one from the vault

Texas Longhorn pitcher Austin Wood (#44) celebrates with teammates after retiring a Boston College batter during the longest NCAA baseball game in history.

…the vault of last month that is.  Still finding photos I like stuck away in my harddrives as I backup data….more to come!

swimming, dogs, bikes and baseball

It’s weird thinking that a place as hot as Texas has the best swimming holes I’ve ever been to.  Granted I haven’t been to every state out there, but I’ve been to both coasts and tons of places inbetween…And nothing so far compares to what we have here in Austin and the surrounding communites.  Barton Springs, Deep Eddy, Blue Hole, Hamilton Pool and the list goes on.  If you haven’t taken the short drive over to Wimberley to swim at Blue Hole, I would suggest you get on it this weekend…Or better yet, go early on a weekday and beat the crowd.  Huge trees to jump off of, multiple rope swings and deep enough I didn’t touch bottom…I took the photo above at Blue Hole last year while on a photography assignment.  I can’t wait to go back….Now just if I could make it out to Balmorhea sometime soon…I hear they have a treasure out there..

I’ve also been on a quest over the past few weeks to backup and burn all my images onto disks…Something I ‘ve been meaning to do for some time…But I’ve been finding all of these photographs that I forgot about…A majority of them should have stayed that way, but I’ve found a few that make me laugh, like the one above.  Brazos getting airborne over Hank at Auditorium Shores in Austin.

I also found this photo…My first time with Hank in the studio.  He was so excited with all the lights going off that I had to use treats to get him to stay still for a couple of seconds.  It’s kind of amazing how many photos I’ve taken in the last few years since moving to Austin.  I’ve got photos of giant turtles, rodeos, mountains, the Austin skyline (from my short gig as an areal photographer), school plays, every sport imaginable and even photos of photos.

I finally pulled the trigger on a new bike this morning…A custom built Origin 8. Nothing too special, but I’ve been wanting another 26er to jump for some time. For those of you reading this that may not know, I’ve been riding bikes seriously (competitively some would say) for the last 12 years. Only in the last 2 years have I begun the transformation from jumping my 20″ BMX to wearing spandex and washing out on tires skinnier than my pinkie finger. This mountain bike found a good home and will fit in nicely with the bike ‘museum’ I have in the spare bedroom…Now if the trails would only dry up a bit…

Now I’m off to the Dell Diamond to shoot some of the 2009 UIL State Baseball Championships…should be a fun time…

A few photographs…

So I’ve been a little busy shooting sports here in Austin.  I shot 7 baseball games last weekend, 4 softball games, 1 baseball game, 3 normal assignments and a soccer game this weekend.  A little bit of work, but a lot of fun.  I also managed to shoot a roll of film on my Rollei as well, so hopefully some good stuff to come…

As I’ve mentioned in some previous posts, I’m the official photographer for the local USL-1 soccer club, the Austin Aztex.  They hosted #1 Charleston Battery for a two game homestead…They lost 0-2 the other night and tied 1-1 this afternoon.

I also shot the Texas Longhorns 10-4 win over TCU at UFCU Disch-Falk Feild the other night.  Michael Torres was on fire the entire game.  After he smacked his first home run and got another hit, I positioned myself up high to get a reaction shot if he crossed the plate again.  Lucky for me, he hit a 3 shot homer to seal the Longhorns win and I got a decent frame.  I usually shoot these shots pretty tight with a 300mm, but I switched to my D2H with the 80-200mm and shot it a little loose.  I like how Torres is jumping off the plate…

And I also nabbed a cool shot of Conner Rowe hitting the outfield wall while making a catch.  Kind of a wild story with how I captured it….

…I have been having problems with my D300 (I need to send it in, but I can’t find the time off!), and it somehow got switched into an auto bracketing mode…I had no idea what was going on with the camera, as the exposures were off the charts…It would only fire a three shot burst and I thought my camera was toast.  I went ahead and did the green button reset and it started firing normally again.  BUT…My 300 stopped focusing!  Then I heard the crack of a bat and I saw Rowe running across the field…I pulled the camera up and tracked him across the field using manual focus and fired off 2 frames.  It ended up running in the Statesman today, but it was one heck of a crop.  I’m surprised it worked at all.  Sometimes you get lucky….(My 300 still focuses, but what I didn’t realize was that when you do a camera reset, it changes the focusing buttons all around…Took me another five minutes to figure that one out…ouch 🙂 )

And why not another photo?  Pretty typical pitcher shot, but I’m digging it.  Gotta love the umpire/weird background.  I’m still amazed at the detail you can pull out of these D300 files…I guess it isn’t that abnormal, as I came from the D2H…anyway…

I also spent a good part of my Friday/Saturday shooting the 2009 UIL State Softball Tournament held in the UT softball stadium..I can’t remember what it is called at the moment.  McCombs Field?  That’s my guess anyway.

And in my effort to try and bring new images to my clients, I strayed away from the flock of other photographers there and headed to the outfield to shoot the batters and get a new view on the bases.  Nothing exciting happened for the 2 innings I was out there, but it was nice to shoot by myself and have the breeze whipping past me on the big scaffolding.  It wasn’t nice trying to climb up a sketchy ladder with three cameras/lenses strapped to my body though.  And speaking of…

…From one of the 2 remotes I set up at the Aztex game tonight.  At least I got one fantastic shot…..woooooooo

more to come……

What a weekend…

The 2009 NCAA Baseball Regional Tournament swung through Austin at UFCU Disch-Falk Field this past weekend and I was there to document -every- game, including the history making 25 inning game with the Texas Longhorns vs Boston College.  I shot more photos in the last few days than I have shot in the same time period, even in my full-time staff positions.  I shot over 20gigs worth of photos….I’ve only done a quick edit through about half of that, so I’ve got some more work to be doing over the next few days…

This was the scene around 12:45a.m., near the 2oth inning when Austin Wood was still pitching…The stands were still PACKED with people, which I thought was pretty surprising.  The UT games sold out each night, with attendence well over 8,000 (I believe they said there were 6,832 seats?), including general admission.

Matt Hempel, who works for the UT athletic department, took this photo of me at some point during the 7 hour game.

I felt like a zombie around the 16th inning.  I had to put my cameras down for a few minutes and take a rest.  Looking back, I guess it was pretty cool being there to witness the great pitching and horrible hitting, but at the time, I just wanted the game to get over.  Following the Longhorns 3-2 win, I still had to shoot the press conference.  I didn’t get home until after 2a.m.

I had to be back to the stadium by 10a.m. to set up remotes, get my pregame stuff and eat 5 more hotdogs, but I didn’t get there until 11:30a.m. for the noon game.  I slept right through my alarm, but I managed to wake up and grab some photos from the days game.

The heat, for the entire weekend, was in the lower to mid-90’s, with a heat index around 100.  The field was so hot it made it almost impossible to sit in the photo wells, so I shot a lot of photos from the stands, such as the one above and below.

EVERY game was good and full of action…unlike a lot of games I’ve covered over the last couple of years.  Things always get better in the post season, as these guys seem put a lot more into playing.  Every throw has just a bit more ‘umpfh’ and the players are diving around everywhere.  Lots and Lots of jube…

Even the coaches weren’t immune from the celebration/dejection bug, as they tend to be.  I’ve got some great shots of Coach Augie that I still haven’t edited yet that I plan on posting at some point…

As the heat of the day began to wear off, I slowly made my way back down to field level to shoot some action from eye level.  In a majority of baseball fields, there are HUGE ads that distract your eye away from the action.  Disch-Faulk Field is one of the exceptions though…There are two ads that I can think of (both are bright red…), but there are no ads on the outfield walls, which is pretty unusual and makes your photos that much better.

And the typical pitcher shot.  I don’t know how many pitches I photographed, but I lost count after the first two days.  I need to get stalking through the rest of the photos I have on my harddrive and get them online, so I’m out of here.  I was hoping this weekend wouldn’t be so crazy, but it looks like the Austin Aztexs have two games and I’ve already gotten multiple calls about covering UIL State Tournaments as well.   Oh boy….