Winning when you lose...

  Last Wednesday I travelled over the Nashville to shoot the Tennessee-Vanderbilt men's basketball game.  It was a longer ride home that to get there for three reasons:
1.  It's always tougher to travel East over a time zone than West.
2.  We stopped at White Castle at 10pm and then sat in the car for 2.5 hours (ouch).
3.  We lost big-time
  But it wasn't a total loss.  I made this frame at the game, which for obvious reasons, didn't get put into the web gallery on utsports.com:

  Part of my job at UT is to train students and I'm always telling them, "keep concentrating on the game, focus your mind as well as your lens," and, my favorite, "quit texting and chimping and shoot!"
  We really went down fast but I kept shooting.  And this little jewel popped up on the back of my D3s.
  It pays to stay in the game because images like this come along very seldom, even though I think the reality is that they happen all the time but there is usually no one there to capture them.
  By now, I figure I have shot many hundreds of basketball games in my career.  But images like this keep me coming back, contorting my old knees, coaxing them into a Crazy Creek chair on the paint.
  There is a great shot at every game, it's just a matter of looking hard enough and capturing them.  I'm convinced this is true, otherwise I wouldn't keep doing it.
  Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a great shot in all respects...  but it's worthy of a blog post because writing all this down makes me remember why I decided against a real job so long ago.  Because what I do is special, different, and fun.  Photography has never been a drudgery affair, quite the opposite...  And even when we lose, I win sometimes...

Old School, New Technology: The Fuji X10

This is NOT a complete X10 review of this new product from Fuji, but it is a first of many posts I will likely make about a more than interesting hybrid camera that has recently come available from Fuji.  It has been said by many of my friends here in the South, that once you own a pick up truck, it's really tough to go through life without one.  I have found this also to be the case with owning a Leica M series camera body and lenses.  As my own financial situation has ebbed and flowed throughout my career of the last 25 years, I sometimes find myself with a Leica but mostly without one for cost reasons.  In order that I can remember, I have owned the following Leica cameras:  M4P, M3SS, M4, CL, CLE, M6, M6, M8.  The last time I had a camera, I put together an M8 kit with all Voigtlander lenses and took it all to Rome with my wife and had a gas.  Still, even buying the M8 used for $3000 + glass, it remained too rich for me to keep and so off to the internet chopping block it went.

  Like many shooters that have held and shot Leica's, I always miss the feel, process, and results of shooting a rangefinder.  It is the true street photography camera from way back.  Now days, they are similar in size to Best Buy point & shoot cameras so they are non-threatening, small, black cameras that no one takes seriously.  This is the key to getting closer to your subjects.  Last, they have no mirror flapping up and down creating noise that draws attention to the photographer.  Think stealth bomber technology coming to photojournalism.  The advent of the first Leica rangefinder in 1913 changed forever how people made photographs and we left the tripod and bulky view cameras behind, allowing for the first time, for cameras to go where they had never been before.  It also created a new job title: photojournalist.
  Alas, the current Leica M9 which offers a full-frame chip, small size, and excellent files costs $7,000.00.  Oh yeah, and no lens.  So that put myself and a bunch of other photographers out of position to own the ultimate rangefinder and they were left once again in the back closets of the silly rich who are the only people that can afford them.
  Then Fuji announced it would make a real digital rangefinder and after a long wait the X100 came out.  This is a really cool camera and the closest thing yet to a real Leica M body.  But the achilles heal of this guy is that there is only one lens which is permanently fixed on the body.  It's a great camera and give you a real 35mm f/2 field of view (lens is actually 23mm but it's a crop sensor), but for $1200, I was hoping for more flexibility.
  Then, with little fanfare and not too long after the X100 has been out, the X10 was announced.  Late one night when I should have been sleeping, I was on the net and found a link to a review of the camera.  I read it and then went to Amazon and just bought one right then and there.  The next morning I had no buyer's remorse but I hoped that the camera would meet my expectations.  I have no regrets and feel it was the best $600 I have spent in a long time.
  I can go places, get closer, change the boundaries of my access, and make solid images that I would have difficulty making with a big fat scary looking Nikon
DSLR.  I just recently shot an entire assignment with the X10 over a two day period as I traveled with the Tennessee men's basketball team.  As you look through these photos, keep in mind where I was when I shot some of these.  My subjects barely noticed my presence as we traveled so this $600 bet has paid off big dividends.  This camera makes no noise when you shoot and it can fire up to 5 fps.  It's a little black ninja!

Please click this link to see:  ON THE ROAD WITH THE VOLS (FUJI X10)

  I always look forward to the quieter jobs, away from the screaming fans and NCAA rules.  And when I head for those assignments, you can bet I'll have this little guy in my hands.  Is it a replacement for a Leica M9?  Absolutely not!  But will it tide me over until I can buy a used M9 in four years for $2700? Probably, but if Fuji comes out with a new digital rangefinder with interchangeable lenses will I wait for that M9?  Nope...

U2 Poster or Golf Team Photo?

  Today was a good day because I got to shoot three times in one day.  I started at football practice, which I always enjoy covering.  Later, I headed out to the new Golf Facility to shoot a team photo.  While we were waiting for the coach to arrive, I shot something pretty quick that looked interesting:

  I looked at the back of the camera and got a little excited.  I love b&w although few people even ask for it anymore.  But sometimes I light images for the sole purpose of being converted to b&w or a duotone.  This is a great example.
  We managed to get all the photography in before it started to rain, which is always nice for the photographer as well as the gear.
  This was shot with a Nikon D3s, SB900, a Chinese radio TTL thingamabob from ebay, and a Chimera Small lightbank on an Avenger stand.  Men's Golf SID John Painter was on hand to hold the whole thing down so it didn't blow into Alcoa Highway.
  It's nice to get lucky now and again, when it comes to seeing stuff, weather, timing of things, etc...  If coach Kelson had come two minutes earlier, I probably wouldn't have even shot this, or if had rained 15 min. prior to when it did, etc...

Never give up...

  Sometimes you just can't let it go.  You can never give up, especially when surrounded by your team-mates.  I'm going to share with you two photos I shot tonight over at UT during a contest between the Lady Vols and Florida volleyball teams.  The first image shows UT's #15 Mary Pollmiller diving for a ball that she already knows she can't save, but she dives for it anyway:

  This frame was shot during the second of the games tonight.  We won the first one easily.  The Gators won the second, and then we came back to win, but it was really close.

  There is no shortage of energy in volleyball; some cheer squads could learn a lot from a typical volleyball match.  After each point, the team meets in the center of their side of the court for direction, encouragement, and to recharge those batteries and get ready for the next play.


  This image is my favorite from the end of the game and it represents the split second after the match-point play when the Lady Vols won the series.  Notice how Florida is already celebrating their point on the other side of the net...

  Mary never saw that because she was focused intently on returning that ball, paying no mind to what expense it might cost her own body in the process.  She managed to strike the ball but it was too late and her angle was bad so it went off into the stands, much to the delight of the ball-girls waiting for some work.  But she got a piece of it in any case.

  There is a life lesson here.  Never give up!  Keep playing even when it looks like the game is over.  The reality is that if you add up ten or twenty plays like Mary's in a game, you are going to win, no matter the odds against you.  Heart often wins out over skill.  Mary is teaching all of us a valuable lesson here and we'd be smart to receive it in the spirit it was offered.  Mary is diving, not for herself, but for the good of the team.  She is showing good example so that they can all benefit from her diving try.  Florida celebrated too early this evening and now their long ride home the the "Sunshine State" will lack a certain satisfaction.

  What will you dive for this week, and for whom?

Reunited with an old friend: Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 EDIF

  As part of a master plan to hopefully be able to retire someday, I recently took a new position at UT as "Assistant Director Digital Media."  I pretty much do what I've always done for UT football but now they've added 19 other sports to my responsibilities.
  As I looked at how to plan for this transition, I looked at Nikon seriously for the first time in 19 years.  UT already had a nice new 400mm, a 200-400mm zoom, the short glass, and 2- D3s bodies.  If I switched systems, I could sell off all of my Canon gear, get UT to buy some more Nikon stuff, and pocket a bunch of money to pay down debt, etc..
  So I took the plunge and began the monumental task of selling off everything I'd amassed in the Canon system since 1992.  It was not a trivial few weeks.  Some days I went to the post office with as many as ten boxes.  Other big days involved carefully packing up my trusty 600, 500, 400, and 200L lenses, respectively.
  Nikon was good enough to send me a bunch of gear to try out and it's going pretty well with one exception...
  I have been manually focusing my longer lenses for my entire career.  Most of us stopped this practice when we left Nikon the first time and got Canon in the early 90's.  But I have always enjoyed shooting tight, especially in football, and I could never figure out a way to get the AF system to not get fooled all the time by linemen passing in front of my view of the QB in the pocket.  So, I kept up this relatively antiquated practice for my whole career.  The longer the lens, the more I manually focus.  The shorter the focal length, the less AF I do.
  I was doing great until "the switch."  The focusing rings go the other direction (note I didn't even say wrong), as do the aperture rings, shutter speed dials, exposure compensation, and even the lens mount is reversed on the Nikon gear.
  My issue was every time I manual focused the lens, I went the wrong way, ruining every shot.  Even when I put my mind to it, I still ended up daydreaming and my fingers just twitched the wrong direction and "bam," I was in fuzzball-land.
  So, I got this crazy idea...
  I got on sportsshooter.com and put out a message looking for an old Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 EDIF lens.  I told people I didn't want to spend more than $1200 or so and it was just a temporary lens for me to get this manual focus thing down again. I reasoned that if I was shooting an all MF lens, I would eventually learn to go the "other/wrong/opposite" way.

  My old friend (he's really old) Byron Hetzler called me from CO to tell me that he had exactly the lens I wanted... all he had to do was find it.  He wasn't sure where it was, "maybe in the garage or in a closet, but I'm pretty sure I still have it," said Byron. The next day, I got a message, "found it!"  My check passed his lens a few days later.  I took it out to football practice and shot it for the first time.

  At first, I was terrible.  "Close, far, close, far...."  I had to work away from other media so as not to embarrass myself.  "Close, far..."  I shot a few frames.  One sharp, three out.  I shot a few more.  Five sharp, two soft.  And so on.  After twenty minutes, I went back to face the awful truth of the Mac 27" monitor.  But all I needed was about fifteen images, and Ruth was there to back me up too.  I had what I needed.  Score!
  That night, I sent a message to Byron to ask him where he got it from.  He told me from Gary Casky whom I had known as a student at Marquette in Milwaukee.  Gary was the UPI shooter that replaced Ralph Schauer who had been a wire service fixture for years in Milwaukee.  Well, I was FB friends with Gary and I got to thinking...  So I asked him if he remembered where he got the 400 from.  A few days went by and he finally got back to me.  "Yes Patrick, that is the lens you used to shoot President Reagan and a some Brewer games before you dumped me for AP back in 1985."
  And so it has been confirmed.  The lens I now shoot practice with once belonged to the UPI bureau in Milwaukee prior to even 1980.  The thing works great, it's tack sharp, even "razor," as Gary Bogdon was so fond of saying back in the day.
  All I had to do to make it truly useful is fashion a lens shade out of an old flip card from a UT game so  I could shoot back-lit.  I don't know how those guys used to shoot that thing with such a shallow shade, but it works great with a little gaffer's tape.  And now you know... the rest of the story.

Big Changes...

  A few days back on Sep. 12th, I celebrated my first month on the job as the photographer at the University of Tennessee Athletic Department.  I haven't worked this hard or as much since I quit newspapers in 1992.  Still, it feels really good to drive home each day (I'm working almost every day of the week) tired from shooting.  I've gone from sometimes not shooting for weeks at a time to shooting multiple assignments a day, and this has been really great for me because shooting pictures is what I do best.

  The nice thing, other than my first steady paycheck in 20 years, is that I know so many of the people I get to work with each day.  While there are many new faces in the AD, most I have known for over 20 years.  It's like going to work with my friends each day, which is a long ways from the sometimes lonely reality of working for yourself, which most often translates as working "by yourself."

  I lost 10 lbs. in the first three weeks, which is a great thing.  But now I'm hitting a little bit of a stride as the days are coming much easier than when I first started.

  The other big change is that I switched back to Nikon from Canon so everything is backwards for me.  I'm getting better at follow focus but I have a long ways to go to get to where I was with the big white lenses.  I switched the last time in 1992, so it's been a long time for me to go the opposite direction in terms of focus, zoom, lens mount, etc...  I've been having success as well as disaster as I re-learn to shoot with different gear so I will try to post some photos soon.  For now, know that I am a work in progress as I have always been...

Moonshine, Power Systems, and the big white wall...

  This summer has been busy!  First, my son Patrick and I made a most excellent road trip out West and visited 11 states in 2 weeks and logged over 7,000 miles on our new Kia Sorento.  We had a blast visiting a family reunion in CO, and then WY, MT, ID, UT, and AZ.  On the way home from AZ, I drove 1169 miles in one day, stopping only for fuel and food, which broke my prior record of 973 miles set back in 1995 or so, shooting minor league photos for Upper Deck on the east coast.

  The guys up at Ole Smoky Moonshine have been busy too.  They needed a new 30 second TV commercial spot that showcases their ginormous new expanded store and distillery.  I love working with those guys because they really set me free creatively to shoot interesting footage and stills.

  While work on my portrait studio has slowed some this summer, I got back in there recently and hired Doug Kiser to remove the rollup door and build me a new perfectly straight wall for the back end of the studio.  Wrestling with background paper has been a pain and I was really limited to how many people I could shoot in a family portrait session until now.  I have a perfect 16' wide x 12' tall white wall as a background now.  I'll be shooting Savannah Rogers in the next few days in the studio so I'll post some images of her senior photo shoot.  Savannah drove up to Knoxville with her Mom Elane, all the way from Florida to have me shoot for her; I've known Savannah since she was a baby so it's a treat for me too.