Note to Self: Dress Warmer!

On Saturday I went to the BYU spring game with an unnamed director to get some footage for a possible unnamed project.  I know nothing about sports; so, after the director filled me in on what “spring games” were, I was still left puzzled as to why I was standing in freezing, snowing and sleeting weather.  This was not Spring.  This was the dead of winter as far as I was concerned.

When I saw that is was snowing in the morning, I had planned to wear some pretty warm clothes which would have included a hoodie, a jacket, multiple layers of shirts, a ball cap, gloves, earmuffs, double socks, maybe even my pajama pants underneath my jeans.  Well, earlier in the middle of the night, I had to take my baby daughter to the ER for some respiratory problems.  I think I was so frazzled by the stress of figuring out all the logistics of getting my other kids to their grandparents’ place and getting back in time to start shooting, I forgot about all that warm stuff and left with just my plain-old jeans, a T-shirt and jacket.  Luckily I had my son’s gloves and earmuffs in the car.  I knew from previous experience that my sons’ gloves, when stretched just so, fit my own hands enough to do some protection.

We shot some footage of the game with two Canon 5D MkIIs.  One with a 24-70mm lens and the other with a 70-300mm IS lens.  Considering the circumstances of the shoot, the 70-300mm IS was the lens of choice for most of the shoot.  Also, considering the bitter cold we were in, the IS (image stabilization) lens helped get rid of most of the shivers from my hands.  Although, some photographers in the sidelines next to us had those über-telephoto lenses that would make any man have lens envy.

Did I mention how cold it was?  It was SO COLD.  I looked around at all the fans that had shown up with their wee-little ones and thought, “Who are these people???”  My fingers were painfully frozen and my feet… it felt like I was walking with wooden pegs for feet.  I was so excited when the game was coming to a close until they ended up in a 10-10 tie.  My minimal amount of sports knowledge let me know that we were going into overtime.  The freezing kid next to me shared an “ugh” moment as we realized we had to stand in the snow a little longer.  He was waiting for some autographs before he could go home.  I was waiting for a shot of the players to come up the ramp to their locker room.

When all was [finally] done, I quickly grabbed our equipment and ditched the director as he talked with one of the coach’s assistants and headed for the car under the guise of “here, let me take all the stuff to the car.”  What a nice person I am.  I hobbled on my wooden peg feet as fast as I could (a turtle’s pace) to the car and got the heater going on full blast.

As I waited for the director in the car, I watched as a poor young teenager walked across the parking lot with the same frozen peg legs I had.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  So mean. :P