Playoffs planning – not easy!

That time of the year again – playoffs!

But how easy it is for a photographer not affiliated with any team to plan anything into the calendar in regards to which games to photograph?? I tell you – not that easy 🙂

At least here in Finland the clubs very rarely own their venues – and with many leagues starting playoffs around the same time, I can only imagine the problems the teams are having in fitting the games to scheduled dates. There are not many sports that actually are fully professional.. so??

But what about planning any games to go to?? Well you look at the schedules released before the season .. and go ‘OK – there should be a home game for the #1 ranked team on the 23.3 .. you look at the teams website, leagues website on the 20.3 … and no information there.

Funnily enough also experience tells me that you CAN NOT count on that game actually being on the 23rd .. why?? Well, there might be another sport which already has their playoffs going currently, so they might have already the 23rd booked.. so the #1 team might actually change the game to the 22nd.. or maybe 24th.

Just makes it is little bit tough to plan where to attend games – would definitely be easier if a club/league would have me a ‘full time’ only for them, then I’d just wait for the games and head to where asked. But when you work for yourself, you can rarely wait until the day before – and then to notice there is NO game that date. Then you have just lost a day of work..

One day someone will give me a decent amount of money and tell me… go and do as many games as you can this season and get some ace content from them.. until then, I will keep waiting for the playoff schedules to be released and HOPE I have some availability for the days in question..

Turn this into a positive in the end – as I might not have dates free for the playoff games, it means I quite fully booked with some other jobs 🙂