Valley Cubs, Wildcats, and Tigers

Well, It's finally here!!!!!
Football season officially started Thursday night. It's my favorite time of the year.
The stars, moon, and the sun are all in alignment, and the convergence of many different sports all happen in the next two months.
I always try to get some kind of shot of the coin toss, with the coin in the air. The good Lord supplied the background for this one. WOW!!!!!!
Thursday night, I started my season off by shooting the Alexandria Valley Cubs and Anniston game.


A cool shoot of the Alexandria quarterback(at least I think so).


After shooting the first half of Alexandria / Anniston, I boogied back to Saks to catch the last half of the Saks Wildcats vs Wellborn Panthers game.
It was halftime when I arrived, but the game was over. Saks was leading at half, 38 to 7.
I stuck around for the rest of the game just because I need the practice.


I seem to be doing better this week Lindy. It's amazing what a little practice will do. And I didn't have any brain farts this week, either.


Friday night didn't start off like I had planned, but I came out with some decent images, anyway. The only game I shot was Heflin Tigers vs Lineville Aggies. I know it's early in the season(week 1), but do you see a pattern emerging? Another cool quarterback shot.


Just a safe shot.


Dive, dive, dive......

I had a much better time shooting these three games than the pre-season game last week. On top of last weeks boring game with very little action, no one I talked to made any decent images from that game. But, football season is here and I'll be shooting every Friday night, most Saturdays, and some Sundays (I have just recently been accepted to shoot for USPressWire. This is a premium sports wire service company, like Getty Images, and is owned by Sports Illustrated staff photographer Bob Rosato). Wooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Wish me luck, and if this year is like last year, I'll have football overdose by the first week of December.

Ya'll........my photography sucks!!!!!!!

Well......I was paraphrasing what NASCAR driver Bill Elliot told us a few years ago when I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot with him at Talladega SuperSpeedway. We picked him up at the airport next door, and as he was getting into the car, the first thing he said was 'Ya'll, my racing sucks'. This was after a terribly bad weekend just before he went into retirement.
With the looks of my highschool football images from last night, I may need to retire soon, too!!!!!
OK, I know it's only a pre-season game, but I just didn't capture a single image I was proud of last night. I guess I need to practice, just like both of these two teams need to practice.


Gadsden City High School has, without a doubt, the best lit football field that I have ever shot an image on at night. Without a doubt.
Then why in the hell did I decide to shoot flash all night long. The best looking images I got were when my flash didn't fire. I could see this on my view finder, I just didn't take advantage of it. Is this what they call a brain fart?


This is one of the reasons I drove to Gadsden last night to shoot the Hoover ve Gadsden City game last night. The number one rated defensive back in the nation. Hoover kept the ball away from his side most of the night, and since this was a pre-season game, he was pulled in the second half.



I couldn't resist closing out this post without an image of everybody's favorite coach, the new Hoover head football coach, and the ex Oxford head coach (where my kids played ball, cheered, and grew up) Josh Nibblett.
Could you really believe I did that?

It's a do-over........

No, that's not it...... How about a mulligan. No, that's not it either, that's in golf........ Oh, I know....... My brother-in-law and sister-in-law re-newed their wedding vows today. I guess you could tell by the lovely bouquet of flowers the blushing bride is holding.


Ain't that just so sweet.......


The ring exchange(do you really need to do this after 32 years)?


Here's a lovely portrait of the bride, groom, and minister(that's what they get for wanting me to take the wedding photos - I'm a sports photographer).


And the wedding album was waiting for me at the lake house when we arrived for the reception with family.


What would a wedding be without cake?


And the bride and groom feeding each other a bite of wedding cake?


I know we live in the DEEP SOUTH, but do we gotta have fried chicken at a wedding reception?


I've been married in this family for over 25 years, and I think this is the first time I've ever got a picture of my brother-in-law Joe where you could actually see his face.


My wife loves Sangria, so she thought she would make a bowl full.

Oh well, not much happening on a hot Friday night in Alabama. Maybe next time I'll have something exciting to post, but don't expect pictures from the honeymoon do-over. Ain't gonna happen...........

I got lucky at the beach

I know what you were thinking....... you were wondering if I got any good beach images on our recent trip to Sunset Beach in Calabash, North Carolina. Right????
Sure you were. Well, how do you like that one, or the one's following? Not your everyday, run-of-the-mill beach image. Right? Now, did I get lucky, or what?
Not once, not twice, but four times in the same hour.


Considering how ill prepared I was for this little excursion, I am well pleased with my attempts at capturing lightning for the first time. I wanted to travel light, photography wise, on this trip, but wanted to carry more than a point and shoot, so I mounted my old slow focusing 35-350 on a borrowed 40D (remember, my camera blew a shutter a few weeks back at the race at Barber) and headed off to the beach.
I didn't take it out on the beach until Wednesday afternoon, and then only shot some images of my son Chase skimboarding. Around sixish that afternoon, after we had cleaned up and was getting ready for burgers on the grill, I took the boys back to the beach to get a few portraits of them.
We goofed off Thursday in Myrtle Beach most of the day, then, as we were driving back to where we were staying,"It started stow-min" as we would say in the south.


Lot's and lot's of rain, wind, and lightning. It had mostly blown over by the time we got back to our humble abode, but the seed had already been planted in my little ol' noggin' 'bout trying to capture some images of the lightning. So I invited the family to go down to the beach with me to enjoy the show, but for some strange reason, everyone declined. Go figure.


Back to being ill prepared..... all I had equipment wise, was a 35-350 mounted on a borrowed 40D, so I found an old towel and headed out to the beach. By now the rain had almost stopped, so I got an umbrella out of the car. Let's see..... It's lightning and i'm walking down the beach with a fully extended umbrella in my hands. Hummmmmm. I didn't feel as safe as it sounds. Anyway, most exposures were either 10 or 20 seconds at f11 or f20 and the camera was set on the handrail of the boardwalk entering the beach with the towel used to dampen any vibrations from me standing patiently or someone walking up behind me on the boardwalk. I wouldn't have wanted to be out there more than a couple of minutes earlier, and I did wait around until the storm was very far off coast, and all I got was four lightning strikes in my frame. There were many more, and the next time i try this, I will have a wide angle lens and a tri-pod. The image at the beginning of this post was the last image I captured on that dark and stormy night.


My boys chillin' on the beach........


Chase skimboarding and terrorizing little children and old ladies.

'till next time.............