Right school, wrong gym

"Western guard Brielle Ward fouls St. Frances' Shatyra Hawkes on a drive to the basket during Western's 54-42 loss in the Breezy Bishop Showcase at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Saturday, Dec 13."

Mistakes are made every so often. It happens and they are a part of life. In my most recent case, I was at the right high school, but in the wrong gym.

A standard Saturday night sports assignment, I needed to shoot some next day action of girls high school basketball at the Breezy Bishop Showcase at Polytechnic Institute - St. Frances versus Western to be more exact.

Having been to the school before to do some sportraits, I knew where I was going. Not to mention, the photo assignment confirmed my prior visits.

As always, I arrived well before the tip. I've never been one to be late to anything, and when I know I will be, I get gut wrenching nerves. I am not sure why I am always early or how that all got started. My only justification is because my parents were and are always late, or so it seems.

Sitting in the gym with 20 minutes to spare, I checked my exposure and thought about putting up some small Nikon SBs (lights) in the corners. The D3 was spoiling me though with a 1/640 of a second shutter at f/2.8 at 6400 ISO, so I decided to keep the frames per second and roll with ambient.

As I sat on the bleacher playing on my Blackberry, I noticed that the game would be running late, as during halftime of the current match-up, it was almost 7 p.m.

At 7:10 p.m., my nerves were starting. Why wasn't this game over yet? When was the game I was suppose to be shooting going to start? Did I miss it? Is the gamer suppose to start later than posted on the assignment?

Then with some luck, I asked the gentlemen sitting in front of me if I could shoot the roster of the two teams out of his program for captioning after the game.

When I told him what two teams I needed to shoot, he said, "You know the Western game is in the other gym, right?"

"Umm. Other gym?" I asked.

I had no idea the school had two gyms and here I was running late. Which I hate.

To make matters worse, the other gym was darker, packed (even with parents and other teams sitting on the baselines) and hot.

I missed almost the entire first quarter, but that was OK since I would actually be able to shoot the entire game before my deadline.

As the game went on, I was a little upset that I didn't have the time to put lights up because of sitting in the wrong gym. So I shot the entire game with a 85mm at f/1.8.

Despite being late, all went well, not to mention it was my second basketball game of the season and I was feeling a bit rusty.