenses, looking for moments away from the ball or the action — deep down I still feel like I have to nail that quintessential action shot (aka, redundant action shot) at games.
This year though I'm making a vow of sorts to approach how I shoot high school sports in a different way, all the time, to more like how I shoot pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE.
I've always liked the kind of off the cuff shots I get at practices and training camps, like the football stuff I posted last week. I took that same basic mentality with me to shoot previews at the volleyball practices this week and got stuff I liked a heck of a lot more than I would have if I had just tried to get another pic of someone trying to spike a ball.
So as the seasons begin, I'm going to try and take that mentality to the games that count and see what I get. I really liked shooting basketball with a wide lens last year and am going to keep trying new things like that for me. Now I'm not claiming this as rocket science, far from it. People like Scott Strazzante ( who shot a great blog called The Season last year on three different sports) and Sol of course have been using a similar approach in their sports shooting for years, but for some reason in my mind I seperated how I basically shoot everything else, from how I shoot games. But not anymore hopefully — though I'm sure I'll fall back into that familiar comfort zone from time to time, hopefully I'll have sense enough to push myself to look further than what's in front of me.
So anyway, with all that out of the way, here's some pix from volleyball practices that I liked.





When I got back to the car after shooting the Naselle practice I found Kenz, lounging in the car half asleep listening to orchestral music on the car radio.


-DKM