Picture this: The world's tennis number one warming up in Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, a beautifully sunny day and you are three rows up. Fortunately, you remembered your camera. Snap, snap, snap! What a fantastic opportunity to practice fast paced sports photography with one of the best tennis players today.

↓ Nadal, baby!

Between you and me, we only got the fantastic third row seats because of tickets for the women's double which, for some reason, nobody seems to go to. To better fill up the stadium, there is open seating for the womens' double final, and to our luck Nadal was warming up prior to the game. Why so few choose to see the womens' tennis is beyond me, it was superb, fast-paced tennis.

Following the conclusion of the womens' double final, we were kindly but firmly directed back to our nosebleed seats. In between being glued to the US Open seats, we got a chance to see the Big Apple from Central Park to Ground Zero, Times Square and the NY skyline.

So, where are the rooms for improvements? All of the tennis shots are taken with my D300 coupled with the Nikkor 105mm f2.8 VR Micro. Being a macro lens it is not the fastest focusing lens around, and being a prime lens it lacks the ability to zoom. To circumnavigate these shortcomings I had to 'zoom with my feet', i.e. move back and forth finding the best distance, and secondly I switched on the focus limiter making it a tad faster focusing. Overall the lens performed well but a simple, lightweight 70-300mm lens with built-in stabilization would probably have been a better lens to bring. For the general NYC shots, the Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 DX was a great all-round lens.

For the technically interested: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm f2.8 VR for tennis shots. Camera set to shutter speed priority to freeze the tennis action at shutter speeds above 1/1000 s. Aperture set to f2.8 to blur out the background. For the NYC shots the Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 DX was mostly used. As a head's up if you do go see the US Open tennis and want to bring a camera, you are not allowed to bring backpacks into the stadium including camera backpack. Instead bring a shoulder-slung, top-loading style camera bag with room for a body and a lens. A 70-300mm would be a great lens to bring.