Chesapeake

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.

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.

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 Another Chesapeake game with outdated lighting.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.

The Hickory Hawks hosted their city rival Grassfield on Friday night. Great night for football as I had to put on the hat and thin gloves.

Hickory isn’t the best place to shoot football at night. The combination of outdated lighting and black jerseys make for some high ISOs in the images. Luckily, software has come a long way in the last ten years and the noise cleans up well.

Thanks to Hurricane Helene’s tracking, and the upcoming rains we were expecting on Friday, we had a football game on Thursday night. It was Military Appreciation night as the Hickory Hawks hosted their rival, the Great Bridge Wilcats.

The combination of high school stadium lighting, dark open spaces between the two sides of the stadium, and Hickory’s all black jerseys, make for a difficult night of shooting. It gets so dark out there. Even shooting wide open at f/2.8 on the 400mm lens, my ISOs were reaching my peak settings. Lets hope these schools can switch out to LED lights in the near future.

I made it out to Colon L. Hall stadium in Great Bridge for the Friday night high school football game between the Oscar Smith Tigers and the Great Bridge Wildcats. Great Bridge’s stadium had undergone renovations and it was finally complete. I have to say the stadium looks really good now. I want to say it was originally built in 1962. Made completely out of cinder blocks and concrete, it had suffered from neglect and black mold for years. They gutted and ripped out a lot of the back wall and replaced it with steel beams.

I shot my first high school football game of the season on August 29th. The game featured the home team Deep Creek Hornets of Chesapeake, Virginia and the visiting Currituck County Knights of Barco, North Carolina.

Having just received my “new” Nikon 400mm f/2.8G ED VR lens a day earlier, I was eager to try it out and since it was Labor Day Weekend coming up, most of the high school football games would be played on Thursday. Deep Creek High is not too far from my house, so I decided to go there and shoot. Did I mention I shoot for MaxPreps too? The gallery from this game is on both MaxPreps and my own site.

As my film journey progresses, I absolutely love the simplicity of shooting with my Nikon FM2n and Yashica Electro 35 GSN. But I have been thinking about getting into medium format at some point. I’ve really had my eye on finding another Yashica. Especially the Mat 124G. But then I was watching Youtube and and I saw Kai’s video on using the Nikon F6.

Watching his video got me thinking. I have the Nikon FM2n. The perfect, most simplistic 35mm SLR made by Nikon. It doesn’t even need a battery to function. But what if I paired it up with the most advanced 35mm SLR Nikon ever made? That would be an awesome complement to the FM2n.