Raymond Moberly of IEEE Consultants' Network of San Diego watches his booth's Jacob's ladder during the 2010 High Tech Fair at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, March 10, 2010.

Last week I covered an exhibition of local technology companies attended by middle and high school students. I contributed photos as wells as the written piece for the Del Mar Times story, and it was pretty intense seeing what these kids got to be exposed to. Back in my day we never played with bomb-detecting robots or jet turbines during school hours.

Meanwhile, I was perfectly content to squeak by with an ancient 300mm wide open at f/2.8 to keep the bulls and their riders sharp.  That is, until I found out that a spectator’s beer I had clumsily knocked over with my big fat camera bag cost seven dollars to replace.  My chagrin at the remuneration of said refreshment bled over into pessimism regarding my ability to deliver quality images of the rodeo.

Later that night, however, I was perusing my photos when I found an unexpected keeper: I had caught the flash from the parabolic satellite dish on the rodeo photographer’s camera, giving me one frame of a cowboy’s ride lit dramatically from the side.  Considering my shutter speed was close to 1/1000 of a second, I assume that the pulse from the flash had to have been rather long.  That, and maybe I had a little luck on my side after all.

And then, a few weeks later I was reading Newsweek’s terrific Beijing Olympics photo blog Visions of China when I came across a photo by Donald Miralle of Michael Phelps celebrating his eighth gold medal.

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Simon Barnett, DOP for NEWSWEEK, lauded Miralle’s photo for the effect added by catching another photographer’s flash.  I couldn’t help but note the similarities between the circumstances around Miralle’s photo and mine: both shooting sports, both using 300mm Canon lenses, both struggling in low light to freeze the action, both using another’s flash to highlight the subject.

Regardless of the historic event that Miralle caught so well, I couldn’t help but smirk at the fact that my photo came first.

I had never quite understood what exactly defined the sport of roller derby – or that it was actually a sport at all – until a week ago when I went to my first match.  It was a friend of a friend’s first match as well, only she would be on the rink, elbow to elbow with the rest of the women of the San Diego Derby Dolls league.  But some of the top players appeared to be well into their thirties, quite unexpected for what I thought would amount to a staged show reminiscent of professional wrestling entertainment.

What I found was two teams who took their sport seriously even while competing with names such as Isabelle Ringer, Anita Battle, Taryn Hearts, Micki Dagger, Slamurai and (my favorite) CN Enemy.  My sentiments were echoed by a reasonable proportion of the crowd in attendance who seemed to have never been to a match before, but were nonetheless engrossed in the action once it got underway.  The organizers are keen to get the word out about their young league; if you want to play roller derby, even if you’ve never laced up a pair of roller skates, they’ll train you.

More photos here.