I thought I would give Rugby a Try (get it).

Let me start this blog post by stating that I have never photographed a rugby game. Actually, let me be more specific, I have never BEEN to a rugby game before. Last night was my first time watching and photographing this sport and I had a blast. The play is fast, there is a ton of action, and the crowd is off the chart loud and fun!

I credit this blog post to my son, who called me and said "dad, you need to go photograph women's rugby because they are in awesome shape and tough!" So thanks Connor for that tidbit of info.

The cool thing is that the rugby stadium is right across from the water polo venue (until water polo moves to the larger swim venue for medal rounds). So, once I had completed all my images for USA Water Polo, I hightailed it over to rugby to have a shot at it. 

 

Once again, I was using the Canon R1 and Canon RF 100-300mm lens. I was going to put on the RF 1.4x teleconverter to give me a little more reach, but I forgot to bring it yesterday. Oh well! I set the camera to ISO 1600 and aperture to f/2.8. This gave me a shutter speed of 1/1250 - 1/2000 sec depending on which direction I was pointed.  

I knew that the US team was coming up next, but I used the China / New Zealand game to warm up and learn a few things.

I thought I would be artsy and use the Paris 2024 goal post as an element in the shot.

Then it was just following the action. I typically only shot when the athletes were on my side of the field.

The games are very short - only about 20 minutes each. And then it was time to photograph USA Rugby.

Love the hair!

I used the new "Eye control" of the Canon R1 to determine which athlete would be in focus. It is awesome. Whichever person I am looking at through the eye piece, will be the person that gets tracked by the focus system.

That made my life a little easier with all the action happening so fast.

This was the first Try for the US (and yeah I had to learn the proper game for scoring the points). 😆

Did I mention how tough these women are?

Team USA won the match and the ladies celebrated.

Then I found out that the next match was France vs Canada. The place was electric and I thought I would stay and photograph that game too.

A big hit by the Canadians...

...and the ball popped out.

Then it was off to the races for the French team.

I love the scrums.

This Canadian player was beat up but still going strong.

The French team ended up losing, much to the dispapointment to the large crowd that was on hand.

Now it was time for the Canadians to celebrate.

 

And that they did.

It was a hard loss for the French players. And as a photographer, I don't like taking photos of people crying, but it is part of the story, and that is what we do.

Then the Canadians went over and rang the bell (which I knew nothing about until I ran over and captured this).

All in all, this was a really fun sport to photograph, and I look forward to doing it again.

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* Thank you to Canon, Apple, ProGrade Digital, Crucial, Tiffen, DataColor, ThinkTank, Adobe, and CameraBits  for providing loaner product to me for the Olympic Games!

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