Last week, Seattle was introduced to Thursday Night football, part of the NFL’s never-ending quest to monopolize an even greater portion of American sports fans’ media consumption. It used to be they just played on Sunday. Then, once the college season was over, they started playing on Saturdays. Then, 40 years ago, they started to play on Monday nights too. Five years ago, they expanded it to Thursdays for the second half of the season. So now, in December you can watch NFL football four days a week. What a wondrous age we live in. On to the pictures!

I long ago tired of shooting the player intros from the field, so this game I decided to shoot the player intros from the stands above the tunnel. It’s a nice elevated angle, but it’s too crowded with too many people until all but the last few players are introduced. With the combination of light, smoke, music, the environment oozes testosterone to a practically intoxicating level.

Some fan in seats above the tunnel handed Marshawn Lych a 12th Man flag to wave as he was the last to be introduced. Lynch had a monster game, dominating the Eagles to the tune of 148 yards and two touchdowns:

The Eagles backup quarterback, Vince Young, was pressed into service by injury and had a performance approximately 180 degrees from Lynch. He threw four interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown:

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll enjoyed the game-clinching score:

Over on the opposite sideline, the sentiment wasn’t quite as merry:

Eagles fans attending the game seemed to finally grasp that the preseason pick to reach the Super Bowl wasn’t going to come to fruition.

While I won’t say that I’m a fan of night games, especially against East Coast teams like Philadelphia, with the accompanying early deadlines those cities entail, I will admit that having a Sunday off is quite enjoyable. Good news for my Sunday next week: the Seahawks host a game on Monday instead.

More blog posts to come soon!

UW head coach Steve Sarkisian gets a high-five (or four, in this case) from Dubs, the Huskies’ mascot, following a victory in the Apple Cup against Washington State. Sure it’s a bit of a contrived photo op for the dog’s handlers, but, you know, whatever. I have a soft spot for pictures of dogs.

This year’s Apple Cup was at the Clink, excuse me, CenturyLink Field. Oh, how I long for the quaint days of yore when previous corporate overlords like Qwest paid for the naming rights to our sports palaces. The site of the game was moved from Husky Stadium because of an accelerated renovation schedule. Since the Clink will be the Huskies’ home field next season, I decided to get a photo of the stadium and downtown skyline at kickoff. However, what meager amount of light in the clouded sky was pretty dim even though it was only 4:30 p.m..

Additionally, the painted end zones for the Seahawks kind of kills the photo. So goes life; at least I tried.

Jermaine Kearse stiff-arms out of a tackle. The next frame would have been better, since the Cougar’s head was pushed down lower, but the framing was too tight and I only had about 1/10th of his helmet visible.

Though it kind of looks like he’s being sacked, Keith Price actually scrambled for a gain of about eight yards on the above play.

Chris Polk was the story of the game, dominating the Cougars.

He brushes his shoulder off following his third touchdown of the game. Ho-hum, just another day for him, I suppose.

Everrette Thompson celebrates a fourth-down stop (and appears to have three or four arms thanks to another player standing directly behind him).

Keith Price passes during the first half.

Desmond Trufant tips a pass away for an interception.

Coach Sarkisian lets loose after a game-clinching touchdown.

Cougars head coach Paul Wulff walks the plank back to the locker room after the game ended. He was fired three days later, winning nine games in four seasons. Honestly, I think they should have given him another year. Wulff took a program that was one of the worst in the country and made them competitive, for a fraction of the cost that UW is spending on their coaches in a location that must be far more challenging to recruit to. But if anything, he knows life can be hard, and I won’t be surprised if he finds success elsewhere.

Time has not been kind to these ex-Seahawks cheerleaders, who came back to participate in a Halloween-themed halftime show during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Wyatt, ~18 months.

Chow time.

Looking at the planes up high in the sky.

Quinn, age 4.

Brotherly love.

By checking their handy online schedule, I arrived about a half hour before their scheduled march to walk the perimeter of the group and get my bearings for what the general vibe of the group was.

Mostly it was just people holding signs and waving at passing traffic.

There were a few pockets of light remaining in the autumnal afternoon, but it was fading and fading fast.

Photographically, it would have been really nice for the light could have lasted longer – overcast skies are so common here that doing things outdoors in sunlight is an opportunity that should be capitalized upon as much as possible.

And for a little unsolicited public relations advice: if they’re trying to present a sunny, optimistic vision for changes to American society, I’d humbly suggest they do as much as possible in actual sunlight. People always look happier and agreeable when they’re in sunlight instead of shadows. Always.

Also, I know they want to be as green and environmentally responsible as possible, but writing “Revolution is Sexy” on the back of a soiled pizza box is a bit of a contradiction. Perhaps that is why the sign is abandoned in the park, along with a likewise attractive ski hat:

At the appointed hour, the group of began marching down the sidewalk, destination unknown. I was at the very front of the mass of people and had no idea of how many of the roughly 1000 people in Westlake Park were participating in it. They eventually all arrived at the Bank of America building at the corner of 5th and Marion and had a protest in the building’s plaza against “the banksters.”

Once they all arrived and after they occupied the plaza for about a half hour and made their voices heard by all of the employees working on a Sunday evening (probably zero, if they’re keeping traditional banker’s hours my dad used to joke to me about – “9 by 3,” meaning the ninth green by 3 o’clock), they decided to call it a day and go back to Westlake Park, seven blocks away:

Despite not having a permit, the police blocked off traffic and allowed the group to take the whole street for a more efficient route back. The protesters filled about two city blocks worth of space, so I’d make a semi-informed estimate they numbered about 800-1000.

On the way back, I noticed a woman in pearls looking out at the march from her window-side seat in a posh seafood restaurant on 4th avenue. Jenny described this as my attempt at being “artsy-fartsy.”

Just yards from reaching the final destination of the march at Westlake Park, the group decided to stage a sit in at the corner of 4th and Pike. Maybe about 70-100 decided sat down, blocking the path of a Metro bus. The police didn’t appreciate this; they weren’t prepared with the manpower to take away the prospective new guests of the King County Jail to their temporary accommodations. While the police dispatched a paddy wagon, the protesters held a vote and, after considering a night spent in lockup, thought better of it and retreated to the legal safety of the park, free to protest another night and day.

A leader shouts to the crowd as they vote on what to do:

Despite being abandoned by the vast majority of protesters, two teenagers held fast to their claim on the intersection as darkness fell. The ranking Seattle Police officer at the scene explained what would happen:

They were taken away:

As I was departing the park – after having a drink with an old friend I bumped into on the corner – I took an overall view of “general assembly” meeting the protesters were holding under the first drops of rain.

I’d guess there was maybe a couple hundred still there.

Who knows where this motivation and energy will go? After having witnessed a similar movement in the late 90s and early aughts with the heyday of the WTO protests, I have a healthy bit of skepticism of what they’ll actually accomplish. They’re tapping into the dissatisfaction the general public has towards the plutocracy, but they could use a streamlined message or thesis that can push instead of a scattered bird-shot approach where they try to address every instance of the “man” holding “the 99%” down. People don’t have time, let alone care, to listen to a spoken-word manifesto on Marx. Fewer drum circles wouldn’t hurt, either.

We’ll see what comes next.

I photographed a concert by the Toronto indie-emo band Tokyo Police Club at The Showbox in Seattle last week. The principal reason I was there was to shoot fans in front of a “step-and-repeat” background and instantly upload the photos to facebook. This set up was to create a red carpet type of experience for fans, but the execution could have been better. I had to be tethered to my laptop to shoot directly to the hard drive,  then an assistant uploaded the file to the facebook page for the concert. The subjects were to then tag themselves on another laptop operated by a different person working for SMG. Unfortunately, both the wifi network at the venue and facebook itself were excruciatingly slow that night, so getting the photos uploaded was not optimally efficient. It still made for an interesting experiment in feeding the instant demand of social media.

I also shot the performances by Beast Makes Bombs and Tokyo Police Club. Apparently, it is required that new rock bands have three words in their names. In days past, I shot my fair share of concerts, but it took me only a few minutes to shake the rust off from getting the photos that I really wanted.

Beast Makes Bombs performs. I ventured into what now passes for a “mosh pit, but was underwhelmed. This sub-genre of music of postmodern hipster indie-pop doesn’t really inspire the unchecked aggression I recall from the Soundgarden and Ramones concerts of my youth. Perhaps that is for the better:

After a quick break (and more step-and-repeat photo shooting), TPC took the stage and I squeezed off some frames during the first four songs:

I traveled down to Portland to cover my first NBA game of the year, just a ho-hum third game of the playoffs on Thursday night. It was a bit like diving into the deep end of the pool, sports action-wise; I can’t think of any larger of a jump from shooting baseball to playoff basketball in terms of speed or intensity.

After the Sonics fled Seattle for some oil patch in the middle of the country, I became a bit of an NBA refugee myself, abstaining from following any team. Without a team to cover, I didn’t really have as much of a professional reason to spend any free time on it. Being less than a three hour drive away and starring a fellow UW alum, Brandon Roy, I could have simply adopted the Portland Trailblazers. However, the intense bitterness I felt over the Sonics departure prevented me from embracing them even half-heartedly. Not to mention the whole rivalry-thing between the two teams. If the Red Sox ever left Boston, I wouldn’t imagine many of their fans would start wearing Yankee caps.

Anyway, I drove down and covered game three against Dallas. I started off with the home team running on to the court for warmups by giving high-fives to kids. I instantly recognized it to be a contrived photo opportunity, but couldn’t help myself from shooting it. It made for a nice frame and was a stock image that I didn’t have in my archive. I probably won’t be shooting it again, however.

Despite arriving at the arena two and a half hours before tipoff, I didn’t get an on-court baseline shooting position, or “lane,” in NBA parlance, so I had to shoot from the stands, which wasn’t exactly the end of the world. The NBA somehow had space for two lanes for shooters from my agency at a Lakers game the night before – the premiere team in the league – but somehow didn’t have space for a single shooter (myself) out in provincial Portland. Anyway, having not shot any pro basketball in the past three-plus years, this didn’t really disappoint me too much since the speed of the game would have created a steep learning/adjustment curve compared to the mediocre Pac-10 hoops I’ve shot in the meantime.

Shooting with the 400mm from the stands creates a nice, shallow depth of field, though there is collateral challenges of people in the stands standing up, cotton candy sellers walking up and down the aisles, etc., Additionally, you lose access to about a third of the court, being either too far away or being blocked by the backboard or post. The above photo of Dallas’s Nowitzki getting stopped by Portland’s Batum, is at about the far limit of range for shooting cross court. The nice thing about shooting from the stands, is that I could move to the other end of the court when momentum shifts. I still had to make educated guesses about what would be the best spot for whatever happened next, but at least there is the option to slightly influence my photographic destiny for the night.

Like any shooting position in any sport, there’s a certain element of luck that’s intrinsic to making a good picture; you need the players to be coming your direction in order to get their faces. If Wesley Matthews drove left down the lane instead of right, for instance (pictured below), all I would have is a photo of him thru the glass backboard, which wouldn’t be usable. But since he went right, I was ready and got the picture:

Nowitzki is an amazing player, by the way. I’d never seen him play in person, but he’s freakishly good. It’s a bit confusing to comprehend when I watched a seven foot man move with such grace and skill.

I hadn’t seen a crowd quite as frenzied since watching Sonics playoff games in the early-mid 90s with my Dad. The Blazer fans are knowledgeable and intensely passionate about basketball; watching them collectively lose their minds in love for their team brought back some cherished memories I shared with Dad for the Sonics.

The Blazers have forced a game six, so I’ll likely be returning to Portland later this week to cover that game, too. Hopefully I’ll have time/inspiration to write up a post for that game.

Cheers!

A couple days into the season, I got around to shooting my first Mariners game of the year. Like last year, they’re off to a poor start and expectations are probably the lowest they’ve been since 1995. Which makes for some very open photo wells.

I’d slightly botched an earlier play at the plate, which wasn’t super photogenic to begin with, but given I didn’t see a single homeplate play in all the games I shot last season – again, the Mariners were not a good team – I was a little afraid my one opportunity of the year had already passed.

Little did I know that Mariners outfielder Ryan Langerhans would make an ill-advised attempt at home a half inning later, providing me with the above photo. I was pretty stoked.

Good times, good times.*

* – Sorry, as a longtime News Radio fan, I couldn’t help myself.

Fall has finally arrived and I thought it would be a good time for me to review some of what I’ve shot over the summer. I know I should have found time before now to write a blog post about my past assignments, but I often find it difficult to get motivated for the challenge of staring at a blank screen and creating a narrative out of my photos.

I didn’t substantially improve my baseball shooting at all this season. The Mariners were so horrible that I only shot a scattering of games, either day games of opponents likely to make the playoffs or games Felix Hernandez was pitching.

The above image was shot during a mid-week series against the Chicago White Sox, the favorite team of my youth. Though I was born on the Southside of the Windy City and attended my first games at the old – and far superior – Comiskey Park, I would rather have shot some great photos than seen the Sox win the games. I did manage to get a few nice frames, but nothing fantastic.

Chicago’s irascible manager Ozzie Guillen playfully reacts while signing autographs before a game. It sort of looks as if he’s about to sneeze or was just punched in the stomach:

The (novella) blog post rolls on…

The Mariners made a nice defensive play early in the first game, so there was plenty of daylight for a high shutter speed:

A “fan” intruded on the playing field late in another blowout loss for the Mariners.

The kid above seems awfully amused with himself, though if the security guards at Safeco were less humane and more awesome like those in Philadelphia, he might not be giggling like a little girl. I’m guessing the guard is probably not saying “here comes the tickle monster!”

The Minnesota Twins also stopped in the late summer at Safeco during their triumphant march to the playoffs. I managed to get a few nice frames of their charismatic catcher Joe Mauer:

I covered a near no-hitter by Felix Hernandez against Texas in September. He was in total command for the first seven innings, but alas, gave up a massive lead-off homer in the eighth which ended my dreams of shooting – and seeing – a no-hitter.

This was actually only the second pitch I shot from behind the backstop. It’s one of the great virtues of digital photography, that I could see that I got this shot and move back to an infield well. Sometimes it can take me an entire inning to get the pitcher properly framed with the ball exiting his hand, but that day it only took me two tries. Also, it would be nice if Felix had his jersey buttoned up higher, but I won’t question the wardrobe decisions of the best pitcher in baseball.

Probably the coolest thing was that I nearly bumped into Ken Burns as I was walking with my gear rollerbag in the service tunnels beneath the stands. I said “excuse me,” but I wish I’d had the presence of mind (and unprofessionalism) to add “Mr. Iconic American Filmmaker” and ask him to autograph my photo credential. He very politely stepped aside, of course, and the above addendum didn’t come to mind until I’d walked about thirty feet past. Heere he is waiting to be introduced before throwing the first pitch of a game between the M’s and Rangers:

I covered some of the WNBA Finals between Seattle and Atlanta. The first game was part of a frantic and simultaneous cross-town double header with the Seahawks season opener. I’ll get to that later, but first I’ll include a few images from the games.

The Storm were completely dominant and Key Arena had a festive, energetic aura about it that I hadn’t witnessed since the Sonics left town two years ago. I enjoyed shooting the games – and was glad my basketball reaction times hadn’t diminished too bad since the spring – but what struck me most strongly was just how much I still missed the Sonics. As good as the Storm were, they weren’t the team I’d grown up with. The games were good and competitive, but they didn’t have the nail-biting intensity that NBA playoff games I’d been to had.

Lauren Jackson was solid:

But Sue Bird has the best overall game of any women’s basketball player I’ve ever seen. She made a game-winning shot with three seconds left, but had so much ice water going thru her veins she made for zero reaction. My effort of running to the other end of the court during the timeout to be in position for the reaction to the winning shot went for naught:

Come on Sue, show some fire!

Ideally, Atlanta would have held serve on their court and forced a game five back in Seattle, but the Storm were simply too good for that. It would have been nice for their fans to see them clinch in person, and I would have gotten to shoot an actual championship game. Seattle didn’t lose once at home all season and it was clear after the second game that the series was over. As I expected, the Storm clinched in game three in Atlanta.

I’ll include a couple shots as a reminder of just how great strobed-basketball is. As much as I miss the Sonics, I *do not miss* covering games in Key Arena. The light is easily a stop and a half less than in other more modern venues, and it has a pulsing color shift that you might see in dark high school gyms and fields. Flesh tones often look less than perfectly natural, jaundiced even sometimes. No strobes:

With strobes, that I caught at the same moment as the team shooter:

I had a taste of football of football when I covered the opening of Seahawks training camp in July. The pictures were very forgettable; to quote Allen Iverson, “we’re talking about practice.” However, I did manage to make a slightly amusing image when rookie wide receiver Golden Tate autographed a Top Pot donut box for a fan.

(Hi Otis and Joni!)

If you’re from the Northwest, you might remember the story of his hijnix when he and a buddy drunkenly broke into a donut shop while it was closed to get some “irresistible” maple bars. Ha ha, burglary is hilarious.

Anyway, on to photos between the lines, as they say. I won’t bother with any images from the preseason games for the Seahawks or the Huskies’ first game against Syracuse, the photos were as unremarkable as the games that no one remembered five minutes after they exit the half-empty stadium or turn of the t.v.. The season really started for me when Nebraska came to Husky Stadium.

I scoped out a spot above the tunnel for a chance at a different angle, but it didn’t work out as well as I would have liked. This first shot is ok, but nothing really fantastic. You can see the zoo of photographers that I was trying to avoid in a ragged line directly between the goalposts and the players.

Not so bad, but when the rest of the team is introduced jets of dry ice “smoke” are turned on and obscure the  view from above:

Of course the smoke jets were turned off for Nebraska, and I made a decent image of some second-tier players entering the field:

It would be nice if the Husky fan with the “Incredible Polk” sign wasn’t there, wouldn’t it? What can you do, besides try.

The game started and Nebraska quickly made a scoring play directly at me:

Unfortunately, my 1D Mark II was feeling particularly uncooperative after this point:

The best frame was badly out of focus:

You might not be able to see it clearly because it’s a web-compressed photo, but I’ll give you a tight crop of the Nebraska player’s face, just for your curiosity:

Yup. Definitely. Not. Sharp. Sigh. I cursed the camera body like a red-headed step child after the extra point as I looked at the pictures. Not exactly my finest moment, but well, live and learn. I resolved to switch my near glass zoom lens to my more reliable 1D Mark IIN from then on.

The strategy was almost immediately rewarded when on the Huskies’ next drive, Jake Locker ran directly at me for a touchdown. Not quite as dramatic a photo, however:

By the way, I’ll just say that when it’s sunny, the light at Husky Stadium is fantastic. Besides the nostalgia for my youthful college days, I love shooting there because the backlit players against the shadow cast by the stadium creates some really lovely images.*

*: I should add a caveat to that of “most of the time.” The next quarter, Nebraska scored a touchdown with most of a player’s body in shadow. Blah:

The next day, after the Storm’s victory, I sped down Second Avenue to Qwest Field to shoot the second half of the Seahawks-49ers game. By the time I reached the field the game was effectively over, an unexpected 31-6 Seahawk victory. Tight end John Carlson did grace my lens with a nice catch:

I was more prepared for the next game against San Diego. This time I got to borrow a 1D Mark III from the nice people at Glazers Camera. The Mark III has notorious focus issues, but I was thankful to be able to give my Mark II a rest and try the focusing gods with a different offering. The Mark III didn’t disappoint from focus problems in the bright sun:

Bleghhhh.

When it was sharp, the images it made were really, really nice:

I got to use my trusty Mark IIN for the near-glass, and made an o.k. photo of the aforementioned donut-kleptomaniac Golden Tate was stopped short of the end zone late in the first half.

The story of the game was the kickoff returns by Leon Washington, who scored two touchdowns. The first came to open the second half, which I was still in the photo workroom transmitting for (as I usually am – NFL halftimes are a mere 12 minutes). The second ran away from me, which I almost nailed were it not for an arm in the way:

I did salvage the frame before, so it wasn’t a total disaster. It definitely has issues from the blurry arm:

The Chargers’ quarterback Philip Rivers passed for nearly 500 yards, but still lost in the end, and acted a little like a sore loser afterward. As he was walking off the field, he stopped, turned around, and actually sneered towards the festive Seahawks.

You stay classy San Diego.

1800 words later, I’ve found new motivation to blog in a more timely manner. Check back next week when I’ll be reflecting on a road trip to Corvalis for an Oregon State-Arizona State game.

The crack of the bat! The roar of the crowd! Baseball’s back, as evidenced by the abundant season preview magazines currently on newsstands.

I recently found out that a photo I shot of the Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez, a.k.a. King Felix, was used on the cover of not one, but two baseball season preview magazines. Both Athlon Sports and the Sporting News found a photo of Hernandez that I had shot fit for their Pacific Northwest covers. After inspecting the credit line inside, making sure this was my photo that was used, I then double-checked the publishing info on the staff box page of each respective magazine. I thought there might have been a merger that I hadn’t heard of in the past couple of years in which both magazines were now owned by one company that might have purchased a single license for the photo and then used it twice.

Nope, Sporting News and Athlon Sports are each independent of each other.

After the thrilling revelation that, yes, I would be twice paid a cover rate for the same photo, I briefly began to consider the probability that the one image would grace both magazines. Since it is a regional cover, the universe of possible players is essentially limited to the Mariners. On the team there are only a few players that one could argue are cover-worthy. Felix, Cliff Lee, Icihro, Ken Griffey Jr., Chone Figgins and maybe Franklin Gutierez.

Of those, Figgins and Lee would be very unlikely because they were acquired by the team in the offseason, so therefore no in-game action photos of them in Mariners’ uniforms exist. Gutierez is an all-star quality outfielder and was recently given a contract extension but is far from the best player on the team. This leaves just Felix, Ichiro and Junior as cover candidates. I’d roughly estimate there might be four other photos, per start (~30 starts per season) by King Felix, that could be used as a cover, or 120 possible photos. For Ichiro and Junior, they each might make an interesting photo opportunity once every five (Ichiro)-to-ten (Junior) games in a 162 game season, giving about 50 photos combined.

So overall, I’d roughly guess there might be 170 other possible photos that might have been usable for a cover. In this rough estimate, I’m neutralizing the fact that not all photos are born equal – some are born under the shadow of weak night lights, orthers, like mine above, are born beneath glorious sunshine – with the fact that multiple media outlets and agencies cover games, besides my agency (cough, Getty, EPA, Icon, CalSports, cough) and they often have very similar photos. Another variable that I’m not even considering is the fact that Sporting News would have images shot by their own staff photographers which went unused for the cover. So I’d probably guess that my estimate of 170 other cover-worthy photos is pretty far on the conservative side.

This puts the odds that something that has a 170:1 chance of happening twice at a mere 28,900:1, roughly.

I realize you’re probably far less interested in reading about me doing math in my head than other photos, so here are a few.

First, the original full frame that the covers originated from:

This was from the Mariners season finale on October 4, 2009. I was motivated to cover it because there was a realistic chance it would be Ken Griffey Jr.’s final game of his hall-of-fame career – which meant resale opportunities would abound, possibly for as long as any of us live (particularly if he did something memorable, like pull a Ted Williams and homer in his final at-bat) – but also by the gorgeous early fall sun. Later in the year and in the day produces a lower, more photographically favorable sun angle. Besides following Junior around, I was also interested in shooting as much as I could of Felix, since there was wide speculation among baseball analysts that he might be traded in the offseason.

Before the game I’d decided that I’d want to have an inside-first base well position for the end of the game and Griffey’s final at bat, so in case he were to do something very memorable, like hit a home run, he’d have to come directly towards the doug0ut (and my cameras). I thought this would be a highly sought-after spot, and was a little worried about arriving later than the 90+ minute early ideal, but all the other shooters seemed to want to be in an outside-first position. So I put my gear down there and then moved around the park some. Only after I shot some of Junior in the dugout. Look at the grey in his goatee! Makes me feel old:

I figured I’d start the game from behind the plate, since that position takes a bit longer to get to and from, so that way I wouldn’t be lossing shooting time with a brisk walk thru the Diamond Club on my way to the backstop. Unfortunately, the high noon start producded an undesirable shadow across the face of the pitcher, so I quickly abandoned that position after less than an inning for the outside third base positions.

The mound was almost completely backlit, which is usually my favorite position, regardless of the sport, since it allows for an even exposure and a more neutral background:

The plate, was half in the shade and half in the sun, but backlit also. Junior acknowledges the crowd before his first plate appearance and Adrian Beltre takes a hack:

By the time I’d made it back around to the outside-first base well, the batters box was compltely in the shade, as you can see from the Franklin Gutierez swing:

After an inning of that, I moved on to my final destination, the inside first base well that I originally began at. I shot some from here, trying to make a nice photo of a light pocket illuminating players in the on-deck circle, but nothing really came together the way that I wanted:

Though action-wise they’re both equally pedestrian photos, I actually prefer this photo to the cover image because Felix’s pitching arm position is more forward and can be seen in full:

Also, his teeth are visible and his expression is more intense. The background is slightly less clean, however, so I can understand why this photo wasn’t chosen.

I then realized that the sun angle had shifted sufficiently that shooting from behind the plate would actually produce usable images. I decided it would be doubly rewarding to get over there, since no one else was shooting from there and I’d have a chance to produce some real unique photos. So I hoofed it in an inning break and squeezed off a few frames:

I then got back to the inside-third base photo well where I shot some more of Felix (and the above cover photo).

I try to provide at least a couple of wider frames of each pitcher, which are often used as double-truck spreads in SI or ESPN these days, but I’m afraid the Boeing ad in the background is a bit of a hindrance for this photo:

After Felix left the game, I returned back to the inside first-base well and settled in for the remainder of the game.

Junior came up to the plate one last time in the eighth and singled:

And was congratulated by teammates after he was subsequently replaced by a pinch runner:

And hugged by the manager:

Following the game, I shot the players parade around the warning track:

Manager Don Wakamatsu gives high-fives to fans:

Then finally, the players came back to the infield and put Junior on their shoulders. I saw this and thought “MONEY,” as did every other photographer at the game. Unfortunately, the players’ position on the field had very unfavorable lighting, producing some pretty ugly images:

As I realized this, I gave up shooting wide with the pack as it came back to the Mariners dugout, and took a tighter angle from further away. By the time I’d retreated, re-composed and re-set the exposure, about ten seconds later, Ichiro had been also lifted on his teammates shoulders, making for another nice, happy photo.

Eventually everyone decamped to the clubhouse and the 2009 season was no more. If I’d been more aware, I would have actually used the flash that I had put out before the game ended, so these final photos wouldn’t be so flat:

Anyway, I’m looking forward to more baseball in the 2010 season. The Mariners actually have a legitimate chance at their division for the first time in nearly a decade. Good times, good times.