The US Open Through The Wrong Lens

There's no denying that a day at the US Open is a photographer's dream. With a little planning and patience, you can position yourself remarkably close to world class athletes playing a delightfully unpredictable sport. Best of all, no press credentials, absurdly priced tickets or eccentric gear is required. Going into our forth year of attending the Open, however, I did have one itty bitty concern.

Consider these snapshots:

I think these are solid photos, and they're capturing the number one player in the world doing his thing. But alas, I feel like I've captured these exact photos for the last 3 years. Did I really need another photo of Rafa Nadal hitting a winner? (Shira's answer: yes, you idiot.) I decided, I didn't.

To encourage taking unique photos this year, I dispensed with my 300mm zoom lens and depended exclusively on a fixed 24mm lens. I considered leaving the DSLR at home altogether and making this challenge about using my cell phone. But, I already shoot so many photos with my cell phone that wouldn't be all that unusual. Also, the DLSR would give me the opportunity to control not just shutter speed and ISO like my LG G6 does, but also aperture, which should give me an entire degree of freedom to work with.

Ultimately it boiled down to this: a DSLR with a 24mm lens at a sporting event is just wrong! This made it perfect for my purposes.

After a full day and a half of shooting pictures I had a much better idea of what this 24mm lens setup could be ideal for. Naturally, it worked well for landscape type photos where I could capture the scene:

With the building of a new Louie Armstrong stadium, and newly constructed Grandstand and roof over Arthur Ashe, there was plenty of interesting architecture to shoot. Not to mention, there's New York in the background. At night the grounds are lit up, which also makes for fun shooting opportunities.

The 24mm lens also did solid work shooting portraits:

As I mentioned above, the seating for the matches can often be quite close. So close, in fact, that I was able to get away with a few action shots using the lens:

The last series in the above was taken during a practice session and shows just how close to the action you can get.

I even managed to take one notable close up photo:

Where the lens truly shined was in capturing off court candid moments. I basically got to play the role of street photographer, looking for interesting subjects and attempting to capture fleeting moments:

I especially like the first photo in the group that shows Madison Keys moments before she walked out on the court to play. With a telephoto lens in hand, I'd never have captured that photo (though I would have hoped I could have been quick enough on the draw with my cell phone).

One has to ask: was the experiment a success?

On one level, no. My favorite two photos of the time there were these two shots by Shira, both of which used the telephoto lens:

The former photo captures an impossibly timed shot of del Potro slipping and losing his racket. The latter tells the story of an impressive shot by the faces of the spectators.

But of course there was more to my experiment than taking the best pics. I got a crash course in street photography and was reminded what a single fixed lens and camera body can accomplish. And most importantly, I took new pictures this year, striving to tell the story of the US Open without merely showing impressive tennis shots. So yeah, I'll call it a success and I'm certainly glad I gave this challenge a go.

I'm incredibly fortunate that I've managed to get to this world class sporting event so many times. As for next year, we'll see. Maybe I dispense with the camera altogether and just bring a sketch pad? Now that's some serious pressure.

US Open Must Bring List

We just got back from the US Open, and after 3 years of practice, Shira and I finally felt we brought the right stuff with us to enjoy roughly 30 hours of tennis. This is trickier than it sounds as there are limits on how big a bag you can bring in, how significantly the temperature fluctuates in a single day, the need to stay mobile, and how little leg room you have to store stuff. So yeah, it's a puzzle. But it's one that Shira and I both solve in different ways. No surprise, there.

Ben's Must Bring List

• Inflatable REI sit pad. This made sitting on the rock hard benches far more bearable and was a new edition this year. One of the main reasons I'm writing this post is that I'm hoping it will help me remember this for next year.
• Disposable poncho. Attend enough days of the Open and it will rain. The typical $1.50 disposable poncho was perfect for this event. It was super tiny, and when I inevitably needed it, I just busted it out.
• Empty Vapur water Bottle. I'll gladly trade drinking New York water (mmmm, so metallic tasting...) for that sense of smug superiority one gets from filling a water bottle rather than overpaying for a bottle of Evian. I also liked that I didn't have to schlep around water when it was chilly out, and could refill it as many times as I wanted once it got hot as blazes.
• SDR Radio. This was an experimental just for fun item. Using SDR, I was trivially able to pick up radio chatter from all over the place. I tuned to around 460Mhz and looked for possible signals in SDR Touch. The main issue was that I wasn't able to tease apart which was US Open chatter and which was just surrounding city services. I'm pretty sure I picked up rail road traffic, police traffic and food service traffic. Next year, I'll have to re-double my efforts to see if I can learn any frequencies ahead of time. After watching tennis for hours on end, SDR was a welcome distraction.

Shira's Must Bring List

• A String Bag. Backpacks are off limits, but for some reason, string bags are considered OK. I had picked one up last year and they didn't give it a second look when bringing it into the stadium. Shira crammed that bad boy full of stuff. The bag actually broke about 30 minutes after we arrived at the park. I used needle, fishing line and mad Boy Scout skills to fix it.
• Suntan lotion. Yep, old school lotion. Yuck. But it works and inevitably you sit in the sun for hours.
• Umbrella. Shira gladly carries around a large, heavy umbrella all weekend knowing that eventually it will rain. And this year it did. I was happy with my disposable poncho, she with her massive umbrella.
• Down Blanket. Shira doesn't care what the forecast says. She doesn't care if all day long it's going to be hot. She knows that by the time night rolls around, everyone in the stadium will be cold because the sun is gone and the Arthur Ashe (with the roof open) is drafty. Well, everyone is cold except for her. She has her down blanket, ready to go.
• Multiple bottles of store bought water. Shira's not a fan over over-paying for water, but she sure is heck isn't drinking the sketchy stuff that comes out of a public drinking fountain.

US Open 2017 - Great Tennis, So Much Sitting

Shira and I just got back from our now yearly pilgrimage to the middle weekend of the US Open. While I may kvetch before, during and after the event (you try sitting through 30 hours of tennis and tell me you don't get a little testy!), we really did see impressive tennis. Some highlights include: watching Isner serve up 137mph serves; watching Dolgopolov play, in his own words, the best two sets of his life; rooting for Americans Venus Williams, Madison Keys and Coco Vandeweghe, the latter of which won an impressive 3 setter against Radwanska; watching our beloved del Potro dispatch Agut with confidence; watching Mayer fight of *14* break points against Rafa Nadal; and of course watching the Greats Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer do their thing. Rafa was especially entertaining, as he was visibly frustrated with dropping the first set in the two matches we watched. He was acting like the game was slipping away before him, when in reality was just warming up to utterly decimate his opponent.

This year the weather was perfect, with cool days and rain only on Saturday night, which didn't impact play thanks to the roof on Arthur Ashe. I also brought along an inflatable sit pad, and man, did that make long hours of sitting on metal benches more pleasant.

The food was so-so this year. There's an obvious attempt to have fancy shmancy food offerings, but ultimately, the food is made and sits around. This just isn't a great recipe for success, and made for less than stellar pizza and grilled cheese. The pickled daikon raddish covered fries from JoJu was a hit, and of course so were classic waffle fries and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Nobody went hungry.

Who know that being a spectator could be so exhausting? After sitting for 3 days, I've officially had my fill of tennis. See you next year, thank you very much!