Yesterday I posted photos from the actual game of Hopkins vs. Duke.  Today I posted some of by favorite photos of the “behind the scenes” of the team.  I picked out about 40 photos from both the trip to play Ohio State in Ithaca and Hopkins at the Final Four.  The photos include the team traveling, in the locker room, in their hotel room, during team building exercises and other events.  So it’s a real 360 of the guys.  Feedback always appreciated.

You can view the photos as a flash gallery here.

Or if you like the old fashioned thumbnail gallery, you can get that too.

Yeah, I know.  The game was like a month ago and I just now have them up.  Am I lazy?  No, not so much.  I traveled up with Duke and after they lost, I was in a funk and didn’t want to even look at the pictures for the longest time.  Then, I have been traveling fairly heavly for my “real job”.  So my time was really limited.

But now, you can find for your viewing pleasure, photos from the NCAA semifinals.

Duke Lacrosse vs. Hopkins Lacrosse Photos

Wanted to give a shout out to the following ACC lacrosse players who were drafted last night in the Major League Lacrosse (MLL) draft.  They are, in order of draft:

Pick #  Team – Name, position, college

2. New Jersey - Matt Danowski [pictures], A, Duke

9. New Jersey - Joe Cinosky [pictures], D, Maryland

11. Chicago - Will Barrow [pictures], M, Virginia

12. New Jersey - Tony McDevitt [pictures], D, Duke

14. Long Island- Ben Rubeor [pictures], A, Virginia

22. Rochester - Nick O’Hara [pictures], D, Duke

27. Denver - Michael Ward [pictures], M, Duke

41. Chicago- Bud Petit [pictures], G, Virginia 

So that is eight ACC players placed in the 50 available draft spots. The #1 draft pick for Chicago went to the man, the legend, Paul Rabil [pictures] of Hopkins.

Just wanted to link to my post on Inside Lacrosse.  We traveled from Raleigh to Boston today.  

OK, I gotta seriously get to bed. 

Tomorrow, I will be flying off with the Duke men’s lacrosse team for Boston. For those not “in the know”, Duke will be playing in the Final Four this year at Gillette Stadium. Saturday at 2:30pm, they will play Johns Hopkins in a rematch of the 2007 (and 2005) championship game, only this time in the semifinals. Should Duke win, they will play either Syracuse or Virginia. 

I’m traveling as part of the Duke entourage, but also as a photographer for Inside Lacrosse. On the Inside Lacrosse Blogs, I’ll be posting some in-depth information about Duke as they make their run for the title. It’s going to be a fun weekend.  

So Duke Lacrosse did a number on Ohio State last Sunday in a 21-10 win, a score that doesn’t really reflect how lopsided the game was.  In the fourth quarter, Duke pretty much shut down their offense and stopped taking shots.  Otherwise, the score would have been far worse. On the bus ride from Duke to the airport, I was sitting beside longpole Parker McKee talking about Ohio State. I recounted how my Heels lost to them in Baltimore earlier this season and said I predicted a strong start by the Buckeyes.  My prediction was for them to be up at the end of the first quarter, maybe half, but Duke then coming back to win it.

Well, I was right about the Buckeyes starting strong.  They scored first to make the score 0-1, scoring off an EMO (btw, how does Sam Payton get hit with a delay of game when the game was only 10 seconds in? I missed the call as my camera was focused elsewhere).  I was also right that Duke would come out after the Buckeyes strong start and win the game.  What I had very wrong was how long it would take Duke to come back — it ended up not taking long at all.  At the 10:39 left on the clock in the first, the officials could have stopped there when Brad Ross scored to put Duke up 2-1.  Duke would never be down again and would not stop the carnage until the score was 10-1.  Congrats to OSU though for their great success this summer.  It is great to see a midwest team get some serious respect in the lacrosse world. 

The entire game was rainy and cold.  Pretty miserable to photograph.  But the photos usually look fun in the end: Lots of sliding goes on during these games.  Too bad it wasn’t a muddy and grassy field.  Photos from those games look awesome!

Here’s a link to my photos from the game:  Duke Lacrosse vs. Ohio State Photos

I was up in Ithaca, NY with the Duke Lacrosse team as they played Ohio State in the NCAA Quarterfinals, hosted by Cornell University.  This is the second year in a row that Duke has not had to play the host school after the host was jettisoned in the first round.  When Duke traveled to Annapolis last year, UNC dispatched Navy, matching Duke instead with UNC.  This year, Ohio State took out the Cornell Big Red before Cornell had a chance to play Duke at their home.

The trip was a lot of fun.  We flew by private charter which was very spoiling.

I posted some behind-the-scenes photos of the trip on Inside Lacrosse’s blog site.  Here are the links:

May 17th: Preparation before Ohio State

May 18th: Gameday vs. Ohio State

If you are looking for action photos, check out the gallery on goduke.com.

Eventually, I will have all the photos posted on my website.

Thursday I am shipping up to Boston with the team.  I’m pretty stoked.

Nope, this isn’t an in-depth article on Zach Greer.  Instead, just wanted to post this photo that I really digged. I’m not sure why I like this photo so much, but here are a few reasons. First, the cloud formation worked out perfectly. The contrast of the blue sky with the green grass also looks great. Second, the lighting is near perfect. The sun was not high up in the sky, and thus no hard shadows were cast except a little under his eyes. Third, I like the depth the photo has. Starting in the back, the background in out-of-focus (OOF). Then, his face is in focus, but his left hand, closest to the camera, is OOF. So the OOF background and foreground, with an in focus center part of the photo add something special to the photo. This was done with a wide angle lens and I was probably about only 18 inches from him when I took this photo. One benefit of working at a school frequently is you get to know the players. While I’m comfortable taking a photo like this of someone like Zach that I know or one of the UNC players, I wouldn’t be as comfortable doing this with a player I didn’t know, or more importantly with a player who didn’t know me, beforehand. It requires getting really close to pull of. Finally, the left hand looks larger than the face, giving the illusion that the viewer is very close rather than looking from a distance.

I am kicking myself, kicking myself, kicking myself for not doing something like this with one of the UNC players. Oh well. I will probably use this idea in the future if I ever so an outdoor portrait with a player.

First, I wanted to send a congratulations to Duke senior Zach Greer.  Last weekend, he broke a 28 record to become that all-time leading goal scorer in the NCAA.  The previous record was 193 goals by NC State’s Stan Cockerton (yup, the Wolfpack used to have varsity lacrosse; I wish they would get it back!).  If you’re a Duke hater and say that the only reason he broke the reason was because he had a fifth year, then you don’t have your facts straight.  He is actually only in his fourth year, and when you consider that he broke this record after missing many of the 2006 games because of the scandal, his record breaking performance is even more impressive. 

Sadly, I did not know which goal exactly would be his record-breaker.  So, when he scored it, I was on the other side of the field and completly missed getting a photo of the moment.  I was with Duke University photographer Jon Gardiner, and we both let out a collective sigh when we realized what we had missed.  (actually I muttered a few four-letter words).  But anyways, congrats to Zach for a remarkable career. 

I have the photos up from the Duke lacrosse vs. St. Johns game.  Here is the link:

Duke Lacrosse vs. St. Johns Photo Gallery

Wow, things have been busy.  I’ve been taking more photos than I’ve had time to post them.  There are a lot of things that I still need to post.   Stay tuned for the following to eventually be posted:

• UNC Lax vs. Hoftstra
• UNC Lax vs. Duke @ ACCs
• Duke Lax vs. St. Johns