Last year, the Oak Harbor Wildcats won the State 4A championship in football. They played all their home games on a field located far off campus on the other side of the city. It had rickety stands, horrid light, and enough squishy, bog-like spots to make Shrek the ogre happy. It didn’t even have a press box and the poor, poor reporters were forced to slog around the sidelines with the photographers. This year, Oak Harbor has a new stadium right on campus, and let me tell you, it is totally wicked! I love natural grass fields, grass stains and mud are awesome to photograph, but the new stadium has the increasingly popular FieldTurf. This is its only downfall. Everything else about it is good and the best part of the new stadium: the light.
Almost all high school stadiums in the area have lights. This is not to say that they are well lit. Some of the fields are so dark; I have a hard time believing the players can even see well. Correctly exposed, some fields can only be photographed with the help of a flash. This is not the case in Oak Harbor. The new stadium has only four light stands, but, boy, are they pumping out the light. It was so refreshing to be able to see inside guys’ facemasks. Normally, the only part of a high school football player’s face one can see is the whites of their eyes and that’s when they look up, directly into the lights.
Besides have the best light of any other high school field I’ve been to, at the right angles, Wildcat Memorial also has the cleanest backgrounds. The players on the field “pop” while the background fades to nothingness. When shooting, I try to find positions where I can shoot against a clean background. This normally means I stay on the “home” side of the field, with the main grandstands at my back. (The visitors stands are usually much smaller then the home stands and therefore don’t end up in every frame.) Oak Harbor’s stadium is at the very edge of campus and is not surrounded by structures, making it good for very clean backgrounds. The only things that get in photos are the pushed back soccer goals and, of course, the field goal posts. These things I can deal with.
Oak Harbor High School is a decently long way from the paper, which is located in downtown Everett, but for the light and the backgrounds, I’d go there every Friday night from now until the end of the season.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
