Cover Stories...

I'm beginning to believe the worst part of football season happens before the season even starts. It certainly seems like it may be the busiest. It has a lot more to do with the deadlines that seem to get tighter every year and not with the grind of shooting the photos... that's always the fun part. The biggest problem is the logistics and trying to make my schedule end up fitting in with kids' and coaches schedules.

Luckily, we have a lot of really good coaches in the area who make life a lot easier in getting their players back after practice in order to let me shoot the photos. Now, it wouldn't be so bad if this was all I had to do, however, for the first four days of this I'm shooting mug shots of all our area 11-man schools. Some of the cover shots work out when I'm able to get them shot after shooting mugs. However, most of them require some creative scheduling, like driving 60 miles out of my way after finishing mugs, or waiting around for a practice to finish, of hoping a kid can come back a couple hours after practice is over. But, luckily they all worked out, and for the most part I was happy with the results.

For the front cover of the tab (above), the theme was about quarterbacks so we took the best of the local quarterbacks (Cooper's Clayton Nicholas) and the best area QB (Snyder's Keenon Ward) and put them on the cover. The problem was there was no way we'd be able to get them both in the same town because of practice schedules. So, the only option was to shoot them separately and put them together in a photo illustration. Now, this would have been easy enough, I've done similar photos, however, it's always a good idea, when you walk out of the office with the lighting kit to MAKE SURE ALL THE PARTS ARE IN IT!! Like the reflectors!! Because it truly sucks to be setting up the lights and notice you have no reflectors and knowing there no way I'm going to have time to come back to re-shoot it in time. So, after a slight panic attack, I pulled out the strobes I always keep in my car and set them up on the light stands, the strobist approach worked out well this time. Note to self: don't start one of the busiest weeks of the year right after coming off vacation!