Clash of the Titans, (Almost)...

This was supposed to be one of the best baseball games of the year, a battle of two of the best 1A baseball teams in the state only separated by only about 15 miles. On paper it was going to be a great game when Stamford played Anson. The crowd was as big a crowd as I think I've ever seen for 1A teams in the regular season. The bleachers were jam-packed, people lined the first and third baseline fences in lawn chairs and after they filled the baselines, they started around the outfield. Then a few people even stood on top of the southeast end of the football bleachers which overlooked center field. I wasn't the only one expecting an epic regular season battle.

And, for the first 3 innings it was, then in the fourth inning Anson's wheels fell off. Stamford, like they've been doing the last couple of years started hitting the ball, slapping it through the infield, bloopers to the outfield, capitalizing on Anson mistakes, then a timely grand slam that blew the game open. After that Anson was frazzled and down big. in the fifth inning Stamford closed it out winning 11-1 by mercy rule. Stamford looked like the defending state runners up, and like they were hungry to finally get over the hump, and like no one was going to stop them. There will be another match up soon, I'm wondering how it will go.

Best of the Best...

When the time came this year to decide who was going to be on our All-Big Country Super Team, I knew this was going to be tough. Our area was just loaded with talent this year, especially on offense. In the past we've had some really good players, but there was always a couple that just rise to the top and had stand out years making the choices pretty simple. This year, however, there was no way around leaving out some really good players just based on how many great players we had. It made for a really fun year to cover. Having four teams win state titles, however, at this point, it became really hard. In the end the votes were tallied and the group we had were some really great players, then I had to get them into the studio for portraits. That was the fun part. I decided to go with colored backgrounds in the teams' corresponding colors.

Early Morning Wake up Calls, it's Football Time...

I'm still trying to catch up... Football practice recently got started which for me means mug shot tour. Shooting mugs shot of all the 11-man football players in the area. As a way of keeping my sanity I try to squeeze in shooting practice for an end of the week photo column and slideshow. This isn't always the easiest thing to do given that I'm already on a pretty tight schedule. So, most of the schools I'm shooting I only get about 10-15 minutes to get my shots before moving on to the next school.

This year was a lot harder than normal. Last year the UIL, state state's governing body for high school sports changed the rules for two-a-day practices. Instead of the way it had been done, now schools can't have a two-a-day practice until the fifth overall practice and they can't have 2 two-a-day's in a row. Not only did it cut down on the actual practice time for the players and trying to get them into playing shape. But, it also cut down on the time I had to not only shoot practice but to get mug shots. Because of less times the teams had to practice most of the schools I went to who were normally in the middle of their break were either in the middle of practice (luckily most were kind enough to work in mug shots during a water break or take a few minutes from practice to shoot mugs) or were already finished. One school was done and players were about to leave and the coach had to stop them from leaving. Luckily, only one school had to be rescheduled and only one was missed. That's about par for the way things happen every year. I even was able to make a few decent frames and work some nice early morning light.

Getting up off the baseline...

It's no real secret I'm not a huge fan of shooting basketball, especially during the regular season. Part of it is because the local Abilene teams tend to be awful. The other part is all basketball photos tend to look the same, especially when I'm shooting as many as eight games a week (a high school boys and girls game on Tuesdays and Fridays and college men's and women's games on Thursdays and Saturdays). By the time the playoffs come around things get better there is at least an emotional factor going on, plus after the first week all the really bad teams are weeded out and I finally get to see some good ball being played.

One of my favorite ways to combat the baseline bore of getting much the same shot every game is to get away from the sitting on the baseline and shooting from in the stands. While the baseline may seem like a cool place to shoot a game from, sitting there for two straight games not only is hell on your back, but you are at pretty much the same angle the whole time too. By getting up into the stands you are helping yourself out a lot by getting a better angle and shooting down on the players and since they are going up at the basket it's easier to get clean shots of their faces rather than armpits. Now, I don't shoot every game from the stands, I try to vary it up between the baseline and the stands and often the crowd sizes dictates where I sit too. Obviously if it's a full house I don't have a choice and have to sit on the baseline. These three photos were taken from a couple of games over the last week and they are better than anything I've gotten from the baseline this year.

The beginning of Fall...

Well, at least sort of. Fall is football season, my favorite time of the year. Sadly the start of the cool weather part of Fall is still a few weeks away. But hot weather won't delay the start of football. The first Monday in August is the official start of football season around here. It is when the majority of football teams are allowed to have their first practices of the year. It also means I'm about to be busy as hell for the next two weeks putting together our annual football section.

This year's section is 8 pages smaller than last year's... only 144 pages! Many of the photos are file photos from the previous season which requires me to go through thousands of photos from last year. But the other part of it is mug shots. We shoot mug shots of every 11-man football player we cover. There are a few reasons for this. Often it is the only time we get out to cover a lot of these schools. It also gives us the chance to go to every school and talk to the coaches. We do a video interview of the coach and a player for the web and, if we have time, shoot some practice photos. At the end of the first week I put together a photo page to go with

This year I logged a little over 1,800 miles of driving going to all of these schools over a two-week period. I'm not even going to take a guess at how many gallons of sweat I had pour out of me. By the end of the week a lot of the kids talk about how much they are tired of hitting each other and ready for the real games to start. I know how they feel, after the first week, I'm tired of shooting practices and ready for the actual games. The problem is I usually still have another week of shooting practice then then scrimmages after that... just like them.