Smiling at soccer

I'm the official SLCS photographer. This means I'm someone from our community with a half-decent camera who stands half a chance of making the odd trip to Nelson (where there are a couple of photofinishing joints) in the middle of June. So I take the posed team shots and then I do individual portraits of each player in uniform. There are always a couple of kids I have trouble tracking down. Yesterday was my last chance to corner the last two, so I took my camera to the soccer game.

Sophie told me it was time I took some pictures of her playing. I hadn't taken any really good ones of her yet this year, so she was right. Alas I only had the short lens with me, for the portraits, so I was reduced to taking long shots. I took plenty of photos, but I couldn't really see her face, or the expressions of the kids around her. Wish I'd had my zoom. I bought a camera bag not too long ago to avoid just this sort of thing. I ought to have used it. My photos were pretty random.

But the funny thing was going through all those shots later and zooming in on the faces. Sophie is always smiling. The other kids' faces sometimes look intense, aggressive, bored, frustrated, tired, cheerful or just blank. Sophie, in every single shot where her face is showing, is smiling.

I think she enjoys herself out there.