2010 High School Football Preview Cover
I shot this portrait of Eric and Blake Frohnapfel, players for Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, for our football preview last week. I had to sit on it until in ran in the paper. I managed to avoid shooting the 20 or so portraits of the featured players but I’m sure I’ll be doing our All-Area spread this year.
NCAA Football Recruiting
I shot a portrait of Tim Scott, a football player from Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, to illustrate a story about college football recruiting. In retrospect, there were a few technical details I should have addressed. In particular, I think I should have hit the front of the box with a little light as well as the background to minimize that shadow a bit.
Colonial Forge rising senior Tim Scott, holding a box of his recruitment letters, photographed at his home in Stafford, VA, on July 21, 2010 (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Avery Green, All-Area basketball player
I recently wrapped up the winter All-Area sportraits. Of the bunch, I was really happy with this one of Avery Green, a basketball player for Courtland High School. He was fun to work with and was interested in the process of his portrait. As I was writing this and looking at the other 6 photos in the series, all I could think of were excuses about why the pictures sucked. And since nobody likes hearing excuses, I’ll leave you with the one picture I actually liked. The rest were not bad; they were just average. It is definitely a bummer having to admit to a certain level of failure but I must say I came into the project without a clear plan or approach. I think I’ll take the spring off and let one of my colleagues experience the joy that is All-Area while I cook up some ideas for our football preview!
Winter Sportraits
It’s that time of year again – All-Area sportraits! Every season after herding high school kids cats and hauling a bunch of gear to various high schools around the area I swear I am not doing the next one. Yet somehow the sports editor always makes the assumption I’ll be doing it and somehow it just happens. Anyway, typically the AA shoots involve a mix of studio stuff for the interior team mugs and location shoots for the athletes of the year. I tend to pack a bunch of Nikon strobes and various light modifiers for the location stuff since I have a budget of approximately zero dollars and no assistants aside from other staffers at the paper. Since they are typically pretty busy, I don’t like to bother them. The upside is the athletes usually have a friend or two hanging around and I enlist their service as a voice-activated-lightstand (those familiar with the teachings of St. David of Baltimore know what I’m talking about!) Anyway, here are a few pictures of the set-ups so far. I can’t show you the results till they run in the paper. The set-ups are fairly crude but they get the job done so I suppose that’s all that counts. I’m no McNally fer chrissakes!
I started out using a softbox on the flash but opted for bare bulb to overpower the sun. Gotta love the SB-800′s and the ability to sync at very high shutterspeeds. Like I said, not a pretty set-up but I was pleased with the results. To make things even better, Avery Green, the basketball player pictured, was really excited about the pictures too and was pretty collaborative during the shoot, which always makes things easier. (more…)
Quick portrait
Just a quick and dirty portrait for the sports section. This was taken for the Sidelines feature in the sports section. As is too often the case, I had no idea about the the athlete’s name, school or sport just that Sports informed me that ‘a sidelines is coming in.’ So, in absence of any real information, I decided to switch up the location. I usually shoot these things in the studio but decided to go outside. So when Kristen, a volleyball player showed up, I grabbed a 35mm lens and a flash and we went outside. Pretty simple, really. Kristen is in shade, light on the left. I do wish I had centered her in the frame though. It’s a so-so picture – it serves a purpose of illustrating what Kristen looks like but little else. On the upside, she did explain what a librero is in volleyball. So I got that going for me..
Winter All-Area Sportraits
2008-2009 All-Area swimmer Meredith Cavalier
North Stafford's Megan Melendez, All-Area Gymnast
2008-2009 All-Area basketball players of the year, Courtland's Josh Hairston and Colonial Beach's T.T. Carey
Mountain View's Thomas Porter and Kaitlyn Davis are the 2008-2009 All-Area winter track athletes of the year.
Colonial Forge senior Mike Garafalo is the 2009 All-Area Wrestler of the Year.
2008-2009 All-Area co-swimmer of the year Trevor Carr
Stafford High School's Marquel Davis,
Well, it’s that time of year again – All-Area Sportraits. I’ve been shooting a ton of these lately and I was hoping I could pass these to a coworker to see what he could do with them. Sadly he got laid off and bought a plane ticket to China. I remained in Fredericksburg to herd cats coordinate with high school kids to shoot some pictures. I’ve been running on fumes when it comes to these shoots but I think a couple of these turned out OK, aside from one kid not showing up and another refusing to put on a uniform. Nothing makes me feel better than getting big-timed by a teenager! We also have to shoot group pictures of the All-Area teams. I will be the first to say if portraits are a weakness of mine, then group portraits are the weakest of all. The lighting is no problem but I always have trouble organizing the shape of the group. As the seasons roll on, we tend to switch between mugshots of each athlete or a group shot. I think the group shots look better but the mugs are way easier.
All-Area Gymnasts
