College Kids Like to Sleep...A LOT.

Well, I'm back in Nashville again, this time to shoot the annual NCAA Convention.  This is the 4th year that I have covered this event and I must say, while it might be the least exciting photography I do every year, I've come to enjoy the event because I get to see all of my favorite people from the NCAA.  Additionally, this year marks the launch of a new quarterly NCAA magazine called 'Champion', and this morning I had the opportunity to photograph the cover for the second issue which will come out in April.

One of the things that the NCAA really tries to get across in their PR is that the athletes are STUDENT-Athletes.   Shan Foster, a basketball player at Vanderbilt University is no exception to this theory.  Besides being a total stud on the court, Shan (pronounced Shane) happens to be a very accomplished piano player.  Thus, for this shoot, the folks at the NCAA wanted to show these two elements of his life.

We showed up at 8:45am to meet our contact Rudy at the Blair School of Music at 9:00.  Since Rudy wasn't there yet, Arnel (the art director from Sport Graphics) called to ask him if we could start setting up in the amphitheater since we found an open door.  Now, if you've never dealt with Theater-Folk here's a little tip.  Never, and I mean NEV-ER, go into a theater to set up for a shoot before the manager is there. When Arnel asked him if it was cool to set up before he got there, Rudy blew not just A gasket, he blew SEVEN THOUSAND gaskets.  Upon Rudy's arrival, we calmed him down by telling him that we just meant if it was okay to unload our stuff from our car into a hallway near the back of the building.  He promptly relaxed and was a pleasure to deal with the rest of the morning.

So, we proceeded to set up for the shoot and 10am (start time) rolls around...No sign of Shan.

10:20...Still no sign of Shan.

10:30...Vanderbilt's Sports Information Director and Assistant Sports Information Director are working the phones trying to find Shan.

10:45...Still no Shan.

10:50...Shan is woken up in his dorm room by a teammate.  I wish I could have seen his face when he realized he was almost an hour late.

11:15:...Shan shows up and proceeds to apologize a billion times over.

Anyway, he got there and we shot for about an hour and forty minutes.  We got a ton of stuff and Arnel was very happy with the images.  I've included a few that I just quickly grabbed so you can see what we did.  The last two probably won't see the light of day since there isn't a piano in them, but I shot them anyway since I saw this beautiful hallway in the building the day before when we scouted the location.

Hope you like them and please feel free to add comments at the end of the post.

See ya next time!

-TSB2

Oh my god, it's Usher's twin!

Even though this doesn't show his friendly personality, I really like this pic...

One of the last pics we shot.  Right up my alley...architecture, geometry...

I really dig his look here...