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 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.

Ref. 1067

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

Friday Night Lights — High School Varsity Football

Friday night high school football is a time-honored tradition that I can remember from way back when I was in high school. I love photographing football, and the challenges that come with making meaningful photographs at a high school football field.

I’m not going to post a ton of images, but I will link to the MaxPreps website gallery for this game in case you wanted to purchase prints, posters, t-shirts or any of the many options available from MaxPreps. You can find images from the Aug. 24, 2012 Marcos de Niza at Notre Dame Prep Varsity Football game on the MaxPreps site.

Here are a few of my favorite images from the game, and remember to contact me for custom graphic poster options, like the samples shown here.

To see the rest of the images and read the rest of this High School Football post, click on the continue reading link below.

2012 Phoenix Arizona High School Baseball — some shots I thought you might like.

High school baseball season has long since finished, at least around here because of the heat, but I thought you needed a little reminder and review of some of the images I captured during the season. These images are from the Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions at the North Canyon Rattlers game or from the O’Connor High School Eagles at the Pinnacle Pioneers game.

I can’t tell you how great these images look printed large as 12 x 18 inch prints, you really can see the detail and the colors really “pop” so make sure you order your big prints before you get all caught up in football. Cheers, I hope you enjoy these.

The Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions pitcher on the mound against the North Canyon Rattlers. Unfortunately for me a lot of the teams don’t put numbers on the front of their jerseys and identifying the players can either be a challenge or next to impossible unless you take the time to either tag each image with audio, (a feature some Canon camera’s have) or make sure to get a shot of the player’s jersey number either before or after your sequence. Sadly I didn’t do either one, so I can’t identify some of the players in my images.

To see more images from the Arizona high school baseball season, click the “continue reading” link below.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park — A second look

When we first pulled into Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park for our overnight stay at the Valley View Hotel it was early afternoon and we had some time to explore the road and work on my landscape photography. I created a post about that afternoons adventures here at Landscape photography and learning how to see the light . . . 

After a good nights sleep I set my alarm to get up early and had all my gear set for some sunrise photography. Well as often is the case, mother nature did not want to cooperate and I awoke to cloudy, overcast conditions. There looked to be a bit of a rain/snow shower passing through the valley and I thought that might bring some photographic opportunities of a different kind.

You can see the sun reasonably high in the morning sky trying hard to burn through all the clouds and some of the snow lingering on the ground at the bottom of the image. The road down into the valley was closed for the time being because they feared people would get stuck in the mud so I spent a few minutes capturing images from the balcony of our room and headed off for breakfast.

To see the rest of the story, click the continue reading link below:

Landscape photography and learning how to see the light . . .

I believe all photography is about learning how to see light but in many cases seeing light is just one tiny aspect of a long list of skills needed to produce good and/or great images. A perfect example of the added complexities in photography is creating images at a sporting event, the subjects are constantly moving and at times their movements can be very unpredictable, whereas with landscape photography for the most part the subjects are not moving and the only thing that changes is the lighting and how it reacts with the subject.

Therefore landscape photography requires two things, great subjects and the ability to see how and when the light is reacting perfectly with you subject to make great photographs.

One such example of a perfect subject is Monument Valley in Arizona, the iconic location of countless Glen Ford western movies and the subject of thousands of landscape photographers from all over the world. There aren’t many people who wouldn’t recognize the photograph above of West Mitten as being taken in Monument Valley.

See the rest of my Monument Valley adventure by clicking on the more link below:

2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series – Kobalt Tools 500 from Phoenix International Raceway – part 2

When we last left our hero’s they were hurtling at break-neck speeds towards their doom . . .   Oh wait, that’s not right. Both Tony and Carl were fighting tooth and nail for every inch of track position they could get. That sounds more like where we left our story.

At this point it was anybody’s guess who would win, Tony is a proven champion, but Carl has won here in Phoenix in both his Nationwide car and in his Sprint Cup car, and all on the same weekend.

See the rest of the story by clicking on the more link below:

2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series – Kobalt Tools 500 from Phoenix International Raceway – part 1

I know this post is a bit late, but as they say better late than never. After having wrapped up another NASCAR race weekend here I thought I would go ahead and post my images from the November 2011 Sprint Cup race, you see the first part of 2012 has been a bit crazy for me and I just haven’t had the time to post all the events ‘as they come’ so I’m getting around to it now.

The big theme for me this race weekend was ‘cars on track’ so my goal was to get good clean shots of as many cars on track as possible. Let’s see how I did.

12 November 2011: Jamie McMurray (1) takes hot laps during a qualifying session for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt Tools 500 Race at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale Arizona.

I started with qualifying and found some success shooting into the sun, not always the best option for good shots but it was giving me an interesting effect and I managed to get some great shots of a limited number of the cars/drivers in their qualifying runs.

To see more great NASCAR Sprint Cup images click on the more link below:

NCAA FOOTBALL: UC Davis Aggies at Arizona State Sun Devils

It’s college football season and around here there are a bunch of new names and faces to contend with. Arizona State has new uniforms and a new starting quarterback, as well as a bunch of new and returning students.

Let’s bring the Head Coach Dennis Erickson and the rest of the players out onto the field.

They always pump this fog machine up so the players can come running out of the tunnel and the fog, the problem is the fog lingers at ground level for almost the entire first half of the game and makes getting decent images somewhat difficult.

To see more shots from the game click the more link below.

Arena Football, a few season favorites

Arena football is a very fast-paced exciting game. The fans get a real up-close view of the action and almost any seat in the house is like a sideline pass to some great football action, yet arena football is not as popular as it could be. I wonder if Getty Images or U.S. Presswire carried some images from the game or more images appeared in Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine or other national sports magazines, it would be just a little bit more popular?

Watching the Utah Blaze QB Tommy Grady (10) drop back to pass with all the offensive and defensive linemen around him is classic arena football action at it’s best.

To see more arena football action images, click the more link below.