softball on a slow week ...

portraits...

My roommate (and co-worker) sat in as a test subject for a portrait series I'm working on. The series won't publish until July, so this is all I will show for now. 

North Carolina primary...

rain delay ...

waiting on baseball to start Saturday night

more track ...

I would enjoy this sport more if I was given a roster with numbers on it and all the kids wore those numbers. But instead they run their event and scatter, half the time not even in the lane that matches the score sheet or not running in the same order on the score sheet. It is fun to shoot though.

cheers

James

and now the pole vault ...

As I mentioned last time, I am brand new at shooting track and field events and was a little disappointed when I learned they did not have a pole vault at the track meet I shot last week. It turns out there is only one high school in the county that can run a pole vault event and only four high schools with athletes in the event ... so they have their own day before the rest of the track meet.

I did a quick soundslides slideshow for the event as well

first time at track ...

Today was a first for me, as I've never had the chance to shoot a high school track meet before. I've seen plenty of track images out there (some good, some really bad) but I've not made any myself, so I was pretty excited to finally get out there (I was also really disappointed when I asked the coach when the pole vault would happen and he said they would not have that event today). 

I shot several series of hurdles and the 100 meter dash before I realized the record keeping was so bad and I could only salvage the names for one of my photos. I finally made may way over to the high jump and started shooting away

as all these 6 foot tall kids were jumping over a 4 foot beam. I doubt I could do it myself, but they made it look easy, which I suppose it is to an

yone in any kind of shape. Then this little guy comes walking up ... I'm a bad judge at height, but I would say he was about 5'5" or so ... and he is clearly out performing the other student athletes.

Being a first-time track shooter and a sucker for 

clean backgrounds, I forgot about all

 the other messy background events and focused on this kid (his name was Josh Black). I knew the 

paper would only run one, but I was just playing at this point. 

The coaches keep raising the bar, and slowly all the other kids start dropping out. Finally they get the bar to 5'10" and Josh can still clear it. This may be pretty standard for the high jump, but I was impressed. 

Josh's downfall came with the bar at 6 feet high. He tried three times, and cleared it except for his feet, which kept catching the bar. 

So there's my first adventures in track and field. It was a beautiful day (the first really warm one here in a while) and I'm going to bug sports tomorrow to assign the next event, whenever it is. 

spring soccer ...

I spent the final 40 minutes of sunlight today shooting girls soccer at one of the local high schools. The last soccer game I shot, I spent a few minutes shooting from an open window in the press box, but didn't get anything I liked, so I tried it again today and had better luck. 

always get names...

I'm not trying to make an excuse here, but it was raining and I made this photo passing by without thinking I might like it later on.

I was at the Outdoor Heritage Days, an equestrian show jumping event out in the middle of no where, trying to put together a Sunday package/audio slideshow. As I was walking to the barn to find the organizer of the event (and dry off) I saw this little girl petting a horse and made the quick photo, not really thinking about it at the time. When I saw the photo while editing, I immediately regretted not taking the extra five seconds to go get the girl's name.

Lesson learned