Missouri forwards Keith Ramsey and Laurence Bowers walk off the court following the Tigers' 63-53 loss to the Wildcats at Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan, Kan., on Feb. 27.
I think a lot of people were hoping the rematch of Missouri and Kansas State wouldn’t turn out to be as ugly as the game in Columbia on Jan. 9. If you were one of those people, you were probably pulling your hair out last night. If you want to get technical, last night’s 43 fouls were less than the 56 whistled in Columbia, but does it honestly even matter at that point? K-State had nearly three times as many free-throw attempts (34) to the Tigers’ 13. Both teams’ shooting percentages were in the toilet at under 33% for the entire game – in fact, the Wildcats managed to open the game by making 2 of 22 field goal attempts and STILL managed to be tied at the half. » Continue Reading…
Great game tonight — everything that needed to happen did, with the exception of Justin Safford landing hard on his knee and barely being able to walk. Hope todays MRI isn’t as bad as the fall looked in person.
I’m still having some problems with my remote setup, and I finally figured out why. Looks like a broken pre-trigger cable, but thanks to the awesome customer service at Flash Zebra, I’ll have a replacement in just a couple days, well in advance of next Saturday’s HUGE season finale against Kansas.
Finally, it was probably the last time this year we’ll see Steve Moore, Tyler Stone, John Underwood, and Jarrett Sutton on the court at the same time. Definitely a feel-good highlight.
Missouri swimmer Jordan Hawley competes in the 50-meter freestyle preliminary on Saturday at the Missouri Grand Prix. Hawley did not qualify for a finals heat.
U.S. National Team member Eric Shanteau comes up for a breath in the 200-meter breaststroke. Shanteau won two gold medals Saturday, in the 200-meter breaststroke, and 200-meter individual medley.
Photographing swimming has a tendency to get a little repetitive and monotonous when you’re doing it for six hours a day. If you aren’t really aware of what you’re doing, every photo you take will pretty much look like a head bobbing in and out of water. With that in mind, I took my time today to try and get something different. Now, I’m sure both of these photos have been shot before, but they aren’t something you’ll get everyday.
Now that I’ve gotten clean stock photos of pretty much every major swimmer competing, I hope to spend my final day at the pool tomorrow looking more for features and even more unique compositions.
Missouri swimmer Rachel Ripley, right, waits on the pool deck behind Trojan Swim Club member Keri Hehn prior to the 100-meter breaststroke championship final of the Missouri Grand Prix. Ripley placed fourth, with a time of 1:11.5.
Back to sports…for a couple days. This weekend is the fourth-annual Missouri Grand Prix, and my third year shooting the competitive meet. For the second year in a row, Michael Phelps is absent from the pool at the MU Student Recreation Complex, this time due to a snowstorm which kept him in Baltimore. Despite some spectators turning around at the door upon finding out of Phelps’ situation, attendance this year (in my entirely unofficial estimation) seems generally higher so far than last, but nowhere near what it was in 2008 – being an Olympic year, almost the entire U.S. National Team was competing along with other international stars.
I didn’t get much of a chance to shoot today because of other obligations, but expect a full photo gallery sometime later this weekend!
Missouri forward Keith Ramsey drives to the basket against Oklahoma State on Jan. 30 at Mizzou Arena.
Back in November, I bought a set of Pocket Wizards and remote trigger cables for my cameras with the intention of diving into remote photography this basketball season. Now, more than ever, it’s crucial for professional photographers to do as much as they can to set them apart from others, and, practically speaking, remotes help accomplish this by giving the photographer more angles and options to work with. So far, I’ve only used the Pocket Wizards to access our set of strobes installed in Mizzou Arena, and occasionally for a simple floor camera remote. Now, nearly halfway through the season, I finally got my act together and acquired the two missing pieces I needed for a full-fledged remote mount; a Bogen Magic Arm and super clamp. Just to make sure I didn’t screw anything up, I asked Joel for some help in getting the remote camera clamped onto the backboard post before the game started.
For my first attempt (and I say attempt because I really had no idea what to expect) I mounted the camera as high as I could on the post, almost level with the height of the basket. I used a 12-24mm lens on a full frame body, which results in 5-megapixel crop of the total 12-megapixel sensor. Needless to say, the quality and size of the file is not optimized in this situation, but it was good enough for my purposes here. The photo above of Keith Ramsey is one of about 20 worth keeping out of 600 from my remote. A ridiculously small success rate, yes, but definitely worth the risk. I plan on trying different lenses, and different compositions up and down the backboard post in the future.
