Volleyball update

So as I said in the last post that is kinda old now, sorry, I was on my way to shoot volleyball at byu volleyball and I talked about the sign I saw last time I was there. Thankfully no y fans were racists this time but there was an annoying ass ball boy that I had to write about.
So I noticed him dancing around during warm-ups and that was interesting but every point he was jumping around more than the players did.
It was distracting as all hell so I snapped a few frames. I wished he would have stopped dancing and would just done his job.

One Year Later

I write this as I am getting ready to leave for provo to shoot the Utes and cougars volleyball game. That might not get to many people excited I don’t know that I’m excited ether but it does make me think about the last time I was there for volleyball. I did a post then but I need to give an update. I took these two pictures the last time that I was in provo for volleyball.

A few weeks after taking them we decided we needed to run them in the Chronicle. They ran on the opinion page with a single cut line. When it ran it got the attention of Debra who deals with racial issues all the time and she wrote a letter to the byu Athletic department, Tom Holmoe and the LDS church among others. Looking for a apology
The photos then ran in the Navaho times and got a big response I was told from their readers. I have also sent them to a few other papers that have asked for copies. I also ran across a copy of it on facebook.
Long story short it is probably my most popular photo I have taken and it makes me feel good because it is exposing the racism that can exist today. I am all for smack talk in sports I do a good share of it but this is not stuff to joke about or bring up at a volleyball game. I have a strange feeling when I think about y volleyball now and I think it will be interesting shooting tonight for the first time since seeing this student with her dry erase board.

y UCLA or U USU?

Well as usual I have slaked off when it comes to posting but it is the end of fall break I’m feeling more refreshed and I am looking to do a few post I have been putting off. The first thing I have to talk about is last month I had to make a tough decision that in the end was not that hard.
Mike Terry called me and told me that a Sports Illustrated photographer was coming to shoot the game between UCLA and y and he was looking of an assistant. I was excited but I was questioning if I should do that go do that or go to the Utah at Utah State game. The biggest reason I wanted to go to Logan was because it was my plan to go to every Ute game this season. On the other hand the chance to assist Bill Frakes is a great one for me.

In the end I don’t think I would have ever forgiven myself if I passed on the chance to work with SI. I hope that this will be the first of many press passes that I have from Sports Illustrated.

Taking the Big House

The Utes had a huge opening game this year at the Big House facing Rich Rod and his new Michigan offence.(Unlike a team down south that chose to play Northern Iowa in their opener) Tony Chris and I all went to Michigan to cover the game. It was a good game with a scary second half. I had some good shots this game the fallowing are a few of my best ones. The one photo I was asked most about was this one.Lennie texted me right after it happened and on my way up to the press box U fans were asking if I got a picture of Asiata running over the ref. I wish it was a moment later but I at least got an ok picture of it.

Going to Michigan

For the Game Guide for the Michigan game Tony wrote a story about transporting the teams’ equipment to Michigan and asked me to get some pictures. So I went to Wednesdays practice and after the team was done the equipment manager and his team loaded the truck so it could be driven the 30 hours to the big house. It was an impressive to see how fast they got everything from communication equipment, water, power aid, helmet parts, medical equipment, fans and player bags all checked and loaded in a short amount of time.

After it was all loaded Don Wehrli, who has driven the truck for 15 years, locked it up and prepared to start the dive with help from Dean Espinoza who was going to share driving duties along the way.

The most surprising part for me was when I found out that they had to do this all for home games to, but they have to move everything from the Smith athletic center to Rice Eccles so they have no week off.

Ioana’s Portrait

Eearly this summer my friend Ioana asked if I would take her portrait. I agreed because I think my portrait work needs improvement and it was a good chance to work on them. It took a while to schedule a time but we got it in a couple weeks ago just before school started and here is a few.I saw some stuff I would change if I went back and did them again but let me know what you think of them.

Kodachrome State Park

After the paper was done for the summer me and Lana want camping for a weekend to get away and wind down. Looking back it was great because this first week of school has been hard so it was nice to get some time off.

I wanted to do some outdoors photos when we went camping so that is why we went to Kodachrome. It was named by the National Geographic explorers when they photographed the area in 1948 so I guessed it would be a good place to shoot and when it was not raining it was a great place to shoot.

I have edited my photos down to my best 10. Let me know what you think.
I will post more photos to my facebook in the next few days if you want more.

Openings at the Chronicle

For those that don’t know each year the Chronicle does a opening edition that gets mailed out to students and alumni it is done at the end of summer and is mailed out before fall classes start. Any way instead of the normal 8 to 15 pages it is a full sized paper with full 6 sections. That took up a lot of my time because I got most the assignments on Tuesday night and they were due on the next Monday and it was the same weekend as the Softball tournament so I could not shoot a lot myself. My photographers did a great job but I still had a lot of assignments to do that I had to do after deadline. One was for the cover story about the Marriott Library reopening after the construction. We have an old photo of the library a construction photo and a current photo the cover looks really nice, wish I had a copy to post.

I had to take the current photo and I was trying to get as close to the pre construction photo as I could when I got back I realized I was off by a lot on my location in this shot.So I went back the next night and found that the old location would not work because of a new light pole and a new tree that blocked the view.
So not to waste the drive up there I turned the camera on Lana again having some fun.Then it got darker so I did some ghost pictures this one I wish I had the library more in focus.This was the best one of the night and is my new desktop picture on my laptop.

SELL, SELL, SELL

For two and a half days I was shooting a softball tournament of 8 and 10 year old girls. It was my first tournament for Sports Imaging in a while and it was tough to get back in the mode of getting a lot of shots that sell. I need batting running and fielding of each girl so there is not a lot of time to get interesting angles or high action.

On Saturday the final day of the tournament I got some good stuff. West valley had a great defensive inning so they were excited on their way back to the dugout. One girl jumped into her coaches arms.

It was way hot so another coach was throwing water to cool down his players and the pitcher welcomed the water with open arms.My favorite picture of the tournament took place during the 8:30 game it was early enough that the sun was casting a shadow when the runners came up the 1st base line making cool pictures. Like this one of the girl running right in front of me.I had to crop this a lot because the picture includes the full runner because a photo like this would not sell a tournament. I wish I had shot some full frame because I feel it is a little grainy.

Wyoming court date

A few weeks back Lana had to go up to Rollins Wyoming for a court date regarding her car accident she had in the spring so I went with her so that she would not have to drive all alone. Someone I will not say who (not me) was late getting up and someone (again not me) could not find their wallet so we were an hour behind schedule when we left. So that made the drive up fast with no time to stop so we could make the court time. We made it 5 min late not bad. Things went good for Lana.

On the way back I cracked out the camera and snapped some shots as Lana drove.
We had time to stop a few time one time we stopped at a reservoir just inside Utah.
I also got some nice pictures of Lana again.

Camera turned boredom

After Lana got her picture the tables turned and I began taking photos of her to kill the time before the News meeting.

Boredom

This weekend I came up to campus to shoot a soccer tournament but unfortunately they ended over 2hours early and I did not get any pictures. I came up later in the day because Lana was holding a news meeting so I was going to go to talk to the writers about photo request and all that fun stuff. Anyway this gave me a lot of time to kill. Luck for me Lana had a lot of time to kill too so I bet her she could not get my camera out of my bag and manage to take a picture of me. She almost did it is just blurry because she can’t figure out the thumb focusing.

TIMBER!!! Sports.

This has taken me a little longer to put together then I thought it would and a hand injury made typing a pain last week but it is worth the wait.

We did a preview of the Timbersports event at thanksgiving point for the Chronicle and it looked like a cool event. I had seen the lumberjacks compete on ESPN on weekday afternoons when I had nothing to do but watch fringe sporting events. So when Tony said he could get me a press pass to it but we would not actually need the photos I took the opportunity to experience Timbersports live and up close.

The event featured 6 disciplines for the lumberjacks and also a boom run and tree climb.Starting with the chopping and sawing events there was the spring board. Where the competitors would make a hole to put their first bored in then a second hole for their second board and finish by chopping through a block on the top.
The next event was the stock saw where they would use one of the two stock chain saws that were on stage. The one to make two cuts fastest one the event.
The next event was the standing block chop where they would chop through a block when they were standing on the stage.
They then did the underhand chop where they were standing on top of the block they were chopping.
That marked the end of the chopping events and left two sawing events the first being the single buck where they use a manual saw with teeth that are like 3 inches long.
Then the final event for was the Hot Saw. For the Hot Saw the participants use their own modified chain saw. They will use motocross bike engines or wave runner engines so they are loud and fast so fast they often have the chains pop off because of the speed. They would set up glass behind and in front of them is to prevent the chain form leaving the stage.
After the lumberjacks left the stage the woman moved into the spot light for the boom run. It was exciting to watch and fun to shoot.
The final event of the day was the tree climb. The guys race up AND DOWN a 60 foot ploe.
The race up took a lot of focus, skill, power, and coordination between the feet and arms.
The race down took a lot of guts! Down the racers did a free fall with each only having to touch the tree three times on the way down.
To close I want to share some of my favorite pictures form the day. The standing block chop produced my favorite ones, and the wind kicked up a lot of sawdust adding to the amount already coming off the saw itself pictured in the first one.