Jean Woodard Park, Yorba Linda. - More than a month later, this day still bothers me. I went out to shoot my next door neighbor Makenna. Despite living next door, it’s rare that I get to go to her (or her sister’s) games, you know how weekends are when you have active young kids - and I have three. I was here early, and set my chair up far from any parents with my back to the sun to get the best lighting for the game, as I do every soccer game I’ve ever shot. Right before the game was about to start, the referee comes over and tells me I need to go to the other side of the field. He tells me the lady coach doesn’t want me on her side of the field. I said I’m just here taking pictures, then HE says “Who are you with?” It sounded a little like a trick question as it came out, turns out it was. I said, “Well nobody really, I’m not a parent, I’m shooting my neighbor.” He says, “Who is your neighbor?” I figured if I said who it was, he’d have some justification for sending me to the other side, so I didn’t give him that info right away. He says (and I paraphrase) AYSO has what we call a “Safe Harbor” and blah, blah, blah, if someone here cannot vouch for you, you’ll need to be at least 200 feet away from the playing field. (He implied they would not be able to start the game until either I complied or the police removed me. I have no idea what the actual distance he said was - it was all a blur. This all came out of left field man!) Anyhow, her dad “vouched” for me. The refs didn’t need to escort me, I walked to the other side. As I did, I said “Are you serious?” He says, “She is VERY serious about her soccer.” The game started, and I was standing in the crappy spot to shoot this special game, I notice one of the Irvine dads waltz over to my spot, nice. The way the sun was, I could only get the light I wanted at the FAR end of the field on the right side. Essentially 20% of the field and with that distance, a large percentage would be out of focus. There’s a decent one (top center) of Makenna. On the top right you can see how hard the shadows were. Worthless photos. On the bottom right you can see a before and after of the work I had to do just to scrape out a few good shots. Moving all the elements. So I took pictures of the Irvine coaches. Since they weren’t moving, they were the only participants I could get enough light on and in focus. They sat in Coach Chairs, first time I’d ever seen that. I ended up with only 25 decent shots of Makenna’s team, compared to a normal 100-125. I processed some of the Irvine team, and then stopped. It’s a lot of work to fix these shots, and they had their own photographer in a better spot. Later someone told me the woman coach is a high ranking AYSO Queen of Referees, so that could explain the attitude of the ref... I don’t know. I’m just taking pictures lady... “which I am VERY serious about”. Here’s the small Gallery. OH! I almost forgot! Why would the HOME TEAM choose to have it’s fans and families face directly into the sun, while giving the VISITING TEAM the shade? The answer I got was that the grass was labeled HOME and AWAY... most likely to make a distinction for the REC teams to avoid hassle. - Bryan
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