Fan of the Year?...

The first game of the six-man football doubleheader I was shooting was Richland Springs playing Follett. Neither one of these teams are area teams. I was really only shooting it because it was a state championship game being played locally. Also I had to shoot a fan feature for a news story we were doing about the two games. It was just going to be easier to get photos shot from the afternoon game than to worry about pushing deadline with the later game.

The nice thing about shooting a game like this is I only really need one shot from the game and can concentrate on all of the other things going on like watching the crowd. Obviously when I walked on the field I could almost immediately tell who I would be shooting for the crowd story. When you see an old lady with a white and blue mohawk on and her face painted blue, you just can't ignore it! And since, I only really needed one action shot from the game I spent most of my time focusing on Ms. Superfan. The shot at the top was easily my favorite and I thought it captured the pure passion and fanaticism of many high school football fans in west Texas. It is not the photo we used for the news story though, I used a different photo of her that showed the crowd better as well.

After spending most of the first quarter shooting fans shots I decided to spend the rest of my time shooting the game. I love games like this since there is no pressure to shoot just one team or the other and I don't have a lot to worry about. I can take more chances and shoot from positions that may not be ideal because if I miss a shot or three it's not as big of a deal. I really only needed one shot for sports, if I had time or enough photos to do a slideshow that's just extra but there are no expectations. I ended up getting few nice photos plus my new favorite fan actually ended up making a nice gallery.