UIL Golf & Tennis Day 2...

The second day of hell week isn't nearly as bad as the first. Mainly because, #1 I'm already in Austin already so I don't have a four hour drive to get there before I start. And, #2, tennis is only the championship matches. However, the problems with overlapping are still there, even more so sometimes. Mostly because I have to stay until the end to watch for reactions. And again like on Monday I had two different golf courses to go to. I got the local 4A player before going to shoot tennis. Unlike West Texas the course the 4A golf was playing on had lots of trees lining the course it was nice to be able to make a photo of the fans watching from the trees.

Next I headed to downtown for the tennis. Wylie had three different teams playing. The first was mixed doubles. The match went quite a while to three sets. I figured this would be good since it was pretty close. Well, the Wylie team won and while the male half of the team was getting pretty excited after quite a few of the points, after he won he went to the net shook hands with the opposing team and left... not good for photos. Luckily in the boys doubles match the guys were very animated and after they won they didn't disappoint. The last match was the Cramer twins who won easily as expected.

UIL Golf & Tennis Day 1, AKA Hell week...

Every year the first or second week in May brings hell week. The week of the UIL state golf, tennis and track championships all in one week. It's a week in Austin I both look forward to and dread every year. This year it was extra hard because we just had a ridiculous number of kids in the events. Every year we have a bunch of kids, but this year we had kids at every venue around Austin which meant going to two different gold courses and two different tennis venues. That was the worst part, due mainly in part to Class 4A & 5A or 2A & 3A tennis being held in Lakeway, a snobby country club community about a 30-40 minute drive with traffic from downtown Austin.

To say I despise Lakeway would be an understatement. I try to keep my complaining on here mum and be as positive as I can on here. But there is nothing good about Lakeway. The people there are rude, from the members there to the people running the tournament. It's not unheard of to have matches running 4+ hours late for any number of reasons including the members having to play their matches on the courts which are supposed to be reserved for 2 days for the state tennis tournament!

So, anyway, back to hell week. On the first day I try to get to golf early enough to follow the players for a few holes before needing to leave for tennis. Then it's off to tennis at UT's tennis complex. After shooting a few matches there it's golf course #2, then to hell... errr, Lakeway. After fighting traffice I get there to find out everything is backed up, the problem is it's backed up even further than my estimates. This year everything was four hours behind! I shot two matches with the local kids playing in their first round matches. By comparison, most of the kids playing at UT were already done! It did help a little bit, but I didn't get dones shooting until almost 8pm! which meant doing my work in the car on the way back to the hotel and sending on the run, luckily Austin has good 3G coverage all over the city. By the time the day was over it was an 18 hour day, and that's only day 1.

Another Kid Boxer...

I give out my business cards a lot, and when I tell someone to feel free to call me anytime if they have stories I really do mean it. Most of the time I'll never hear from the people I give my cards to. However, there are the few people who will call me. Geno, the guy who runs Old School Boxing is one of them. Last year he told me about Karissa after I had told him a couple years earlier I was interested in doing a story about female boxers. So, when I got a message from him a couple of weeks ago, about a kid going to the state Junior Olympic boxing tournament, I was excited about another boxing story.

Geno did it right too and I had to thank him for it. All too often I have sources call me and say "hey this is going on right now" or tomorrow, you should come out and cover it. And usually I'm already too busy and can't make it out there that day. Luckily for both us us I got the call on this one a month before the kid was going to El Paso, so it gave me plenty of time to get out there. I was able to work it around all the other stuff going on and go out there to shoot twice. Here is the link to the story that ran: Learning The Ropes

Regional Track Day 2...

Day 2 of the Class 3A & 5A Regional track meets was on Tuesday and I was a little more ready for this one. I got up early (and stayed late) to get there to shoot the field events and then get the running events afterwards. In 5A most of the kids running were eliminated in the prelims, in 3A though, there were a ton still running. So it was me spending all day in the sun (and getting a nice tan line on my forehead from my hat). Overall I liked what I shot a lot better than the previous day, however, the hurdles shot from the prelims was my fave of the meet.

Regional Track Day 1...

Of course, I'm behind in my posting, once again. Not much to say here, I shot the Class 3A & 5A Regional track and field meets in Lubbock. It was a little different than normal considering it was on a Monday and Tuesday. These are the photos from Monday's prelim running events. I was a little unorganized, not something I like to do shooting track and I didn't notice that field events were in the morning with running prelims in the afternoon. The good thing, however, was the the 3A running prelims were late in the afternoon and the light was nice. I spent much of the nice light time shooting pans of the sprints. My favorite came from the boys 110m hurdles. The race looked really close in this shot, the guy on the right ended up hitting the next hurdle and losing, luckily my guy won it and qualified for the finals.

Airshow...

These are the photos from the airshow I shot the day following the Thunderbirds dress rehearsal. This was supposed to go a lot smoother than it did. I had a parking pass to get on base and was supposed to be cleared to get through the front gate in the morning, well that didn't happen. So after waiting 40 minutes at the front gate to be turned away, then after waiting another 30 minutes in traffic and know I'd never make my noon assignment had I actually gotten on base, I left to shoot a crappy softball game only getting in about 40 minutes and then heading back to the traffic jam.

This time I figured I'd try a different route at getting in. I took the back way in through Tye and got right up to the gate. So, here I am thinking cool I'm almost there... not so much. It was STILL another 40 minutes to the parking lot. Then after that more than a half mile walk to get in the gate! So by the time I got there the Thunderbirds were about the only thing left. I guess I'm glad I shot the dress rehearsal, at least I knew how the performance would go! I was able to get most everything I needed plus some shot from the static displays and get out.

Ironically, the traffic getting out was just as bad, not to mention that there were still people lined up to get in after all the performances were over. I did feel bad for them. And, since the cars going out weren't moving that fast if at all I sat in my car and edited all my photos. After another 30 minutes I saw things were moving pretty quick, since everyone had gotten in they reversed the direction and had all lanes going out. Luckily it was only 30 minutes to get out!

The Fabulous Thunderbirds....

Last week was the annual airshow at Dyess Air Force Base. This year the Thunderbirds were performing. This is something that brings back memories from childhood, I grew up with my dad taking me to airshows growing up in Atlanta and the Thunderbirds were always amazing to watch... they still are. So, on Friday I was sent out to cover the Thunderbirds' dress rehearsal for the big brothers big sisters and some Make A Wish kids. It was really cool and kind of helped with my planning on shooting the performance the following day at the airshow. Since there wasn't too much of a crowd for this one since it was basically a private viewing I spent most of my time shooting the planes flying, that is when I wasn't gawking at them.

Nice Ass...

The assignment was to shoot photos about the wildflowers in bloom and how great the crop of wildflowers, bluebonnets in particular, are this year. With all the rain we've had this is best bloom they've been in the ten years I've been here. It didn't take a long time to find this, I stood along side the road for about ten minutes waiting for the donkey to get closer so I'd have a nice clean background. And honestly... I was really hoping the owner would come out so I could tell them that he/she had a nice ass :-)

Crash and Road Rash...

The second day of the ASC track meet went well, but I didn't get as much time as I'd have liked either. I was only able to stay there for about half the races, but the hurdles made up for everything. It's rare to see a crash in the hurdles, let alone two. The second one I didn't get I was too tight on the guy in the next lane, but this one turned out well.

McMurry ended up winning the meet, so I figured two crash photos were a little much, but it did get used and played inside very well. We ended up using the photo from the 4x100m relay as the main photo, since McMurry blew away the field in the race.