A picture tells the story...

You never know what you may find when you look back through the images you shoot.

At the conclusion of practice, offensive coordinator Ian Shields, L, and (former Monroe-Woodbury Wide Receiver) Jared McFarlin discuss practice as Army Football holds their second of several early morning practices at the Foley Athletic Center on the campus of the USMA at West point on Monday, February 13, 2012.

JOHN MEORE/for the Times Herald-Record

McFarlin no longer with team

By SAL INTERDONATO | Published: FEBRUARY 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

Sophomore wide receiver Jared McFarlin, a 2010 Monroe-Woodbury graduate, has left the Army football team.

McFarlin hasn’t attended recent practices and his name was removed from Army’s roster on its athletics site.

McFarlin was a feel-good story early in the 2011 season. He earned an opening day start and made four catches including his first college touchdown against Northern Illinois. The 6-foot-5 target started two of the next three games. McFarlin’s playing time began to diminish with senior Austin Barr returned to full health in week 5. McFarlin had just one catch in Army’s nine games.

McFarlin finished the season with seven catches for 74 yards.

An assignment is an assignment...

No matter how large or small the assignment, no matter how exciting it may or may not be, you give it 110% of your effort.
This assignment was to shoot a HS Cheerleading Championship for OCIAA Section 9.  It didn't matter which team I photographed, there was no instructions to shoot any particular athlete, coach or routine.  It didn't matter how long I was there, just get something the paper can run with the 'box scores.'  I showed up early, I stayed late and this is what I got!  
I guess these will work...

 

 

Early to rise...

"Can you shoot this?" the e-mail said.  Monday morning 6:55 AM (Yes AM)

Sure, why not...
I left the house at 5:50 AM to be on-site at West Point at 6:30 AM.  I had the above shot in mind, but was not sure how it would play out.  As I walked down the hill from the parking lot, I could see players leaving the weight room and walking across the practice field to the athletic center.  I hustled over and tried to get a low, long shot of the players crossing the field by the moonlight, but that didn't work.  So, I peaked inside and grabbed a couple of shots of players stretching.  I headed back outside to see if there were any late comers.  I heard a few players running along the fence, so I set up for the above shot.  I used a wide angle zoom lens, I popped on my strobe, dialed back the flash exposure, grabbed an exposure for the sky, composed the frame, focus and wait... Click!

Army football has re-arranged their spring practice schedules to have the players start at 6:55 in the Foley Athletic center.  This will give the player/student/cadets a chance to get their school work done in the afternoon, have dinner as a team, work on their military training and get a good nights sleep.

Coach Ellerson said in his interview that he has used this method at other schools and it worked well in keeping the players grades up as well as getting in the spring practices required.

At West Point, the cadets are up early anyway so why not use this time to work out.  The football administration worked with the Dean of Students and other logistical departments to re-arrange their class, transportation and meal schedules to fit this into their day.  Since they Academy has the players for the weekends, they can use that time to get in some longer practices and conditioning.

Emma's Bars and Floor routine from Winter Wonderland • 11 Feb 2012

Changing conditions

As a photographer, I have to be accustomed to changing environments... Weather, lighting conditions, gear limitations, etc.
The last three days of work have been under very different lighting conditions.

A cheerleading competition, with studio strobes set up on the railing of the balcony.  Set to just under full power, I was able to shoot at ISO 320, 1/250th of a second at f/3.5 and get results like this:





















The next assignment was to shoot 64 swimming races, thats right 64!  I was tired and wet at the end of the day.
Under probably the worst lights possible, fluorescent lights, only around the outside of the pool, with no lights over the water.  As well, there was a very large set of windows behind the starting blocks.  There goes all the good starting block shots.
I had my camera max'd out at 6400 shooting at 1/640th, wide open.  using a custom white balance on the bad lights... Now, some of these swimmers were really good, but most were beginners and could barely bring the heads out of the water for me to get action shots.  And I had to deal with a really nice reflection from the windows!  I'll look for a sample from this event.

Next we go to shooting green-screen portraits of a small basketball league.  3rd grade to 8th grade boys and girls, about 20 teams.  Setting up the green-screen is like second nature, and not difficult. Keep the large shadows off the background, use a lighting pattern that shows a main light and control the shadows with a fill light, about 1 stop less than the main.  On the meter, it read f/11 on the main and f/9 on the fill.  I added a grid spot to the top of the backdrop holder to offer a a hair light and a little separation from the backdrop.  Here is a shot of the set-up.

When all the hard work pays off...

I returned home Thursday to see a message on my office phone.  I didn't recognize the number so I listened to the message.  I had to play the message 3 times to make sure I heard it right.  
A Picture Editor from SI, that's right Sports Illustrated, wanted to talk to me about a few images they saw on one of the websites, of a football player from Don Bosco Prep, Leonte Carroo, who committed and signed with Rutgers University.

Before I called her back, I went through the images I had on Carroo to see which ones they might be interested in.  I had 10 - 15 that were in the gallery, but had a bunch more that did not make it.  
We finally connected, and talked about the images they were looking for, the possible layout and the SI process of using images from photographers.  
She sent me screen shots of the images.  I quickly began editing the images to the sizes they needed and added all my information the the files as required.  I added a couple of different shots that I thought may work.  The images were sent off un-cropped at 300dpi, about 10MB per image.  This way they can crop the image to the layout as needed.  I don't usually send out non-water-marked, high res files to someone who just asks for them, but hey, it's Sport Illustrated!  Zoom, of they go...


The response I received back... "Perfect!"

The story closes on Monday and Claudia, the picture editor, will let me know how the images fit the article and how much to bill.  They pay a standard rate for the size of the article, so it could be a good one.  Very exciting to get noticed for all my hard work on the sidelines, especially from SI.  This has to lead to bigger and better things!  If they make it into the article, I post a copy of the page. JM


Just received word back that they didn't choose any of my images.  Oh Well!  Nice to be asked. JM