A Work in Progress

Today's image is from July 6th. I have been working on projects the last couple of days so I have nothing new worth showing so I'm putting on a pict of my last trip to Yankee Stadium.

I'm a huge Yankees fan. I was born and raised a Yankees fan. My father also loves the Yankees. So with it being the last season at the old ball park I had to see what I could do to get tickets.

I've been just about everywhere in the stadium. I'm sat upper deck (but not for long) and in the lower levels. I even have gotten press passes and been in the belly of the beast.

I have dirt from my first game shooting there back in 2005 to go with dirt from Tigers Stadium from 2003.

I have alot of great memories.

So when I found out I was going for the last time...my first Boston/New York game....I decided to take my camera and a wide angle lens. It was not only my first Boston/New York game it was my first time in the bleachers.

So I got to hang with the bleacher creatures and see a great game. The Yankees won it in the bottom of the 10th inning. I got to celebrate with my Father and I got to take a couple of friends with me who had never been to Yankee Stadium.

I paid $17 for each ticket. Which I got back in February in an online lottery from the Yankees website. My cousin Gerad and my friend Woody went with us. It was a Sunday night game on ESPN so we got there early and went to Manhattan. Neither Woddy nor my father had ever been in Manhattan. It was a good time.

So here's today's image. My last at the old Yankee Stadium. I have allot of great stories and memories of that place.

This is one of my favorite non sports images that I took this year. Back in August I got to shoot the John Mayer concert at the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center.

I hadn't done a concert since Brittany Spears in Buffalo back in 2003.

I really like how the light engulfs Mayer.  Its cool to me cause he plays allot of blues and here he is blue.

Darien Lake was a hard place to shoot. The stage is really tall so the photographers have to stand on chairs in order to get a good shot.

I also have a shoot of the lead singer of Trian taken back in 2001 where he is also colored by the lights that I like but this one is just a hair better.

My photo of the day today is a couple of days old. Its Livonia's Matt Leader in the 100 breaststroke in Tuesday's meet against Geneseo. I really like how his reflection show up in the water. I've gotten this look before but not as strong as this one.

See I'm working with my Nikon D2h as my main camera as my D3 is at the Nikon Repair place in Meadville, NY.

My flash which I got with my D2h is getting worn out and needs to be replaced but I have other more important things to worrie about that replacing a $500 flash with another one right now. Plus the D3's ability to shoot at high iso's means I can work around this flashes problems.

What it doesn't do is make this flash work right on the D2h. So I have experimented with ways to get what I need out of the flash with the D2h. Which helped produce this shot.

I have the flash mounted off camera and then I bounced it. On this shot the first lap I bounced off the water. This lap I aimed towrd the ceiling. With the ceiling being 15 feet up I pulled out a bounce card to help redirect. The combination of where the flash was and where it was aimed helped give me a better refection.

Now I'm off to Pavilion for some wrestling.

So a few weeks back I took a Sunday out and shot the cover of the LCN sports preview at Avon. Both teams look to be very good this season so we decided on doing the cover with both teams on it.

If you know me you know I hate more than 5 athletes on the cover since it typically takes up to much space width wise for the paper.

This idea was a joint idea between my sports editor and myself. I know the idea didn't go over well with the players but I like how it looked.

I had alot more I wanted to shoot and I did do some stuff but I cut short my shoot due to the flu.

I used 2 allenbees that I barrowed from a friend. I also did this all without any help.

I learned a few things that day. 1. it dosen't go well when your sick. 2. an assistant would have helped though I tried to line one up.

I would like to do more studio stuff. I have plans for other stuff to do. I've been reading up on techniques and taking notes for my next project.

Today's image is one of my favorite images of 2008 series. I'm going to grab these images or some of my older stuff and ad them from time to time in this blog. When I started this blog I figured I'd mix new stuff with older stuff, and stuff thats been printed along with stuff from my portfolio that hasn't.

So here's another 2008 image. I really like this image. Back in early August I shot several of the Avon Braves Varsity players as I worked on the cover for the fall preview that I have on here a couple of entries back.

This here is Dan Allen. Dan's the senior linebacker of the 2008 Champions. I was trying many different shots with members of the Braves. I took Dan and Matt McBride over to the bleachers. While I liked Matt's image this one really stood out to me.

It has that can't wait for the season look to it. Also I like how the gaurd rails direct the eye. It was a last second shot that I came up with and I really like how it looks.

On a side note this week's Sports Illustrated is out and it has my image in it. Its run how I thought. Its cool to be in SI. I hope its not my last time in their magazine.