State Tennis, Day 2...

The second day of the state tennis tournament was hectic, to say the least. Abilene High's Erin Walker made the finals of the 5A tournament out in Lakeway and Wylie potentially could a state championship in every tennis event. So, unable to split myself in two, the plan was to go shoot the first set of Walker's match and then haul ass back to shoot what was left of the Wylie players.

By the time we got to Penick-Allison Wylie already had two state champions in girls singles and mixed doubles. Luckily we had run photos from both of them in that day's newspaper, so I didn't feel totally awful about missing them. Plus I still had three matches left to shoot. The boys singles match ended up going three sets, so at least I was able to get that one shot. One thing I do hate about shooting Wylie's players and their total dominance of Class 3A tennis, is a lot of these kids haven't won before and, in turn, just don't show a whole lot of emotion when they win a state championship... which is what I ran into this time. The one team I was hoping to win, the girls doubles team, who was showing plenty of emotion in their three-set match ended up losing a heartbreaker. Oh well, maybe next year.

State Tennis, Day 1...

This year's format for the state golf and tennis tournaments were a little different. For me all the tennis was on Monday and Tuesday, as usual, but golf was all at the end of the week. This made things a little bit easier, in that I could spend all my time focused on shooting tennis and didn't have to worry about getting out to the golf courses and figuring out the best way to split my time. Now, my only problem was the 30 mile gap between where the 3A schools were playing at UT's Penick-Allison courts and Abilene High playing in the 5A tournament at Lakeway, which I still despise.

Wylie, as usual, was taking pretty much their whole team to the state tournament. Abilene High had a singles player and a doubles team there. This would have made for a really fun couple of days, had they not been playing on opposite sides of the city. The original plan was to go to Lakeway first to shoot the Abilene High players in the first round then run back to Austin to shoot what Wylie players who had made it to the second round (which was expected to be quite a few. Well, in usual Lakeway fashion, everything got backed up. With 16 matches scheduled to be played on 12 courts, something had to give, and they something was the 11:15 match was almost two hours late. Finally I got to shoot the first set of the doubles match and was able to get on my way to make the 40 minute trip to shoot the second round at Penick-Allison, who of course, was on time, like always. During the couple hours I was there I ended up shooting five different matches. The thing I like most about Penick is the stadium styled courts which allow me to shoot from from up high as well as going down and shooting on the courts. Shooting tennis from up high is great since it allows me to with nice clean backgrounds. Since none of the high schools have stadium courts it allows for a different look than the rest of the year.

While I was at Lakeway shooting Erin Walker's singles match, it was kind of an overcast day. After getting a few nice safe shots, I figured I play around a little bit with some slow shutter shots. The great thing about tennis is you can show up and get a useable shot in just a few minutes if need be. However, if you have time to shoot the whole match it allows you to play around a little bit and experiment. I ended up getting a couple of shots I liked and a whole bunch of them that didn't work, but that's pretty much expected. Overall it wasn't too bad of a day for the first two rounds given the lack of emotion from the events.

Regional Track, the "Short Day"...

So, Saturday was the "shorter" day of the regional track meet. I say "short" because it's still a 16+ hour day between getting there early shooting field events and two full track meets, then editing, sending and driving home and squeezing in a slideshow to boot. The only big difference is all the running events were squeezed together and thank to some weeding out I didn't have nearly as many runners. However, there still were more than enough to keep me busy... plus the light was pretty nice for most of the day.

One thing that was still missing was a lot of really good emotion. There were a couple of good moments, but still, usually those who won were the favorites and usually had their sights set on the state meet anyways. But still, there was more than the previous day. I ended up getting a nice remote shot from the hurdles that I was nervous about sending given the extreme crop, but at that point you just send it in and hope the page designer does a decent enough job to make it work. After two long days I was semi-happy with what I had but am still hoping for more at the state meet.

Regional Track, the Long Day...

Last week was the regional track meet. It's a fun event to cover, but an incredibly long day. On Friday is both the 3A and 5A preliminary races. Which means that there are three races for both the boys and girls in both classes. And, since the 3A district that we cover is all local teams, that pretty much mean during the 3A meet, I'm covering nearly every race (some races have more than one runner from the same district). So, like I said, it's an incredibly long day on Friday. We left Abilene at 8am and got done around 11pm.
One thing about shooting many of the same races over and over is it starts to get rather redundant. With that usually starts to make for some boredom. Especially given the lack of emotions in these races. Most of the winner expect to be the winners, plus the winners still have to race another race the next day. So, other than just the norm I tried a few extra things. One thing I will say, is the officials at this meet are really cool to work with and give you plenty of leeway to work. I'm guessing part of it is because there aren't a whole lot of photographers to corral like there are at the state meet. So, setting up remotes wasn't a problem at all to do... other than the occasional explaining how the camera worked. I ended up making a few nice frames with the remote, but since the running events were all prelims, I ended up using a shot from the long jump instead, since like I said earlier, winning the running event only got you better position on the track the following day.

Deer Dodging in the Gap...

This weekend was the eighth annual Buffalo Gap Food and Wine Summit. And, even though I'm not a wine drinker, this is a really cool event. They always bring in some pretty big name chefs who make some amazing food. Last year I was out there most of the day on Saturday, this year, I covered the Friday night dinner too. While all of the events are pretty spectacular, this one is really cool. It is a six course dinner for a couple hundred people. I ended up hanging out in the "kitchen" with the chefs. And, by kitchen it was a horse trailer (it was clean and really cool, didn't look like any horses had ever been in it, but at the same time it screamed west Texas) that was backed up to the big tent that was being used as the dining room. When the plating started of the dinner it was a really impressive sight to see all of the chefs working in unison to plate all the food quickly, uniformly on to a really pretty dish. I wish I could have stayed to see how all the other courses were done, but I had to get back to make deadline.

On Saturday, I had two different event to cover, the wine and cheese seminar in the afternoon and the Cowboys Cuisine & Cabernet dinner. The afternoon seminar was interesting, but since I don't drink wine, I wasn't really into how to pair it with different cheeses... though I am a big fan of cheese. The evening dinner is pretty much the signature event of the weekend. Lots of big name chefs from across Texas come in and do some really cool things and I have to say the whole event smells amazing!

When shooting food events like this I try to show the people enjoying the event. But, at something like this, the food is almost as big of a star of the show. So, I usually end up shooting a lot of detail shots too. Especially since most of the time the presentation of the food is just as good as it tastes and smells. Plus going around and shooting all of the food tables you learn some crazy things, like the Dude, Sweet Chocolate people who made a chocolate mousse with tobacco, kumquat marmalade and foie gras. I know, sounded weird to me too, but from hearing all the people raving about how good it is, they must have done something right.

So, how does the deer dodging in the title fit into this? Well, it has nothing to do with the event except when I was driving back from Buffalo Gap on Saturday night, cruising along at 70mph I look i the road and see two deer walking across the highway. There was no way I was going to be able to stop in time, plus I'm sure the car behind me would have ended up in my back seat had I slammed on the brakes anyway. One of the deer was on the shoulder and the one behind it was just across the center line in my lane. Basically, I only had one choice and that was go right between them... so that's what I did, hit the gas, swerved her to the right and split right between them it was tight, but I made it through, I'm just glad I have a small car, I doubt anything much bigger would have fit.