Until Spring semester starts in January, there probably won’t be any further postings on the project. The guys will be starting final exams very soon. I’m not exactly sure what I will do with myself while not working on the project. Acutally, I do know. I have gigabytes of photos to sort through, caption and back-up to my PhotoShelter account. That will probably keep me preoccupied over the Christmas holiday. I’m backing up all my photos online so that they are backed-up offsite just in case my computer crashed or my house burned down. It would be a huge loss to me to loose all the work I’ve done.Tonight though was the junior dinner. Mrs. Haus was a champ to come home earlier today from Ohio State and cook a meal for a hungry set of guys plus a hungry photographer. Tonight she made a chicken casserole, salad, bread and a homemade cherry cobbler.Before the meal, coach Haus’ youngest son Grant was able to once again sucker a player into playing him in a game. This time it was on the Nintendo Wii instead of paper football. Chris Cortina was the first victim and was promptly downed with ease by Grant while playing boxing and football. The other players said goalie Grant Zimmerman’s skills were legendary and he was nominated by the other players to take on little Grant and preserve what pride the players had left. I didn’t see how the Grant vs. Grant match-up played out, but big Grant was showing a respectable performance on the outset. My apologies to the seniors but I will be missing their dinner. I have to be in San Fransisco next week and New York the week after for business.

Wanted to give my alma mater UNC some props for placing #1 in the inaugural ”Elite 50″ by STACK Magazine.  The magazine ranks athletic programs by looking at academia, performance and athletic opportunities.  Nearby Duke University also did well placing #5. Those in-the-know can probably guess the #2 team: Stanford. Hopefully this will not go the way of the Athletic Directors Cup where we win the first year and Stanford wins every year afterwards. The value in this #1 ranking is that the magazine is given out to high school students.   High school students who include in their ranks high caliber athletes that UNC and other schools want to recruit. In this business, good publicity goes a long way.Other ACC schools making the Elite 50 include UVA (11), Maryland (24), Clemson (30), Boston College (31) and Wake Forest (35).

Today I was lucky again as there was new material for me waiting in the weight room. The team today did testing in the weight room at different stations with tests including the bench press test, squat test, stretch test and vertical leap test. I’m guessing the point of the tests were measure the maximum weight they can now lift to establish a new baseline. The tests also provide the opportunity to monitor progress throughout the season.

“Jersey” Mike Burns probably had one of the more impressive lifts while doing squats. It looked like at one point the metal bar could fatigue and snap under the load that he was lifting. Most all the teammates gathered around him and encouraged him as he did his lift Jack Ryan also stood out in the vertical leap, almost getting higher than could be measured.

I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to write between now and January. I will be out of town traveling for business traveling the next couple of weeks for my “real job” as I call it. But next semester is when the project should really start to get interesting as the season starts up. As a housekeeping note, special thanks to James at Inside Lacrosse for linking to this blog. I appreciate the attention to it. Coach Haus was kind enough to mention the attention the project is getting today after lift. The players clapped and that was very encouraging to me as I work on this long project.

ACC Football official Ron Cherry gives a verbal description on a foul during the NC State / Maryland game last Saturday.  Funny thing was I was at the game and totally missed this call.  I guess when I am photographing a game my head is in the game and I miss what is going on around me.  Enjoy…

Wanted to send a quick congratulations to the North Carolina Field Hockey team. They beat Penn State on Sunday 3-0 to win the NCAA title. They had a “McGuire’s Miracle” year, going undefeated in a 24-0 year.

When I was a student at UNC, the field hockey team was absolutely and ridiculously good. Here’s hoping those times come back.

Links to some photo galleries:

• From Greg Fiume, and old friend from my Washington days. [tarheelblue.com]
• From Craig Stone, DC Sports Box. [dcsportsbox.com]

(note: this is a delayed posting on events from Friday, November 16th)

As the project progresses, I’m finding I’m struggling more and more to get original material in the weight room. I’ve made a commitment to come out at least once a week and work on the project. The downside to that is the environment gets to be monotonous. I’m not sure how many angles I can photograph someone doing bicep curls. To break my stale photography, I’ve been looking at books from some of the master of photography to try and get some insight from their work on how they would approach creating photos. What are angles that I’m not thinking about? How could I mix up my photography techniques to create a new vision?

Sometimes I get lucky, and something totally new is put in my lap. Such was the case today when after weights, the team went to the parking garage behind the field house for endurance training. The session consisted of two, 7-minute events. The first consisted of running laps, alternating between sprinting and jogging. The second session was done in the stair case. The guys raced up three flights of stairs on one side, and down another side. They alternated going up and down for seven minutes straight. It looked excruciating to me, but everyone made it the entire seven minutes. Although if they really want to know what is excruciating, they should come up with me and walk up to the catwalks of the Dean Smith Center where I have strobes installed. Before every basketball game I have to go up there and turn them on. There’s no elevator, instead it’s a mix of stairs and steep inclines.

Even though it is only exhibition at this time, basketball has finally begun. Not saying that football is bad, but I enjoy basketball way more than football. For one, it’s inside. No worries about how will the light be, will I need sunscreen or maybe a jacket. Is it going to rain on us? Everything is much more controlled and there are less surprises in regards to elements. Probably another reason I enjoy it more is because I’m better at photographing it. Last week I fired up my Speedotrons for the first time in the Dean Smith Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. They still worked which was a relief.

Here is a link to some UNC Basketball photos from when they played Shaw last week.

The project was in need of some major help – I was having a lot of problems getting up with some of the guys while they were just “hanging out”. As photos capturing that was going to be a big part of the project, I was really worried about that facet of the book. Last night I sent an email out to a few of the players hoping to get a response and fortunately Michael Jarvis called me and invited me over with him and some of the sophomores as they watched the Patriots vs. Colts game. Beyond Michael there was also Tommy D’Alessandro, Mike Burns, Joe Howard and freshman Kevin Piegare. Kerry McCormick poked his head in every now and then too. Around 2nd quarter the guys started talking about where to get some food. It came down to Shakura’s Japan Express or IP3 (Italian Pizzaria III) on Franklin Street. Shakura’s won out easily when Jarvis said he wanted to go there. So we all, minus Kerry, packed ourselves into Joe’s SUV. Tommy got stuck in the back since there were too many of us to fit in the seats.

I took some photos in the restaurant and I wondered at times it the two people working the counter wondered who these guys were, and why were they so famous that a photographer was following them around taking photos? Maybe the latest recruits for Roy Williams?

In September, I photographed the shots that would be used for the NC State men’s basketball poster. Chris Alston in marketing and promotions wanted to have action photos of the players mirroring action photos of players from the ’83 team. 2008 marks the 25th anniversary of the national championship team with Coach Jim Valvano.

The players were given a copy of the photo by Chris of the ’83 player they were going to emulate while I set up the lights to strobe the court. For each player, I met quickly with him to look at the photo with him and discuss strategies to getting the right shot. We took three or four photos and compared what I had on the camera vs. the photo. Usually I needed to talk with the player again to have him move his angle or hands and retry. For the most part, the photos came out pretty good. The poses were not perfectly the same, but given the time pressures we had, I though it was a pretty solid job.

Kudos to Chris Alston and staff for coming up with this idea. I thought it was a really creative way to remember the the ’83 team. Thanks to the players too. They were eager to do the best they could to honor the ’83 players and do the best job possible. They were patient and accommodating.

Below is the poster. The ’83 player is in B+W behind the current player.