Wanted to link to a post by James Schaffer, art director at Inside Lacrosse Magazine. On it, he describes some of the post-production necessary to prep a photo for cover on their in the most recent issue. Pictured is Paul Rabil of Hopkins and Ben Rubeor of UVA.

I post the link for two reasons: One, I think it’s pretty interesting from both the photographer and fan perspective. But two, I freelance for Inside Lacrosse and it’s always great to suck up to the boss by linking to his work. Click here to view the post.

To any of you out there with a blog run by the Wordpress platform, here’s a warning to all of you: Keep your Wordpress software updated. I was taking the “it works fine” mentality on my software and not updating for at least 6 months. Big mistake. One of the fixes that I did not install was a vulnerability in the database. This vulnerability allowed a hacker to hack into my blog, create a new user account, and create about 40 spam postings. Not comments, but actual postings. The postings were posted-dated and did not show up on the “front” of the blog so I never noticed them.

My only clue to their existence came in the form of an email from Google saying my site had been removed from their index because of spam. I thought it was spam comments that slipped through the spam catcher but was horrified to see the damage that was done. It took sometime to sift through my blog and delete the offending posts.

Worse though, was that after being removed from Google index, it took about 2 months to get back in. The old adage “A website not in Google’s index practically does not exist” is very true: Removal from the index all but makes your site invisible. Traffic from keyword searches was cut by more than half.

But alas, a happy ending. Last week I finally got back in the index, this time with updated Wordpress software and a changed password in my court. As a soapbox moment, I can’t help but to point out the absence of ethics of spammers who hack into people’s blog, and get the blog banned from a search index. That is pretty damaging. Thankfully I don’t make money off this blog. If I did, it would have done serious financial harm to me. My guess is if this done to a bigger cat in the blogosphere, like one of the many blogs owned by Time-Warner, these spammers could be facing litigation seeking damages. That said, the offenders are probably in Africa, Russia, or other place outside of US government reach.

Booyah baby. The ACC put posted 3 of the top 5 preseason rankings for men’s lacrosse according to Inside Lacrosse Magazine.They are as follows:

• #1    Johns Hopkins
• #2    Duke
• #3    Virginia
• #4    Georgetown
• #5    North Carolina

Maryland wrapped up the list at #6.

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).

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]

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.

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.

Whoever said “timing is everything” in sports photography left out the other important part: lighting. This post will be of little interest to most people, but for students of photography or those looking to learn more about sports photography, I hope you find it of interest.

One aim of sports photography is to isolate your subject. Typically that is done through depth-of-field, namely a shallow one. You keep your subject in focus, but objects 2 to 3 feet in front of the athlete are out focus. Depth of field (DOF) is determined by three main things:

1. The focal length of the lens used. All things being equal, longer focal lengths leads to a more shallow DOF.
2. Distance to the camera to the subject. The closer the subject is to the camera, all things being equal, the more shallow the DOF.
3. The aperture or f/stop. All things being equal, as the lens is “opened up” (moves towards f/1) the DOF becomes more shallow.

But light can also be used in to isolate a subject. In this case, a sports photographer has to be lucky but also has to be able to spot the chances where the perfect lighting can be had.

Below is a photo from Carter-Finley Stadium, home of the North Carolina State Wolfpack Football team. There is about an 8 minute window on the field when the sun is low enough that Vaughn Towers cast a shadow over the field and stands, but there is a sliver of light that cuts through the openings where the exits are. It lets in just a tad of light over a very small part of the field, but if you can get a picture of a play in this light, it’s just perfect:

Notice how only the player(s) are in the light, but the stands and even foreground are in the shade. These moments don’t come often, but keep your eyes out for when it comes.

—- Update October 8, 2007 —-

Below I thought I would add an example of a flat photo where the subject blends in with the background. This is typically what you get as again, the sun has to be in the perfect position to get the lighting like you saw above.

Wanted to highlight some excellent work by Ethan Hyman, staff photographer for the (Raleigh) News and Observer. Ethan did a shoot of both the new football coaches together and taped the process. Thought fans would find it interesting. [LINK]

If you have ever wondered what it is like to do a photo shoot with a varsity athlete (and hey, who hasn’t?), then check out this video from Inside Lacrosse. Staff photographer James Schaffer does a shoot with some of the UVA recruits coming in this year.

Link to Video