Praying with Ziggy

Yesterday I covered the 79th Annual Blue-Gold Game, otherwise known as the Notre Dame spring football scrimmage. Since I attended the University of Miami I have an innate dislike of the Fighting Irish. Also, Notre Dame’s football stadium is traditionally one of the worst places for photographers to work because the sidelines are always packed with people who don’t mind stepping in front of a camera lens whenever they feel like it. On top of that, it was forecast to rain all day.

I went into the Sports Illustrated assignment hoping for the best but expecting the worst. There must have been some divine intervention because the sidelines weren’t overly crowded and there wasn’t a drop of rain during the entire scrimmage.

I played around with a little device I call “Ziggy.” It’s actually the ZigView – a video monitor that I hook up to my camera so I can fire the shutter remotely while still looking through the viewfinder.

I placed a fisheye lens on a monopod and held it up as high as I could get it. Most people who try this just wind up doing a “hail mary” (appropriate at Notre Dame), but since I had the video monitor I could actually compose the image while shooting.

Here are a couple of frames I made with Ziggy:

 

TRAVEL FUN: Sometimes you just have one of those days. Flying to Chicago on Friday was one of those. I had the car service pick me up, but it took much longer to get to LaGuardia than normal due to “Pope traffic.” The Pontiff was in town and it was wreaking havoc all over the city.

I arrived about 30 minutes before my flight. I didn’t expect it to be a problem because the Delta shuttle flies out of the less-crowded Marine Air Terminal. The agent at the counter must have been new because he somehow accidentally canceled my reservation. It took him about 20 minutes to get it back, although I lost my medallion upgrade. After being help up at security (very typical for me with all of my gear), there was some question as to whether I’d get on the flight at all but I managed to snag the last seat on the plane.

The landing at Midway in Chicago was one of the harriest I’ve ever experienced. We had a lot of turbulence and right before we landed the pilot did this crazy 180 degree turn at an angle I’ve never quite experienced on a commercial flight. I thought maybe he was training to be a Blue Angel.

Then, at the last minute, he revved up the engines and pulled back up. That’s not good. After we leveled out, he made an announcement that traffic was a little tight at the airport so we had to abort the landing and come around again. I think that’s pilot code for “there was another plane on the runway and I didn’t want to crash into it.”

On the second approach, he did that same crazy 180 turn and bounced down a bit on the runway. On the way off the plane, I asked the pilot if that was the normal approach for Midway. He said because of the strong winds, the tower was having planes land that way. I also asked how low we were the first time when he had to pull up. 400 feet. Fun!

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