2013 NCAA March Madness Basketball

It’s March and for many sports fans that means NCAA March Madness Basketball. Lots of people follow the annual college basketball brackets with fantasy sports leagues, office bracket pools, and television coverage all leading up to the final four!

Sadly, I don’t have any coverage from any of the tournaments, only a few shots from a game where the UCLA Bruins took on the Arizona State Sun Devils. I hope this satisfies your need for college basketball.

26 January 2013: UCLA Bruins Shabazz Muhammad #15 dunks the ball during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the UCLA Bruins at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the Bruins 78-60.

26 January 2013: Sparky, the Arizona State Sun Devils mascot (foreground) and the UCLA Bruins stand for the National Anthem prior to the start of an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the UCLA Bruins at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the Bruins 78-60.

I know this game is from way, way back in late January, but it’s all I have, so you will have to make due. From the opening tip-off to the final buzzer, this was a great game.

You just had to know I’d get a few shots of the Sun Devils Spirit Squad.

26 January 2013: Arizona State Sun Devils Jordan Bachynski #13 dunks the ball during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the UCLA Bruins at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the Bruins 78-60.

It looked to be a full house as the second half started.

You just gotta love the outside jumper in front of the opposing teams bench.

26 January 2013: UCLA Bruins Kyle Anderson #5 (center) during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the UCLA Bruins at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the Bruins 78-60.

26 January 2013: Arizona State Carrick Feliz #0 and Jonathan Gilling #31 celebrate after winning an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the UCLA Bruins at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the Bruins 78-60.

2012 Scottsdale Polo Championships – Horses and Horsepower

I have never attended an actual polo match before, except for the polo scenes in the movie “Pretty Woman” so when I heard about this event to be held on October 20, 2012 at the Scottsdale Polo Fields I made the necessary inquires for a media credential. What a great event, all kinds of interesting things to photograph, although covering the actual polo match proved to be difficult and would require very long glass with very shallow depth-of-field to help with very, very distracting backgrounds. I didn’t feel like lugging big heavy glass around with me on a warm day in October, so I took an f5.6 lens which didn’t cut the mustard as they say.

I was a bit disappointed with most of what I got, with the difficult lighting conditions and me not having a long enough and fast enough lens I tried to capture some reasonably good images. Have a look and feel free to let me know how you think I did.

Covering a polo match is, as I said is all new to me, I sure had a good time and found the event very interesting. I look forward to the next event where I can apply what I learned at this event and try to capture more compelling images.

To see more images from the 2012 Scottsdale Polo Championships, click the continue reading link below:

PGA Golf — 2013 Waste Management Phoenix Open

I know golf is not hugely popular on my photo blog, but I thought maybe if I had some images of one of the most popular local players, Phil Mickelson and some brightly colored images I might get a few extra viewers. Here are a few shots from round 2 action, I hope you enjoy these.

February 01, 2013: Phil Mickelson on the 9th green during round 2 action of the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the TPC Stadium golf course in Scottsdale Arizona.

To see more from the 2013 Waste Management Phoenix Open, click the continue reading link below:

Lucas Oil Off Road Series — 2012 Drivers and a buggy or two

For the 2012 season of the Lucas Oil Off Road Series racing (LOORS) I tried to mix it up a bit with my images and I found some personal gratification from producing images of some drivers in their trucks. The way the screening and window net as well as the dash configuration sometimes made fitting my wide-angle lens between everything difficult so not every driver is represented and some shots just came out better than others. Here are a few that I liked:

Todd LeDuc gives me the eye as I grab images through the window net.

To see more images click the continue reading link below:

NCAA College Football – Oct. 18, 2012 University of Oregon Ducks vs. Arizona State Sun Devils

I am excited to see the Oregon Ducks play in this year’s Fiesta Bowl so I went back for a little look at the images I captured when the Ducks came calling on the Arizona State Sun Devils

18 October 2012: Sidelines are reflected in the helmet of University of Oregon Ducks CB Terrance Mitchell (27) prior to the start of the Pac-12 conference match-up between the Oregon Ducks and the Arizona State Sun Devils at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.

First off the Ducks had these really cool helmets that would make all kinds of great reflection images so I had to try to take advantage of that opportunity.

To see the rest of the game images, click the continue reading below:

Hawaii, on the big island you must stay

When I travel my primary focus is photography (no pun intended), but for many people photography is almost an after-thought when they travel. I don’t really understand the mindset of someone who takes random snapshots in the middle of the day while visiting some of the most amazing locations around the world. I have traveled many times to a location for the specific purpose of making photographs, and when I say “making photographs” I’m not talking about “taking pictures” or “grabbing a few snapshots” what I’m talking about is the very deliberate act of getting up before sunrise to make sure to be at a location for the sunrise light or arriving at your shooting location hours before sunset to allow yourself time to set up your tripod and plan out some images you are interested in capturing.

For me the joys of carefully crafting beautiful photographs is a challenge to my “creative self” and has a degree of therapy to it that helps feed the never-ending drive to exercise my “creative” muscles.

Hawaii seems like just the place to push my photographic skill set because I currently live in a desert environment and tropical beaches and rainforests are just about polar opposites from what I am familiar with.

There were certain iconic shots I was specifically looking for on this trip and much to my dismay mother nature would not always reward me with perfect blue skies and golden sunlight. I think one of the challenges of travel photography is being able to “find your shot” even when the skies are cloudy and grey, or when the “shot” you envisioned in your head just doesn’t present itself.

To see more beautiful images from the big island of Hawaii, click on the continue reading link below:

PGA Championship Golf, wait . . . What? Really?

Yes, PGA Golf is a thing, and a big deal thing at that, well at least for some people.

Photographing professional golf is so much different from photographing something like football, it’s an entirely different skill set, but many of the same concepts apply. I like the challenge of photographing professional golf tournaments because of the rules involved with not firing your shutter before the player strikes the ball and dealing with challenging lighting conditions out on the course.

Golf is an exciting sport to a great many people, well at least that is what the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) would like us all to think. I don’t know a whole lot about golf but I enjoy the challenges of trying to make nice photographs during the tournament, so off I went.

02 November 2012: Jay Don Blake hits up onto the 18th green during the second round of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship on the Cochise Course at The Desert Mountain Club on November 2, 2012 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

To see more from the Charles Schwab Cup Championship PGA Golf, click the continue reading link below:

2012 Phoenix Fashion Week Runway Shows from Talking Stick Resort

“How about some more images from the 2012 Phoenix Fashion Week Runway Shows at Talking Stick Resort you say.” Well here are some more of my images from the Thursday night runway shows, but first I want to talk about the value of these images — Zero, Nada, Nothing, Zip, Not One Thin Dime, A Big Fat Goose Egg. The reason for this lack-of-value is because they are not unique, or special in any way and the fact that there were at least two dozen other photographers there on the riser around me as well as several guys and girls shooting hi-def video with most, if not all of them willing to give away their images and video footage for FREE. So, I can’t for the life of me figure out why the nice folks at Phoenix Fashion Week would even consider paying a photographer to license his or her images when almost every image of almost every designer’s clothing is available from any one of several photographers for free.

I know before the lights come up that there isn’t much value in covering runway fashion shows, but yet I still enjoy doing it for some odd reason and as long at I am allowed to cover these shows I will continue to do so. Sure some day I would like to be paid to cover a New York Fashion Week runway show, or gasp . . . travel to Paris France to cover an event associated with the Paris Fashion Week, but sadly I’m sure that’s never going to happen. In the mean time I’ll keep working to improve my runway fashion photography and continue to have fun doing it.

At least they are using a nice raised runway with a decent reflective surface to help with the lighting, I shot all of the Thursday shows using only ambient, i.e. no flash.

To see more of the runway fashion shows, click the continue reading link below.

2012 Phoenix Fashion Week — Fashionably Pink Celebrity Fashion Show

In the past this part of the Phoenix Fashion Week shows has been very difficult to photograph, the quality of light is very poor, there is no traditional runway and, for the most part the models are local celebrities rather than traditional runway models, and this year it was no different. Given the lighting conditions in the past, my expectations for this show, as far as getting reasonable photographs were very low, so I set my sights on shooting mostly video clips for the evening. The process of shooting video clips of this show were difficult with the configuration of the so-called runway so after a while I just grabbed a few frames for the fun of it. Here is what I got.

This local television news personality seemed to enjoy the runway walk.

To see more of the Fashionably Pink Celebrity Fashion Show click the continue reading link below.

2012 Tour de Scottsdale bicycle race — First Set

First let me say that these images have big watermarks on them, the reason for this is image theft. Yes, I used the word theft as in stealing something you are not supposed to steal. There are some individuals who don’t believe they should pay to license images or purchase prints, and for some odd reason road cyclists seem to think either because of their status or just some other reason that they are immune to copyright laws. The only other group that steal more images from the internet are high school age kids.

OK, now that is out-of-the-way let’s get down to business. I am selling prints to help pay for the cost of the fancy cameras, my photography skills and the time and effort to cover these type of events. If you think I should give you photos from this event for any reason, including you were just diagnosed with some incurable disease and you only have 3 days to live, well I’m sorry but you can find more information on purchasing prints here: Request Prints.

If you would like to see and inquire about prints from the 2009 and 2010 Tour de Scottsdale you can find those here: 2009 Tour, and 2010 Tour 1, and 2010 Tour 2.

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To see the rest of the set, click the continue reading button below