AVP Volleyball (Muskegon)

01.12.2010

At the end of August, my brothers and I were headed up to a cottage near Traverse City, Michigan. We decided to stop in at the AVP Volleyball tournament that was being held in Muskegon. Whoever said white men can’t jump has never watched beach volleyball.

My bros and I got there a little bit late on Sunday so we only got to see about 2.5 matches, but we got to see both finals – including the Olympic champion female team (Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor) and also the male Olympic champions (Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhousser). BALLIN!

Phil "Albatross Arms" Dalhousser with a huge block. How in the world are you supposed to get the ball past this cat?

Nick Lucena gets wise and goes over the top of him.

This hang time is OUTRAGEOUS! You could drive a small bus underneath Dalhousser!

SHOOT NOTES
Interesting facts and what I learned.
  • All these photos were shot with my Sigma 70-200 2.8 lens.
  • It was real cloudy when we showed up. In fact, on August 23, the temperature was 60 degrees when we showed up the beach. Once the sun came out, it warmed to a beautiful 75!
  • This was the first volleyball shooting I’d done. I learned that many photos are taken portrait (not landscape) because the ball moves vertically so much and the really compelling photos have the ball in the frame. A number of these pictures, I couldn’t crop the way I wanted because the ball would have been removed from the frame. The frames here WITHOUT a ball in them still struck me as compelling enough to include, but a ball would have made them 10x cooler. So I learned that I need to time my shots better to include the ball.
  • I learned a factor out of the photographer’s control is how a play develops and which player(s) will go to cover the area a ball is hit. It seems like photos where teammates are both in the frame makes for a cooler shot. Obviously, diving shots are extremely cool!
  • Without question, shooting down on the sand makes for better images. I shot the men’s final from the stands and didn’t really love very many of the photos. The semifinal match I shot on the sand was much cooler.
  • During the men’s final, there was a guy out on Lake Michigan who was kite surfing. He was fun to watch during breaks in the action. Hang ten, homie!

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