Sports Photography by George Ross

As a token of thanks to Providence College’s media athletic director, Jenn Rynearson, I offered to shoot the PC team competing in the NCAA Northeast Region Division 1 XC Championship held in Franklin Park in Boston on 11/14/2009. When I woke up that morning the weather was absolutely awful as Hurricane Ida developed into a classic Nor’easter and by the time that she was done, 7″ of rain had fallen in the Boston area. Just the thought of photographing an XC meet in a rainstorm gave me goose-bumps. I drove up to Boston in twice the time that it should normally have taken, got my rain gear on and tried to locate the PC Athletic trainer, Kristen Duhamel. Easier said than done in a torrential downpour, but I found Kristen standing in mud and  peering out under her rain hood as she cared for her team. Once I got the lie of the land it was time to get wet.

It was clear that my shoot plan had to be torn up because the mud was so deep that simply trying to walk with 20lbs of camera gear was going to be dangerous. I rarely use a monopod but today I did, not for camera stability but for my stability!!  Earlier on in the day 3,500 high school kids took part in the state XC championship and seriously cut up the course before the collegiate runners toed the line. The rain just never stopped – there was variation in intensity, but it never stopped. I was using two Canon EOS 40D’s, one paired with the fantastic 70mm-200mm L series IS f/2.8 and the other with a canon L series f/2.0 prime, the cameras were set to aperture priority, center-weighted exposure and hi-res jpegs, I seldom use RAW for large events. It was clear that lighting was going to be a challenge. During the men’s race that went off first, I used the 70mm-200mm set to f/2.8 with the ISO set to ISO 3200 (the maximum for the 40D)  but during the women’s race I had to switch to the prime because f/2.8 was simply not fast enough. The prime did not perform to well and my shot consistency was not that great but that is a problem with the 40D body and not the lens. The 40D is not as responsive to autofocus in combination with continuous speed shooting in low light conditions. I nearly overlooked the most important piece of equipment, the Aquatech rain jacket - if you ever find yourself struggling to pay $240 for a camera rain jacket, don’t even think about it and pay the money because as a sports shooter it will be one of your best investments.  Why? because it will get you shooting in conditions where others will fear to tread; and on this day, it got me a magazine cover.

View the photo gallery  from this muddy race