Home sweet Home...Finally

Back in March when we scheduled the Spring Championships, I took on an exceptionally heavier load this year since my colleague Jamie and his wife recently welcomed a baby girl into their life. Thus, I picked up some slack to help out and over the last few weeks my travel schedule was at its peak.  My travels took me to Houston for a week for the NCAA Division II National Championships festival, Fort Worth for the Mt. West Conference Baseball Championships, and lastly to Sacramento for the NCAA Division I, II, and III Rowing Championships.  While I did have a blast shooting all of these events, they couldn't have come at a worse time since I missed more of the NHL playoffs than I would have liked.  However, the one positive in this was that I didn't have to sit and watch the Red Wings (BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) destroy every team in their path on their way to winning The Cup.  Hopefully the Avs can regain their '96 and '01 form to bring Lord Stanley back home!

Anyway, my first trip was down to Houston for the NCAA Division II National Championships festival with my colleague Steve.  Division II started doing these festivals about four years ago and they have been extremely successful.  The student-athletes love coming to them since they get to stick around the entire week, regardless of whether they win or lose in the quarterfinals or semifinals. Friendships are forged between teams while at the same time, the competition is fierce in a wide variety of sports.  Tennis, golf, lacrosse and softball were all on the menu at the festival and I got to shoot them all over the five days that I was there.  The best part of this event from my point of view was that our images were used daily in a NCAA Newspaper recapping each day's events that is printed every night and left in the hotel lobby for the teams and their parents/fans to read in the morning.  Throughout the week, Steve and I received several compliments on the photos and it really made us work harder to capture unique images that kept the newspaper fresh.  The worst part was the heat, and we even caught Houston on a 'cool' week.  Can you imagine me in Houston on a 'normal' week with 90+ degree heat and 90% humidity?  I'm sweating just thinking about it!  Good God, how do people live in that???

Well, I found out the following week when I went to Fort Worth for the Mt. West Baseball Championship and roasted in the sun for four straight days.  The temps did hit 100 and I think I may have created Lake Brown somewhere near the 1st baseline at TCU's baseball stadium since I was sweating so much while shooting there.  It was almost embarrassing.  I shot this tournament last year in Las Vegas and I didn't think I would ever shoot in a hotter environment...well, that theory was quickly put to rest as I wilted away while drinking Dasani out of their entire supply of bottled water.  One last thing about Ft. Worth...if you ever find yourself in this city, consider yourself lucky!  It is a really cool downtown area with great bars and a pretty happening scene at night.  Business leaders in the city hire police officers to keep the streets safe, and according to my taxi driver they even built homeless shelters and established social programs to keep homeless and transients away from this bustling district. If this is all true, it has worked to perfection and might be a model that other cities should take a look at.

After the baseball tournament, I got home for a few days then packed my bags for one last trip out to California to shoot some rowing.  I'm not going to lie...I really wasn't all that psyched to go do this assignment since I was new to it and I knew it was going to be a challenge to come up with variety since you're stuck on a boat trailing the rowers.  This indeed was the case and after the first day of shooting, I wanted to throw all my stuff in the water!  I felt like I had been shooting the same photo ALL DAY LONG.  I finally got some decent celebration of the Williams team that won the Division III Eights Grand Final (Rowing speak).

The second day of the rowing went much better considering I convinced the folks at the NCAA to get me my own boat.  I felt like Caesar on the front of it, just pointing to the right or left to let him know where to go and giving other signals to speed up and slow down.  I should have given the thumbs down to see if anyone would have been fed to lions!  I even managed to get the driver to drop me off at the base of a cliff where I spotted a trail to the top of it and got a nice overhead blur of the starting line that I've included below.

Hope you like the pics!

Next up... the Cape Cod Baseball League, and a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery (definitely a different assignment).

Enjoy the pics!

-TSB2

Coming up with variety at Rowing was pretty challenging, so I'm pretty proud of this one...

I think I had three lattés in me at this point and it was only 6am....

...and 6 lattés at this point since I started messing with my white balance when the light wasn't as dramatic...

No, he didn't make the catch, but at least he got a 1 for an effort grade...

More incorporation of NCAA logos, which they love...

Wow, this girl had been to the championship her freshman, sophomore, and junior years but lost every time.  She finally won her senior year, can you tell?

So, I was all finished for the day, relishing in the fact that I wouldn't have to go back out into the humidity of Houston...until I found out this girl hit a hole in 1!!!  UGGGH!

At least I made a nice photo of her on the 16th hole.

I think that trophy must be extremely hot and burning her hands....

Okay, so one last thing...I just got a couple new cameras and they're AWESOME!  The AF system on them is much better than my previous ones and don't get fooled by the net nearly as much when shooting tennis.  I love this photo.  He looks like a spider to me...