Photo Gallery: Notre Dame

I've never done a photo story after a Virginia Tech loss before (although there are galleries online for every game I photograph), so I'm appreciative of an opportunity to tell a different kind of story.

The day started well before kickoff (after an early-afternoon stop at The Key Play Tailgate) with a dedication ceremony to a statue of Frank Beamer, located on the Southwest entrance, complete with a mini-speech from the former big whistle himself:

I got extremely lucky on the positioning for the whole thing. HokieSports had a bit of a miscommunication within their own staff and wasn't allowing credentialed media inside the roped off area, so I had to go full paparazzi and make my photos peeking over the big hedge bushes on either side of Moody plaza, as the crowd had already taken up pretty much the entire area at the bottom.

Things worked out:

Between the ceremony and kickoff, fans were able to stop by and get an up close and personal look at the new hardware outside Lane:

And yours truly had an opportunity to make a nice portrait of the man in bronze:

A very fast moving rainstorm passed through campus around the time of the walk, which produced a fantastic sunset about 30 minutes later as the clouds broke up. Here's a view from the roof of the West stands as the Marching Virginians walk down Beamer Way before marching onto the field, followed by Lot 1 and the residential side of campus on the North end. Being able to go up onto the roof of Lane is one of the few perks that the media pass gets you and I'm up there before kickoff almost every game.

On the field, I wanted to try out some slower shutter speeds in a couple scenarios, first one as the Corps of Cadets marched into (a very early arriving) Lane:

...and the second one during a much more chaotic time:

As the game got underway, my photos definitely started out with a feel of an evenly matched game, which the 1-point difference at halftime reflected:

Then Dexter Williams had this Charlton Heston-sized opening appear at his own 1-yard-line and the game was over:

As I pointed out in the first story that went up post-game, sometimes you just know when you have your headline photo.

It seemed like the game got very quickly out of hand after that:

Things that I find myself doing more often during a loss include taking less photos (who wants to go through that many photos anyway?), but also taking more time to linger behind the Hokies' bench, where sometimes you can know exactly how well the game is going even if you had no other inputs or idea beforehand:

To end on a more positive note, while I post a gallery after each game that contains a few dozen photos, I actually edit and turn in about 100 more as background material, stock photos, or simply possible material for future stories not yet even brainstormed. I also sometimes will throw in some more outtake-ish things, which I will leave with you here with no caption (I'm going to try to do this more often in the future too).

You can see the entire Notre Dame gallery here. Enjoy!