Sometimes, the best photos are considered "tasteless"

I was out shooting at one of the local golf courses for a story about the city thinking of buying the nice local course, and considering shutting down the municipal course it currently owns. Well, Maxwell (the muni course where I was shooting) isn't the nicest play in the world to play, but it is cheap, so it gets its fair share of college kids playing there. The group that I ran into were a fun group. There were cutting up, and trash talking the whole time. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I would get something of them goofing around. When one of the guys was putting and his friend snuck up behind him and smacked him in the leg with the flag. They got a good laugh out of it, sadly though, it wasn't going to make the paper... for obvious reasons. So, I kept following the group a couple more holes hoping to get something else, however, nothing else happened, but I was able to make a couple other nice shots that would work. I was pushing time and could probably have stayed out a little longer, had I not had a golf cart that had a dying battery (I had to push the damn thing up the final hill before getting back to the clubhouse!). The bottom photo is what we used in print.

Day 2 games 3&4... the playoffs are half over

Well, the third week of the football playoffs is over now. My total mileage driven for covering the playoffs over the last three weeks (including the volleyball championships last week) is up to 1,729 miles. The number of local teams has dwindled down quite a bit, it now down to a fairly manageable level.

Saturday was the day for the big schools to play, since I shot the little ones the day before. The two local city schools that were still alive in the playoffs, Wylie (Class 3A) and Cooper (Class 4A) were playing 150 miles east of Abilene in Aldeo, a southwestern suburb of Ft. Worth. The good news (for me) was they were both playing in the same stadium. The bad news: the games were at 1pm and 7:30pm, which meant a LONG break in between games.

The first game was a great game. Wylie was playing China Spring, the #3 ranked team in the state. Talent-wise China Spring was stacked, however, I learned last year never to count Wylie out of a game despite how outclassed they are in the talent department. Well, Wylie ended up winning the game 24-21. It was the typical game Wylie has played this year, tough defense not a lot of offense. This team is really impressive in that they are not flashy by any means they just win, which is what they did this game.

Like I said, it was a great game to watch, however, there wasn't a whole lot of offense going on. It was a lot of good fundamental plays. Luckily for me there were a few big plays made, and for a couple I was even in the right position to catch the play!

As I said earlier there was about a four hour gap between the two games, and since they were in the same stadium, I sat in the press box and sent my pix, then worked on the slideshow. There was no sense in leaving, it was cold and Aledo isn't too close enough to anything that I could get to after sending my photos. So, I sat in the press box and put together the photo slideshow for the web, which I was able to get done before the next game, and that saved me from being up all night too, which is alway s nice.

The Cooper game was quite as exciting. They were dominated by Denton Guyer's big offensive and defensive lines from the start and never really got anything going. Heck, they didn't even get a first down until almost the end of the second quarter. Not something that helped me a whole lot with early deadlines and a photo page to fill from my two games. Luckily I got plenty from the Wylie game. The photos from the photo page needed to be in at halftime. So, I sent what I had, which wasn't all that much.

The second half of the game was a little bit better for Cooper, they at least got their offense moving in the right direction. They had a couple big plays but nothing that was going to get them back in the game. And, it seemed like every time they made a big defensive play they turned around and shot themselves in the foot on offense.

One of the big problems with a blowout from the get go, is finding some kind of emotional shot that tells the story of the game. Most of the kids just walked off the field. The disappointment seemed to already have set in. However, after the handshakes and when everyone was leaving the field I was able to spot a couple of the seniors hugging after playing their last game. It pretty much summed up the game.

Post Turkey Day Football...

The great thing about Thanksgiving weekend, well besides leftovers, is football on Friday afternoon, and then another on Friday night. This Friday it was two small school battles. And, all four team were area schools. The first game was a blowout and was kind of expected.

Afternoon football is awesome, the light is nice, I don't have to worry about stadium lights, and even better I don't have to worry about hoping something will happen in the first half because of deadlines.

This Friday afternoon I covered Albany High School vs. Gorman in Graham, about 100 miles northeast of Abilene. This game got pretty ugly. Albany is traditionally a good program, Gorman was outclassed by a bigger and more physical team. Albany ran all over them.

Friday night's game was a lot tighter game. It was a six-man game. Now if you've never experienced six-man football it's pretty crazy. The field is a little smaller, and so are the players and there is a LOT more scoring. Well, there is USUALLY a lot more scoring! The game I covered on Friday was a defensive battle with the final score being 38-24.

Now, I know in a normal game 62 points for two teams is pretty high scoring. But when the winning team is typically scoring in the 70's, and a team scoring over 100 points isn't that uncommon, then 62 points total is a defensive battle!

The game was in Trent, a small town about 30 miles west of Abilene. I was kind of pressed for time, since it was 130 miles from Graham to Trent, after fighting a line of cars to get into the stadium, the game had already started. But, I wasn't too worried since I was expecting quite a bit if scoring. Trent High School has probably the nicest six-man stadium in the country. Most six-man stadiums are tiny crappy little stadiums being played on dead grass, rotting wooden stands, and the original lights that were put up probably 40+ years ago. Trent's stadium was built last year soon after its new high school. I'm told it is the only six-man stadium in the country to play on artificial turf, the reason being it was going to cost as much to run a water line the half-mile to the stadium as it would to just put down turf, so they went the waterless route, and built a six-man Taj Mahal of sorts. There are nice metal bleachers and new lights which aren't half-bad for a high school stadium. The funny things is, despite the nice new stands, people still watch the games from their cars, well it was cold that night.

Playoff mileage total: 1211 miles

I took a little break on Saturday from shooting football. The Brownwood High School volleyball team was playing in the state volleyball tournament and if they won their semifinal game on Friday I was going to San Marcos, about 250 miles south of Abilene. Well, obviously they won, since these are the photos from the game.

After shooting football in Stephenville on Friday night I got out of town as quickly as I could after the game. I headed down to Georgetown, just north of Austin, to spend the night. Georgetown was about 40 minutes north of San Marcos, I left about 11am for the 1pm game. I got there a little more than an hour before the game. Since I had never shot in the Strahan Center before, I got there while the Class 2A game was still going on so I could scout out places to shoot from. I also wanted to check the light, which wasn't that bad, good enough even to use a teleconverter on my 300.

I know I've said it before, but volleyball is not a sport enjoy shooting. Way too often I find my shots mediocre at best so this one was going to be challenging. My plan was to basically make my way around the arena changing up my shooting as much as possible. I started up in my regular spot on the floor, then moved beside the Brownwood bench to shoot some wide stuff.

After the first game I moved up high to shoot down on the action. Instead of bringing a 300mm and 400mm lens, I upped my ISO and used a teleconverter on the 300mm lens. I spent most of the second game shooting from this position, and got ok results but nothing spectacular.

For the third game I shot from the TV camera deck up high at mid-court (it was empty, the only broadcasting being done was a webcast and they were shooting from lower levels). I liked this angle because I could shoot some nice stuff of the net players and the opponents blocking at the same time. It also allowed me to shot the players in the back row at the same time allowing me to shoot both. Normally when I'm sitting by the bench or in the backcourt I can only shoot one or the other.

Sadly I was only able to shoot a little more than half of the game from up there, since Brownwood was losing the final game and was looking to get swept I had to make my way to the floor to look for reaction shots. Now, my job as a journalist is to tell the story not hope for one team or another to win. Any while it's not a big deal to me that they lost since I didn't have a dog in the fight, I was hoping they would at least win one game so I could work this angle that I felt I liked the best.

But, it wasn't going to happen, so I made my way to the court to wait for the reaction. This also game me a little time to shoot from behind the players. I was able to make a couple shots I didn't ever really think would get anything from back here, so it was a pleasant surprise.

My plan in sitting behind the players was that they would turn around and face me when they reacted to their loss. Well, it didn't quite work out like that. The one girl that collapsed, sat down with her back to me, so it didn't quite work out as planned. Oh well, it was worth a shot. I can say that now, since I was able to make some decent dejection shots from before and during the medal ceremonies.

More football...

This week was another busy week. I shot two games, one on Thursday, on Friday. Thursday's game was one of those old school games, but at least I didn't have to travel far, since the game was in town. A lot of running and maybe four passes the whole game. Sweetwater played Midland Greenwood, both teams played a Wing T offense and I don't think Sweetwater had thrown a pass in three games. The good part about this is I could shoot the whole game without deadline worries despite earlier deadlines.

The bad part about shooting teams like this is much of the option offense is based on deception. Including who gets the ball. I'm so used to shooting spread offenses, it's tough to adjust. The other problem is a lot of the runs are up the middle. The old adage of three yards and a cloud of dust still ring pretty true... sans the dust since most of the games I shoot now are played on artificial turf. The action photos I got were nothing too spectacular, but I was able to pull out some nice jube stuff, luckily the photos was secondary.

Friday's game was in Stephenville again, where I shot last week's Abilene High game. This week it was a 2A playoff game between Merkel and Brady. Brady isn't in our coverage are but it seems I've shot them as much as any time I've covered this year. It was the third time I've shot them. Shooting in Stephenville has it's good and bad parts. The press box has a lighting fast internet connection, which allows me to send full rez photos and not compress the heck out of them. The one big problem with the stadium is the lights. This place is lit worse than most small high school stadiums. Even at 6400 ISO on my D3, I had to shoot at 320/f2.8 and still needed to lighten the pix up.

The game, like the last couple I've covered lately, started out pretty slow, but got better near the end of the second quarter. Brady started throwing the ball at the end of the half, which was nice since I had next to nothing and needed to send photos to our sister paper in San Angelo, who had an earlier deadline.

By the time I got my photos edited and sent it was nearly halfway through the third quarter. I was able to make a few more shots for the rest of the quarter and the start of the fourth. It was looking more and more like Merkel wasn't going to make a comeback. I focused on Merkel since it wouldn't have mattered if I got photos of Brady since it was past San Angelo's deadline. There was a lot of dejection, I decided to keep my eye on the quarterback who was the catalyst of the team as well as its leader.

Despite the awful light and really cold conditions - it's finally starting to get cold in Texas - I was able to make a few decent images. The good part was the game again was over fairly early, since I was heading south for more playoffs, but not football this time. More on that in the next post.

Shooting Beyond the Field...

Saturday was a fun day. It was a day game and the light was really nice. Plus Cooper's uniforms look really nice during the day, the reds and blues of their uniforms saturate really nice during the day. They are a major pain in the ass, however, to tone right during a night game and they look even worse in black and while... it turns to a muddy gray. But Saturday, against a pretty blue sky with no clouds, it was great!

The sun was low in the sky and on it's way down. The shadows were getting long which made some fun shots of the drill teams. High school football game halftimes are a nightmare on Friday night's when you are working on deadline. But, when you have an afternoon game the 30 minute halftime gives you plenty of time to let the creative juices flow. And with an online slideshow for the game, that allows for the perfect outlet to show your work. It also does a good job of breaking up 30+ action shots.

On a normal Friday night, I'm running to the press box to download photos and do a quick edit to at least get ahead of things and possibly send in a couple photos in case the game is going to go long. On Saturday, as I was headed up, I noticed the sunlight coming from the stands and it was making a nice rimlight on the band who were wearing their uniforms for the first time in a couple weeks. So, instead of going up and dumping my cards I figured I'd stick around and work the pretty light. My old boss, Woody Marshall, at my internship at the Macon Telegraph told me my first week I was there, "When God gives you good light, don't f**k it up." You can fill in the blanks, but I find it words to live by and always have. God gave me good light Saturday.

3 Games, 3 days, 606 miles...

Thursday night started the high school football playoffs in Texas. The playoffs in Texas are sort of a high school version of March madness that lasts six weeks. For those who've never experienced it, there is nothing bigger this time of year than high school football. There are two state champions crowned in each of the five classifications, a big school and small school division. It's pretty odd, but just means more work. Just about all the games are played on a neutral field and our newspaper has a LOT of teams playing the first week.
For me, that means a lot of driving. The first game, on Thursday, was played in Sweetwater, a short 90 mile round trip for a game between Stamford and Winters in a Class A game. Class A is the smallest of the divisions playing 11-man football. The game was played at the Mustang Bowl in Sweetwater, which is probably one of the coolest high school stadiums I've ever been to. It's about 70 years old, a 7,000 seat concrete bowl that can get very loud and they play on artificial turf, like most of the bigger high school stadiums around here.

The game wasn't that close, Stamford scored early and never made it look like they were in trouble. I made a couple of nice images. The first one was a long pass that would have been perfect, I didn't have time to switch cameras so I went ahead shooting really tight with my 400mm and it turned out great, I got a really nice tight shot, that filled the frame and you could see both his eyes real big as the ball falls into his hands (top photo). The only problem was the defender reached in as pulled his arm down to break up the pass. It didn't matter, about three plays later the same kid, Omar Garcia, hurdled a defender into the end zone for a touchdown (above). It also didn't hurt that he ended up scoring three of Stamford's four touchdowns that night.

I had my shot in the second quarter of the game, which did a nice job of keeping my stress level down, I was able to send photos at halftime. Then I spent the rest of the game shooting for the online slideshow. Also, since my photos were already sent, I didn't have to worry about whether I was going to have time to shoot the postgame celebration. It's been a few years since Stamford made the playoffs, let alone win one. So I knew they'd be pretty excited. They didn't let me down (above).

Game two, was on Friday night in Stephenville, a little over 200 miles round trip. Abilene High was supposed to blow away Mansfield High. AHS was ranked #3 in the state going into the game. Well, I guess that's why they actually play the game, b/c nobody bothered to tell Mansfield they were supposed to lose. The game was a pretty big upset. AHS had a chance to win the game when Mansfield missed the PAT on their final touchdown. But an interception ended the game with about 2 minutes left and no timeouts. In a game like this a reaction shot is pretty much the only option to tell the story. And while it may seem like I'm being cruel to the average reader, it is my job to tell the story, so a shot of the team's quarterback upset after the game is the shot to have. That's what we ran, it's not the first time and won't be the last. Despite the phone calls complaining about it (as far as I know, we only received one).

Game three was the longest drive. Lubbock is a little over 300 miles round trip, and was the site of Cooper High School's first Class 4A playoff game. Cooper just dropped down a class and was making the best of things this year. The best thing about this game was it was an afternoon game. So, the light was going to be nice, and since daylight savings time had passed, the later in the afternoon, the better the light got.

The game started out pretty slow, the first quarter was spent with neither team moving the ball too much. Cooper had a decent drive but turned the ball over on downs. At the start of the second quarter our videographer Victor Cristales came up to me and said "I don't have one highlight yet," I laughed and told him I had nothing either and hope it gets better soon. About three plays later, it did. Cooper's Reese Williams took a pass and went for a 60-yard touchdown (above). Not long after that Cooper's Stefphun Hazlett tipped and bobbled and interception that he held on to and ran in for a touchdown (below). My spot behind the end zone allowed me to be in good position for both shots.

Cooper was another of those teams who hadn't had great success over the last couple of years. In fact, if there was one of the three local teams that was going to lose I would have said it was going to be them. So, when they were up 35-0 with about four minutes left, I traded the long lens for the wide angle and went to hang out in the bench area (one of those nice things about shooting high school football as opposed to college and the NFL). There was a lot of hugging and goofing around. It had been six years since the school won a playoff game. I found cornerback Will Ford and pretty much stuck with him, he was one of the team captains and one of the best players on the team. I guess I picked right, because as time expired Ford led the team out on the field with his hand raised.

Well, despite spending all most as much time in my car as I did covering games the first week of the playoffs went pretty well photo-wise. I was happy with what I got from all three games, which is rare. Hopefully the next 4-5 weeks will work out just as well. The mileage will probably only go up since the teams I cover will start playing teams from towns even farther away. Stay tuned.