Washington v. California 11/17/07

California knows how to party. And by party, I mean lose. In the city, city of Berkeley, the Bears keep on losing. Keep on losing.

So it wasn’t much more than a month ago that I was in Berkeley and the Bears were number two in the country and poised to take over the top spot after an LSU loss.

Then they lost to Oregon State, and then another three of their next four games, with only a narrow victory over hapless WSU to break up the slide of futility. They came to Seattle needing a win desperately, but instead got run over by Husky running backs Louis Rankin and Brandon Johnson, losing by two touchdowns in a game that they were favored by a touchdown.

Rain poured down on the fake turf of Husky Stadium for the hour of pregame warmups, but it eased up before kickoff and it entirely stopped by midway through the first quarter. Yay!

It was not a very pretty game to shoot. Lots of running, a lot of the time away from me. I made my first helmet-pop photo in a long time, but unfortunately it featured the wrong team, since Cal ultimately lost the game. I was almost hoping that Cal would beat my alma mater because this picture would be a lot more usable had the Bears won:

Lens: 400mm, ISO: 400, Aperture: 2.8, Shutter: 1/1000. Joe Nicholson-U.S. PRESSWIRE

But alas, that was not to be. After five consecutive loses to Cal, no tears were shed on my end. I had another “almost” earlier in the same play when the running back’s shoe flew off, but I somehow didn’t have the ground in the picture, so it didn’t look like too much:

Lens: 400mm, ISO: 400, Aperture: 2.8, Shutter: 1/1000. Joe Nicholson-U.S. PRESSWIRE

Plus, the guy’s foot and socked-calf don’t stand out much against the background of his teammates, so it was a double disappointment. Sigh. Keeping the ground in the frame was a persistent problem for me; this touchdown by Marcel Reece would be a little more impressive if my picture showed how high he had jumped to get it.

Lens: 400mm, ISO: 400, Aperture: 2.8, Shutter: 1/1600. Joe Nicholson-U.S. PRESSWIRE

Also, I don’t appreciate the ref in the background. It sort of looks like the Cal player has four legs.

Though Rankin ran for more than 200 yards, I failed to make a real nice image of him, somehow. The best I had has the quarterback cluttering up the background:

Lens: 400mm, ISO: 400, Aperture: 3.5, Shutter: 1/1250. Joe Nicholson-U.S. PRESSWIRE

I did make a decent frame of Johnson at least, but by the time he was playing (Rankin got injured), the natural light was pretty much gone and detail in his face was minimal:

Lens: 400mm, ISO: 500, Aperture: 2.8, Shutter: 1/800. Joe Nicholson-U.S. PRESSWIRE

Next up: More Bears, but this time from the city of big shoulders instead of the city of hippies.