Rocky Mountain Cup - Rapids v Salt Lake
This time it was my very first Rocky Mountain Cup, which is an MLS rivalry game between Colorado Rapids and Real Salt Lake.
These are the types of games that test what a player is really made of. How resilient of a person/player are you really? To put it short, Rapids 0 - Real Salt Lake 6. It was an absolute one sided affair from the first whistle. Colorado went down a man within 10 minutes, and then went down another man after getting a red card at the 45'. The score at half was only 2-0 to RSL, however I knew RSL was going to come out in the second half with their foot down on the pedal. Playing with 10 men is hard enough, because there will always be 1 man open. Now there were 2 men open for RSL, and Colorado was just playing pressure and chase. The man advantage became too much for Colorado as they were tiring from chasing. RSL took their man advantage and scored 4 more in the second half to seal a emphatic 0-6 road win.
My last game I photographed was the Boca Juniors friendly. When I photographed that game I was using a Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 FL VRIII lens, brand new is $2,700.... a ridiculous piece of equipment. If you talk to almost any professional photographer, the number one lens most recommend is a 70-200mm f2.8. However, I couldn't justify spending that money on one piece of glass. Therefore, I compromised and went with the Tamron SP 70-200mm f2.8 G2 lens, which is only $1,300!! For this match, I slapped the Tamron lens in front of my Nikon D500 and I got to say. I'm overly impressed with the lens capabilities for being an, "off brand" lens. The lens was SUPER fast at picking up focus, and also keeping focus. When I was shooting with the Nikkor lens, whenever I would track a player moving, the lens would skip focus. However, this Tamron stayed tack sharp and tracked the subject the whole time!! If you are ever in the market for a new 70-200mm f2.8 lens and don't want to break the bank, I highly suggest you look at the Tamron G2 lens, absolute superb piece of glass!
It may have only been the second MLS game I've photographed, however, I can already see where I got better from the first time! This is what I love about photography! I am constantly learning and getting new ideas. No matter how good of a shot I think a picture is, I will always find something to critique and improve on!
