Rollerskates

My brother called sometime a while back, mentioning that he had met a tall young woman. A tall young woman who wanted him to come to a roller derby bout with him. Tall and aggressive? Intriguing and unexpected. (My brother has never been associated with The Little General...)

Naturally, I asked if I could come too.

Of course, he said "no".

He had things to do.

For subsequent bouts, however, the then-future-wife and I received invites. However, we demured for several reasons; both doggy and infectious. This last time was different. We didn't demure. Instead, bags were packed, we checked The Dog into the kennel, slid the A/C selector to "MAX", put on our glasses, pointed the ChevOldsmoBuiac North, and hit-it.

I think I have finally found a spectator sport that I can spectate with joy.

Ten people. Tight oval. Simple rules. Helmets and pads. Full contact. Roller-skates. Chaos.

I love chaos.

It's like taking the best aspects of olympic speed skating, wrestling, football, and nascar, and fusing them into a single event, then adding fishnets and tattoos for good measure.

Whatever thought processes went in to creating the sport should encouraged in the general populous. For instance, we could give D.C. area rush-hour drivers rollerskates.

Roller Derby on Wikipedia.

One aspect of the event that I appreciated was that it didn't feel overly commercialized. The tickets were affordable, we weren't hounded for parking fees or for having outside water bottles. The skaters also worked with volunteers to make the event happen. In spite of the the whole crashing into each other business, it was a remarkably friendly gig.

That's right, I just said it was friendly.

Photographing roller derby is a bit challenging. There are lots of spectators, and the track is oblong and surprisingly short. As a result, the curve coming out of the start line ends up being the easiest place to take pictures. As obviated by the large number of photographers and spectators at that very point.

I took nearly 2000 photos, and only a few came out with anything tasteful to say for themselves. The bout was lit by high pressure sodium vapor lights in a tall, indoor stadium, thereby ensuring that color rendition was poor and that high ISO noise would obliterate detail. At least, that's what I thought when going through the photos. At blog post resolution, only the colors seems to be any issue.


I want my photos to give the skaters some colors that don't seem callow, and I want them to stand out above the background clutter a little bit. I had some success using a strobe for fill, but not enough success to get any photos I wanted to post. The combination of interesting and color just wan't there, and it took a full power discharge for it to work. Worthless in shooting sports. I think using two strobes might make a serious difference, especially if the strobes could be mounted off camera and triggered wirelessly, closer to the track.