OMBAC experiments

The thing about sports photography is that if you go out and shoot the same sport often enough, you find yourself taking essentially the same photo over and over.

I mean, how many pictures of a guy passing the footie or wrapping up the opposition in a big tackle do you really need to make your point visually? From a player’s perspective, I suppose you can never have too many. But as the person behind the lens, sorting through hundreds or thousands of photos that start to blur together, you start to feel like the BBC’s modern version of Sherlock Holmes: bored.

There are two essential ways to combat the boredom. The first is to be a seeker of little moments — the way pain flashes across a player’s face when a muscle stretches too far or the helpless smile of disbelief when a penalty doesn’t go your way. Moments are tricky to capture in rugby because the game is always moving on to the next play. Half the battle is knowing your away around the camera and the other half is being lucky enough to be in the right position to get the shot.

The second boredom buster is experimentation. To that end, about half of today’s set is in black and white. The 4pm kick off in Santa Monica on Saturday provided great light for shadows and high contrast images when paired with those bright white OMBAC jerseys. Have I mentioned how much I love OMBAC’s 2015 white kits? The particular shade of white photographs so nicely, I could sing an ode to Canterbury.

Anyway, to kick things off, here’s an animated gif of Derrick Broussard’s try from the big 78-24 PRP win:

derrick-scores

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