Jeff Self Photography Blog

It was doubleheader night at Hickory High School as both the girls and boys hosted Norfolk Academy. The girls game was a very competitive game that Hickory looked like they had control of going into the fourth quarter. But Norfolk Academy got the momentum and dominated the fourth quarter to win.

The Hickory boys took a 20 point lead to halftime and looked to be in complete control of their game. But Norfolk Academy fought back in the second half and even took a 1 point lead with a couple of minutes to go before Hickory finally got control of the game and won.

On Saturday, December 7th, I got up early and took a cold drive down to Pea Island NWR on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was 19°F when I left and my heat was not working too good in my Jeep. I definitely need to take that in and get it looked at! In fact, it was still about 26°F when I started crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge to get over to the Outer Banks. But once I crossed, it was 36°F on the island and my heat started pumping a little more hot air.

It was doubleheader night at Currituck County High School as both the girls and boys took on Hickory High School. The gym lighting had not been updated to LEDs so it was a bit of a throwback to the past. Both games were very competitive, which makes for better opportunities for shooting.

I brought my new telescopic stool but noticed that some of the pegs on it were already broke. It still worked mostly so my back was thankful. I brought my Nikon Z9 body and Nikkor Z 70-200 f/2.8 S lens. I hadn’t used this lens for basketball in a while, so I wanted to use it here. It’s the standard go to lens for basketball, but I think I still prefer a prime lens.

I started my high school basketball season off with a game between Southeastern District rivals Grassfield High and Deep Creek High. Sadly, I was going to have to shoot this game sitting on the floor since my telescoping stool got messed up from baseball season.

Grassfield controlled nearly all of the first half of this game but Deep Creek went on a row in the last minute to actually take the lead at halftime. Deep Creek then went on to dominate the second half.

I went out to Stumpy Lake Nature Area on Sunday morning to look for some birds to photograph. It’s been a bit slow this Fall. Actually, it’s been a bit slow for me since I’ve hardly done any bird photography. But the 40 days of no rain wasn’t helping either. Stumpy Lake was actually a puddle. But we did manage to finally get some rain last Friday. I brought along my Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR lens.

JMU traveled from Harrisonburg to take on their in-state rival ODU in Norfolk for a 4pm kickoff. It was another beautiful day for football and the stadium was packed.

I brought my Nikon Z9 body with my Nikkor 400mm f/2.8G lens and my Nikon Z8 body with the Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena lens. But just before ODU took the field, I realized the 400mm wasn’t going to stay on the monopod. The screw holes in the footer collar were stripped. This was the same issue I had at the Norfolk State game a couple weeks earlier, but I thought I had fixed it.

CNU hosted [William Paterson(https://www.wpupioneers.com/sports/football)] in a New Jersey Athletic Conference D3 football game on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Newport News, VA. This was my first D3 football game of the season and I found it to be just as fun to watch as FBS and FCS football games. In fact, I think I liked it more. No media timeouts! I didn’t even have time to take my phone out of my pocket to check scores after a touchdown because they were already lining up for the kickoff.

I decided to venture out to Pleasure House Point Natural Area in Virginia Beach on Sunday morning. I hadn’t been there since late May. I figured the ospreys have moved on but I was hoping some of the migrating birds would have started arriving by now. The first bird I was spotted was a Great Blue Heron who was roosting in a pine tree. I then walked all the way to the Brock Center without spotting any more birds. It had just been high tide about an hour before I was there, so that was definitely going to limit the bird action. I was happy to see they built the bridge near the Brock Center. When I first started coming here 5 years ago, there was a cinder block that you had to step on to cross a very small runoff between the larger part of the creek and a little pond. You could literally step over it and didn’t even really need the cinder block. But over the course of five years, this had turned into a pretty big ditch between the two. They have built a really nice bridge for walking over the water now. It has grown to be about 20 feet wide and about 2 feet deep in just 5 years.

It was homecoming at Norfolk State this past Saturday as they hosted their MEAC rival Howard University. It was a 2pm kickoff so I showed up around 12pm and drove around campus looking for a parking spot. After realizing it was going to be hard to find, I changed my mind and drove over to Macarthur Mall to park there and then ride the Tide back to Norfolk State. There was a 10 minute walk from the train stop to the stadium and I was carrying my Nikon AF-S 400mm f/2.8 G lens, all 10 pounds of it, along with my Z9, Z8, and one other camera I’ll talk about in a future post.

The Grassfield hosted the Nansemond River Warriors on Friday night for their homecoming. A clear night with perfect temps. Another Chesapeake game with outdated lighting. I really hope they can get around to updating the lighting at the Chesapeake high schools.

Nansemond River was dressed in white while Grassfield wore their dark blue jerseys. Perfect color for a dimly lit field. Detect any sarcasm there?

I only shot the first half of the game as I wasn’t feeling great but at halftime Nansemond River built a 28-7 lead.