The beginning of Fall...

Well, at least sort of. Fall is football season, my favorite time of the year. Sadly the start of the cool weather part of Fall is still a few weeks away. But hot weather won't delay the start of football. The first Monday in August is the official start of football season around here. It is when the majority of football teams are allowed to have their first practices of the year. It also means I'm about to be busy as hell for the next two weeks putting together our annual football section.

This year's section is 8 pages smaller than last year's... only 144 pages! Many of the photos are file photos from the previous season which requires me to go through thousands of photos from last year. But the other part of it is mug shots. We shoot mug shots of every 11-man football player we cover. There are a few reasons for this. Often it is the only time we get out to cover a lot of these schools. It also gives us the chance to go to every school and talk to the coaches. We do a video interview of the coach and a player for the web and, if we have time, shoot some practice photos. At the end of the first week I put together a photo page to go with

This year I logged a little over 1,800 miles of driving going to all of these schools over a two-week period. I'm not even going to take a guess at how many gallons of sweat I had pour out of me. By the end of the week a lot of the kids talk about how much they are tired of hitting each other and ready for the real games to start. I know how they feel, after the first week, I'm tired of shooting practices and ready for the actual games. The problem is I usually still have another week of shooting practice then then scrimmages after that... just like them.