Sports, Sports, Everywhere Sports

Wow, lots going on. Trying to cover three high schools, two sports and shooting a bit of college soccer and University of the Incarnate Word from the stands generates a lot of post-processing time.

The nice thing about Boerne High School and Boerne-Champion High School playing football at the same location is that there is often a Boerne High School varsity volleyball game going on prior to football which allows me to provide more coverage than I might usually be able to offer.

Ah, volleyball...if you really want to feel incompetent as a sports photographer, go shoot some volleyball. The lighting is usually wierd and varies around the court(color balance changes as the lights cycle, aggravated by the floor and walls reflecting their orange hue), the action is all over the place and there never seems to be a good position to cover all the plays from. Good sports photography requires peak action and clean backgrounds and I don't care how fast your auto-focus camera is...it's usually not fast enough.
After reading this thread on Sportsshooter.com at least I know I'm not alone in seeing volleyball as one of the hardest sports to shoot....but boy, sometimes you do get a killer portrait.

Boerne High School - Redux

The last couple of years has been a bit different for Boerne high school athletics. 2008 was the year Boerne-Champion High School opened and Boerne High School was closed for a complete redo.

With the start of the 2009-2010 season Boerne now has Boerne High School reopening and playing 3A, while Champion continues as the 4A school. Both schools were affected by the reallocation of students, but it's Boerne High that is having to work the hardest to rebuild their sports program.

Friday night gave me my first chance to shoot the Greyhounds and I managed to squeeze in a varsity volleyball game prior to Boerne football taking on Lake Travis, a 4A, state championship level team. As was planned the football team got a good look at the level of play they will begin developing to achieve.

The neat thing about sports photography is there is always great action, no matter whether it's Pop Warner level play or the pros, whether it's a close game or a blowout. You just have to look for it. At the end of Friday nights game you didn't see anyone giving up or even looking overly depressed, personally I thought some of the guys looked like they wanted to go another quarter.

Tunnel Vision

So far this year, I've managed to get run over by a softball player, come way too close to foul balls at both high school and professional baseball games, and backpedaled really fast when I had a quarter ton of football players coming at me.

I guess the point is, particularly with football, you really have to pay attention to the players when talking on the sidelines or looking through a 200mm or 400mm lens, either of which tend to give you a very narrow view of the world. Add all the folks just hanging out on the sidelines and things can get interesting fast.

So if you find yourself shooting from the sidelines or just hanging out and you aren't one of the guys in helmet and pads, you might find this message thread eye-opening.

Stay safe...

Boerne-Champion & TMI Football...the season is underway

Another busy weekend and it started on a Thursday. I'd forgotten the joys of shooting football in the afternoon with good light, but the images from Thursday's JV game between TMI, The Episcopal School of Texas, and Pearsall made for an easy reminder. Not only was the light good, but the photos show why you don't need to be shooting pro or college sports to get peak action, intense player emotion images.

The Boerne-Champion vs San Antonio East Central game on Friday started early enough to get some nice pre-game photos, particularly with the great yellow and black helmets of East Central. As I've written about in the past, to get really sharp images you almost always have to use strobe lighting at high school fields. The downside of strobes includes batteries, low light on long distance shots, uneven lighting depending where the play is on the field, setting ISO too high so you pick up the ambient light on the field when you really just want your flash to be doing the work...which usually means blurring.

So given all that fun stuff, when half the lights went out at Boerne High School stadium it looked photography was going to come to a standstill. But Forrest Gump would have been proud, with only half the stadium lights working we had some really interesting portrait light to work with and the players all had their helmets off. How cool... Here's one of my favorites...

Dave Campbell's Texas Football Classic

Wow, a couple of pretty intense days. I was selected to shoot the Dave Campbell Texas Classic Floresville vs Fox Tech game on Thursday for MaxPreps and the Boerne Champion Chargers win over Midlothian for Dave Campbell's Texas Football. Both were exciting games that really got going in the 2nd half .

I capped a weekend of football as a spectator to watch my nephew, Dakota Mawyer (#33), co-captain the first game of the University of the Incarnate Word's inaugural football season. The high-scoring game ended with UIW defeating Monterrey Tech 42-39.

Dave Campbell's Texas Classic Football Tournament & Boerne Chargers

The Boerne-Champion Chargers face Midlothian on Friday, August 27th in the Alamodome as part of Dave Campbell's Texas Football Classic.

Click to hear Coach Danny Threadgill speaking at the announcement ceremony.

(I'll be shooting the Thursday game for MaxPreps.com and the Chargers on Friday)

Thursday, August 27th - 7:30pm - Floresville vs. SA Fox Tech

Friday, August 28th - 7:30pm - Boerne Champion vs. Midlothian

Saturday, August 29th - Noon - Katy Mayde Creek vs. Brenham
Saturday, August 29th - 3:45pm - Odessa Permian vs Duncanville
Saturday, August 29th - 7:30pm - SA East Central vs. Cibolo Steele

Boerne-Champion's Blake Smith - ESPN 2009 All-Star Team

Blake Smith (23) was selected as one of 36 players on the 2009 ESPN All-Star teams. Blake is a 2009 graduate of Boerne-Champion High School, Boerne, Texas and will be playing for the University of New Mexico in 2010.