Dexter Strickland vs. Georgia Tech
I’ve been cover the UNC men’s basketball team this year. I have to admit that my photo game was pretty rusty to start, but thankfully I’ve been able to improve. Here are some recent games:
UNC Men’s Basketball vs. Presbyterian photo galler
UNC Men’s Basketball vs. Marshall photo gallery
UNC Men’s Basketball vs. Rutgers photo galler
Tyler Zeller photo that was ref assed.
Here is another in our series on ref ass, and their ability to block great photos. If you have a fetish for ref ass, basketball is where you will find bliss. 3 refs contained on a small court is just a recipe for blocked photos. Usually I delete them, but every now and then sharing my pain is therapeutic. Indeed, many ungentlemanly words have left my lips from my spot on court side when a good photo is ref assed. (I think I just created a new term).
I realize I’ve been off my blogging game, at least here. But I have been writing up some stuff on Inside Lacrosse’s blog. Here are two recent ones to check out:
UNC freshmen Charlie McComas is overcome with emotion after defeating Johns Hopkins lacrosse in an overtime win.
Better late than never I guess. While cleaning out my hard drive, I realized that I neglected to post photos from North Carolina lacrosse during their overtime win against Johns Hopkins, and their NCAA First Round win over UMBC. Here are the links:
Ben and Chris Hunt’s dad spoke with me earlier in the year about commissioning me to do some portraits of his sons. They are both players on North Carolina’s varsity lacrosse team. Ben is graduating this year so all involved wanted to get some pics of him in his lacrosse gear on campus before he entered the “real world”. We finally went out Wednesday and got some pics of them on campus, just one day before Chris had to leave town. Here is one picture from our session today. In the background is Morehead Planetarium on UNC’s campus. I thought they turned out well overall. The effect in the photo below was accomplished by using two off camera strobes.
Chris and Ben Hunt
Shane Walterhoefer facesoff against Sam Payton in the NCAA quarterfinals.
I traveled up with UNC for the quarterfinals to Annapolis, MD. They gave a great showing, lossing by just 1 in a 11-12 loss to the Duke Blue Devils. The Blue Devils will now advance to the NCAA Lacrosse Final Four in Foxborough, MD. I will be traveling up there with them and it should be ton of fun; they have always been great to cover. Until then, here are some photos of Duke Lacrosse vs. North Carolina.
Duke Lacrosse won their third consecutive ACC title
A great ACC championship game was played last Sunday when Duke defeated UNC 15-13 to take the ACC crown. Only days before Duke had crushed UVA 15-4 and UVA had been the seen by the media as the favorite to win the ACC title (at least at the outset of the season). I never like loosing, but I thought the Heels played very well against a team that has been crushing other teams left and right. (I certainly wouldn’t feel so great if I was a UVA fan.) MVP was in my book and the voting media’s book CJ Costabile who as a defenseman scored a hat trick. I love seeing a defenseman score and seeing one score 3 is rare. Defenseman Milton Lyles from UNC also put one through the pipes. Lyles, who can sprint like a cheetah, beat Costabile to score his goal.
Anyways, I took both some action photos and some behind-the-scenes stuff. I put a post on Inside Lacrosse on my behind-the-scenes work. My goal was to create mirror images from both teams locker rooms. To show that while rivals, their preparation is the same. I didn’t do well as I hoped, but didn’t completely bomb it either.
I also have some of my action photos at this link: Duke vs. UNC Lacrosse photos (ACC Championship Finals)
Wow. (btw, check out some of my Billy Bitter photos)
Brad Ross
I am a little behind on this. But a couple weeks ago, UNC hosted Duke lacrosse at Kenan Stadium. It turned out to be a gully washer with rain that never let up the entire time. My photos honestly didn’t come out much better than the weather. My glasses kept fogging up making it difficult to track the ball. So maybe that is why I wasn’t in a hurry to get them up.
Cover of March 2009 Lacrosse Magazine with Ramses and Blue Devil (photo: Peyton Williams/US Lacrosse)
OK, admittedly I was more lucky than skilled to get this cover. US Lacrosse wanted a picture of two rivals for a photo shoot and lucky me lives right in between UNC and Duke, two of the biggest rivals in America. So getting this cover this month was a product of geography than my skill. Still, I’ll take a cover when I can get it. Anyway, here’s the story behind it:
US Lacrosse emailed me and said they wanted a picture “Ramses” and “The Blue Devil” together. From the moment I heard about it, I knew this would be a fun shoot; something very different than what I normally do. Little did I know that the hilarity would ensue with the initial emails between the mascots. The Blue Devil for example has his own email address and never uses his real name in email. Ramses enjoyed taking some jabsat the Blue Devil when responding to emails. For example this email came across on Feb 4th:
“If the current schedule doesn’t work for a Blew Devil in training, then we might still be able to work in a time at Dook on Friday afternoon. I am currently trying to find transportation to Dook for Friday afternoon…”
Ramses and Blue Devil take jabs at each other (photo: Peyton Williams/US Lacrosse)
The shoot would be held at Duke on Friday, Feb 6th. I was a little worried about Ramses. Dressing up as the UNC mascot on Duke campus (and less than a week before the UNC at Duke men’s basketball game) is what only the suicidal consider doing. Confounding my worries was that we were doing the shoot less than 30 yards from where the Duke men’s lacrosse team was practicing. Amazingly it went better than I thought. The person dressing up as the Blue Devil met with the person dressing up at Ramses. He took him to a place to change and the Blue Devil and Ramses walked with each other to the shoot. I thought that was pretty classy of Blue Devil to have his rival’s back. Proof that while the schools are rivals, there is a lot of respect between the two. The lacrosse players, while certainly doing a double look at the sight of Ramses walking on their field, never gave him any grief. In fact, Duke laxer James Goldberg worked with Ramses and Blue Devil to show them how to line up and hold their hands for a face-off.
Despite the planning that went into the shoot, I was unprepared for one surprise: Once the guys were in character and had their mascot uniform on, they would not be allowed to talk. I had planned on having them suggest ideas to me. That was obviously out of the question. Thankfully I had sketched out ideas the day before so I wasn’t totally unprepared. Still, having a one-way conversation with two models is awkward. But they were good sports and did a great job doing everything. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about them blinking or making awkward faces.
My only regret? I forgot to get a photo of me with the two mascots.
Special thanks to Erin Cobb, Coach John Danowski, James Goldberg, Mike Rock and of course Ramses and Blue Devil.
