State Track, Day 2...

After what seemed like a brief nap after four total hours of rain delays the day before it was time for day two of state track and this was supposed to be the long day. In the past Class 5A was all by themselves for the Saturday night meet in Austin. This year though after splitting Class 1A into two divisions they added the 3A meet with the 5A. The problem with this is it used to be that we usually only had one or two races to shoot on Saturday night and I was usually done fairly early on Saturday to make up foe the 12-15 hour day before. Not this year.

We had to get there early on Saturday for the field events, plus the 1A Div. I and 2A running events in the afternoon session. Once again it was an afternoon of a lot of shooting and not much time to edit. At least this time I had more time to edit photos and I had all my 1A and 2A photos sent before the 3A/5A session started. It also gave me time to edit a lot of the slideshow photos from earlier, giving me less work to do on the other end.

The bulk of the really good athletes for us are in Class 1A and 2A. So many of the races I was shooting in the evening session weren't going to change a whole lot of what needed to make the newspaper. Also, there weren't near as many people to cover. I even had a few breaks with as much as 30 minutes between the races I needed to shoot. I made sure to take full advantage of this running to the tent to edit and send photos when needed. Saturday seemed to go by a lot smoother. Maybe because of the weather delays the night before screwing things up. Either way, I ended up having more photos, mostly because of more athletes and more events, but things seemed to go a heck of a lot smoother.

State Track Day 1...

Like a lot of the UIL events this year things got changed around this year for state track too. Class 1A got split into two different divisions. Division I was doing some of their field events on the first day but the running events were being run on Saturday. Division II, which was had a ton of teams that we cover was all being run on Friday, all the field events as well as the running in the evening session. This not only made for a really long day, but also, very little time to sit down and edit photos between events. Since I had someone in almost every one of the Div. II events. To add to that there was a 2 hour delay in the morning to open things because of a thunderstorm.

The delay put all of the field events on a rolling schedule which meant I didn't have any time to run to the tent to edit. So, I spent most of my dinner break editing photos instead of eating (not that it would hurt me to miss a meal or 6). By the time the running events started I was still a little behind with no photos sent. Part of this is I didn't want something put on the page in case I got something I liked better or it fit with the story being written. In the back of my head I was thinking to myself that a rain delay wouldn't be the worst thing to happen. However, I didn't want the two hour rain delay that we eventually got.

The second rain delay really threw things off. The one good thing that did come out of it was I was able to get pretty caught up with a lot of the photos I already had. Plus I was able to send a bunch of photos with the possibility of getting more. After the rain delay I would shoot a few events and if I wasn't trying to edit in camera I was running up and editing between the 1A events I was shooting (the Class 4A meet was going on too and we have no 4A schools that we cover), or I was shooting an event from the top of the stands in the tent as my photos were moving or downloading a card. It wasn't the ideal situation and made for a damn long day, but it had to be done. It's a good thing I enjoy shooting track... and it's happening again, so I got to go back to the hotel for a nap before starting over again.

State Track, Day 2....

The great thing about the second day of the state track meet is after working 18+ hours the day before, the second day is a "short 12-13 hours. However, from 9am until almost 5pm it is literally almost non-stop shooting, almost 1,400 images worth. The Saturday afternoon session this year was the Class 1A and 3A meets. This year we had a bunch of 3A kids in addition to usual heavy dose of 1A kids.

The day started in the morning with field events. The good part was that they were spread out enough that I could spend a little time shooting each event. Then around noon the running started. Luckily all of the field events were done during this tie and I wasn't going to have to worry about being in two places at once.

This year, we had a couple of teams that were vying for state titles. Both the Munday boys in Class 1A and the Big Spring girls in 3A had a chance to win. And after a strong performance the day before the Albany girls had an outside chance at winning. Munday ended up running away with their title, literally. Big Spring had a few races that they came up short in and Albany couldn't pull off a win in the mile relay. I ended up getting a few nice frames from the meet, but overall, I think I was happier with what I had shot the day before even though I ended up having a lot more keepers on Saturday.

State Track, Day 1...

I always look forward to shooting the state track meet every Spring. Even though there have been some year the officials seem to have a bigger bug up their ass than others in trying to flex their muscles and show who's boss, the meet is still one of the best run track meets in the country. Not to mention Texas has some of the best track and field talent in the country competing in this meet.

The biggest thing I try to show while shooting this meet, or any track meet is there is more to it than just kids running, throwing and jumping. And having a photo page to display my work as well as an online slideshow is not only a great way to show it, but also shows a need for more than just the standard action photos. Of course, there are plenty of those to show too, but my favorite photos are always the emotional shots, especially those who weren't expected to win their respective races or events.

One thing I have been trying to do for years is the hurdles shot of the runner in the blocks while framed by all the hurdles from the finish line. There are still a few things I don't like about it, but at the same time I liked it enough to publish... I'll try again in a couple years and hopefully shoot it better.