Brittany Lincicome

I had an assignment this week to shoot LPGA six-year veteran Brittany Lincicome competing against the men on the NGA Hooters Tour during their Winter Series event at Deer Island Country Club in Tavares, Fla.  Lincicome was teeing off at 8:06 a.m., which doesn’t seem to bad until looking at the map.  Deer Island is an hour from anywhere resembling anything other than the setting from a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings novel.  I figured that I could always catch Lincicome at the turn closer to 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. as the assignment suggested.  She wouldn’t be hard to find.  How many long blond pony-tails could be teeing them up on the Hooters tour that morning?  We were also experiencing unseasonably cold and foggy weather, especially for Central Florida.  Granted, our temperatures were only dipping into the 40′s.  Compared to the blizzard and white-out conditions the rest of the deep South was experiencing that morning, I couldn’t rationalize delaying my departure due to moderately cool temperatures.  Most importantly, I recalled a blog post I had read in 2009 by renowned photographer and film maker Vincent LaForet:

“One of the best lessons I learned from him (there were many) is that while we were all drowning our sorrows late into the night (the press corps in Pakistan) mostly due to the overwhelming emotion / frustration / fear & uncertainty that followed 9/11/01 – Nachtwey would quietly decline to join us – going to bed early (or likely working on a book layout now looking back at what I know of his crazy work ethic.)   By the time we were waking up to horrible light and hangovers – he was walking back into the lobby of the hotel… no matter how good you are, how developed your eye and vision are  - discipline and adherence to the following axiom: “The early bird gets the worm…”  helps even Mr. Nachtwey… “

It’s such a simple concept, “The early bird….,” yet so often and easily ignored.  To continually reaffirm to myself that I do not possess or encompass that of the lazy and unmotivated, laden with excuses of why the light is bad, the moments are lame, and backgrounds are busy, I set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. and trekked deep into the Central Florida swamps to find me a strong, sturdy, blond that out drives many a man with a 264.7 driving average.  I read later on Lincicome’s Twitter feed that she too was staggering from the early rise.

I kept telling myself along the way that the fog and early morning light would be well worth the trip. The scenery into the club was stunningly beautiful.  I even thought that if you didn’t need a private plane just to get home, it would be a great place to live.  However, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the brilliant golden sunrise breaking through the ethereal clouds I had envisioned in my mind was just that; my imagination. The skies more closely resembled that of an old Kodak gray card.  When I worked in Northeast Ohio, we had soft silver light from heavy overcast sometimes 8 months out of the year.  I was so starved for shadow and highlights, I salivated at the thought of harsh noon light on a hot summer day. Working in Florida is a completely different story. The light this particular morning was dull.  But it was also brilliantly silver. Colors were muted, but beautifully monochromatic. At least I kept telling myself this because I drove out there at the crack of dawn!

Lincicome and her coach, Nick Frontero, were both gracious and welcoming as I explained that I would be spending the morning with them.   For the first eight holes, I was the only person with their group,  along with her two playing partners, Jay Whitby and Zach Sucher.

Around 10:30, as she neared the turn, a few reporters and writers showed up.  Then another photographer.  All of a sudden she had a small gallery of fans who lived along the course riding along in their carts as well. There goes my clean backgrounds. The players continued to play as though nothing had changed, but I knew that the intimacy which I had enjoyed for the past two hours was gone.  In a few of my final frames, I began to see a harsh opaque shadow crawl across her face, hiding the tenacity and determination and subtle insecurities she so aptly described as the motivation to play against men while preparing for the upcoming LPGA tour and season. It was at that moment that I envisioned myself walking back into my own symbolic hotel leaving the harsh light and busy backgrounds for the others to feed upon.

Another great quote I strive to adhere to daily is not only at least partially responsible for my recent knee surgery, but also the ruination of my entire wardrobe is “Good photographers have dirty knees.” I’m not sure who originally coined the phrase, but I do believe it is universally accepted as necessary to obtain better pictures and vantage points.  I have come to embrace the stains on the knees of my pants as merit badges of effort in the endeavor to make a different, better photograph.

For the frame above, I quickly noticed as we made our way to the next tee box that the flanking cedar trees would serve as an excellent framing device from behind.  Since this was the Hooters tour, and not the LPGA, I figured I would be safe to fire off a frame or two in her back swing.  As Brittany lineup up and hit her tee shot, I was overjoyed that none of the other golfers walked into the frame ruining what I hoped would be one of my better pictures of the day. As I swiftly returned to my cart with a greater sense of satisfaction, I realized that while kneeling down to clean up my horizon line, I planted my knee deep into a fresh warm pile of dog feces! We have to deal with a lot of sh*t in this business, but this I wasn’t expecting…

The moral of the story is:  Get high, get low, but look before you kneel!

Aerials over Orlando

I was fortunate to get a sunrise ride over downtown Orlando, FL this morning in a Schweizer 300CBi for a story we are working on at the Orlando Sentinel about the new events center, Amway Center, and it’s adjacent parking facility.

The new arena, home to the Orlando Magic, is scheduled to open early October with the Eagles playing the 7th, and the Magic’s first home preseason game on the 10th. Today’s flight served two purposes. The first is for our Sunday A1 story on Amway Center’s parking deck, the only parking facility to directly serve the new building which holds approximately 20,000 people at full capacity. The deck has 1876 spaces at $20 a piece. The second purpose was to scout our cover shot for the upcoming Magic special section, which will likely showcase the new arena.

The light was nice this morning, but not exactly what I had envisioned for the special section. In order to shoot the arena with the skyline in the background, I had to shoot into the sun, which either silhouetted the skyline or at minimum backlit everything. I have at least another month before all of the orange cherry pickers and construction barrels are removed from the area, at which time I will go back up and try shooting at sunset where the western sun will fall directly onto the arena and skyline. It should be really nice.

Keep an eye out for our two special sections, one on the arena and one on the Orlando Magic, the week of October 28, 2010, in time for the first home regular season game for the Magic. In addition to the photos of the arena, we’ll have individual shoots with each of the players with multimedia to follow.

My biggest concern is obviously media parking. We ( the media) have been treated fairly well at the old Amway Arena for the past 20 years. The Magic PR staff are good people. I’m hoping they will take care of us again!

Any day you get to start your work day with a personalized helicopter ride over the   city has to be a good day! To Chris Loughran, my pilot, thanks for the ride. See you   next month at sun down.

Light Show

Saturday night was one of those nights where Murphy’s law permeated every aspect of the evening. The Miami Dolphins were playing the Jacksonville Jaguars in a pre-season game in Jacksonville, FLA. The game was scheduled for 7:30, but was delayed two hours due to lightning and storms, not at all uncommon for August in Florida. By the time they kicked off, I had approximately 20 minutes to shoot two possessions in a driving rain before transmitting to make a 10:00 pm deadline. The good news was that a blind squirrel could have made a decent lightning photo with as much electricity that was in the air at the time. I found my acorn with a 30 second exposure at f22 at ISO 50. It was easily the best photo I made all night.

As I was walking back into the stadium to move my ‘weather feature’ a rather inebriated fan came up and insisted I take a picture of the dolphin he shaved into the back of his head to commemorate game. He and his buddy had driven all the way from Dothan, AL to support their beloved ‘Fins.’  He expressed to me, ‘I don’t even care if it gets published anywhere, but you gotta take a picture of it.’ So I did…

My camera was still set for a long exposure at first, so I quickly began changing my shutter speed while snapping a few frames, when the sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Only one frame was sharp, with the lightning stopping the motion. It’s not exactly how I would have preferred to compose it, but definitely the first time I have shot a shaved dolphin and lightning in the same frame.

Olympic Weightlifter flees Sierra Leone

I recently had the pleasure of working on a multimedia piece and story on an Olympic weightlifter who was training in Central Florida with Titans Weightlifting Team of New South Wales, Australia. Musa Brima Kamara, 30, fled his war-torn homeland, Sierra Leone, in West Africa during the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. He and 13 other Sierra Leone athletes defected following the games in a much publicized effort to avoid punishment, imprisonment and possible death to them or their families upon their return to Africa. After a lengthy process through the Australian courts, they were granted asylum and gained Australian citizenship in their new home along the Northern Beaches of Sydney.

As a child in Sierra Leone, Kamara always dreamed of coming to American. ““When I was little, that is everybody’s dream in Sierra Leone. Where do you want to go? I want to go to America, America, America. That is everybody’s dream in Sierra Leone. If you ask just a little kid, where do you want to go when you grow up, I want to go to America!”

Getting here wasn’t easy. Kamara dodged mortars and shells flying through the Capital City (Freetown) while training with car rims filled with concrete. The rebels scoured every gym in Freetown looking for strong men to join the decade long civil war that decimated their country and way of life.  To avoid capture, he dressed up as a frail old man. When the rebels came up empty, they came to burn his house down. “They burned our house down.  They say there is a weightlifter here. He is strong boy. I just have to run. So they set the house on fire. Everybody was running for their life. You are thinking, ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to burn here.’ ” If the rebels catch you, life is over as you know it. ” Most of my mates, they catch them and take them away. You have two options. You either join them or they kill you.”

As an American born and raised in the suburbs of the western world, it’s hard to imagine the atrocities Kamara witnessed and avoided growing up just to survive. He watched the rebels burn his sister to death. However, I almost never saw him without a smile planted across his face. He was sincere, appreciative and respectful of life and the opportunities before him.  It made me stop, if only for a moment, and appreciate all the things in my life that I tend to take for granted.   Musa and his team came to compete against Florida Weightlifting Federation to gain international experience outside of world competition. They took photos in front of Cinderella’s castle at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.  They took advantage of the outlet stores, stocking up on shoes and clothing to take back to Australia. They laughed and trained and competed with new friends in the world of Olympic weightlifting.  I spent several days with them putting together a multimedia piece and story for the Orlando Sentinel. These are just a few of my favorite photos from the story. The video is at the link below:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-musa-kumara-072310-20100724,0,1317377.story

The complete photo gallery is at:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-australian-olympic-weightlifter-pictures,0,5624107.photogallery?index=orl-musa5320100722131833

Eastern Conference Finals

Game six of the Eastern Conference Finals is tonight in Boston. The Orlando Magic, originally down 0-3 to the sacred Celtics, have turned the series into a bruising battle between old and new. Here are a few of my favorite photos from game 5.

Boston’s center Kendrick Perkins received a stay of execution from the NBA when they rescinded a technical foul from game 5 that forced a one game suspension. Backup big man Big Baby Davis is a game time decision following a concussion from Dwight Howard’s  elbow.  Rasheed Wallace’s back has become as cantankerous and rickety as his persona. All that said, the Magic will have to write history to defy history as no NBA team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win the series.

TNT’s playoff coverage is nicknamed ’40 games in 40 nights.’ That sounds great watching from your couch. When traveling back in fourth from city to city over  the course of two months, one can easily lose track of days, weeks, and months. However, everyone at the paper was in such a good mood after selling so much advertising last year with our Finals coverage in the heart of the recession and newspaper downsizing, I would love to see the Magic train keep rolling.  What is good for the Magic is good for our local economy and ultimately good for the paper. Let’s go Magic!

Boston Beating

Boston center Kendrick Perkins (43) jams up Orlando center Dwight Howard (12) in the paint, limiting the star of the Magic to 3 of 10 shooting in their first game of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals at Amway Arena in Orlando, FL Sunday evening.

The Magic roared into the Eastern Conference Finals for the second straight year on the heels of a 14-game winning streak, sweeping the first two rounds of the playoffs. The NBA’s most storied franchise stands in the way of them returning to the Finals to play the winner of the L.A. Lakers and Phoenix Suns for the Larry O’Brien trophy.

The Magic are going to have to man-up to prove to the basketball world that they are worthy of being included in the same breath as the legendary Lakers and Boston Celtics. The window to win a championship is a short one. The Magic need to find their mojo and get this done now.

Front row…

Thanks to photo editor Tom Burton for a 180 degree photo of my shooting position for the Eastern Conference semi-finals. And you thought sitting ‘Indian-style’ was just for kindergarten.

It’s gettin’ hot in here…

Monday I shot some photos of our All-Central Florida lacrosse players of the year from two local high schools. The players were great to work with. They not only worked with me for almost 90 minutes in the scorching late afternoon sun, but also got down and dirty to create some nice photos. Our heat index that afternoon was 107, which is hot even for Central Florida this time a year. Needless to say, overpowering the sun at 4:30 in the afternoon proved difficult. Fortunately, there was an electrical outlet near the field. With a 100 foot extension cord,  a 1600 watt White Lighting and a 600 watt fill, I was able to at least get some light on them. I felt horrible after the first diving attempt of the male athlete, as my shutter speed was too slow to stop him mid-air, even with the strobe. I had to ask him to dive again, despite not having a landing pad. Next time, I’ll bring a soft landing for him. After the shoot, they both thanked me profusely, saying that last year they just stood their with their lacrosse sticks for the shoot. They had both seen some of the other photos I had taken recently of local prep athletes, which definitely helped them not only understand what I was trying to accomplish, but inspired them as well. It always helps when your subjects are as interested in making the photos as you are.

The Sweep

The Magic finished off their Eastern Conference first round playoff series 4-0, the only team to sweep the first round. It was an ugly round. I’m glad it’s over. I struggled to find photos that showed any kind of playoff emotion from the game last night. Sometimes unfortunately, our best photos are completely insignificant, relegated to photo blogs and online galleries. Vince Carter will likely be the difference if the Magic are able to make it back to the Finals this year. He has to get hot and stay hot. He scored a team high 21 points last night, making some nice photos with a couple of hard fouls.

Hack-a-Howard

Here is quick photo of Orlando’s Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard hacking Charlotte center Tyson Chandler in the face during game one of their Eastern Conference playoff series. Now on to Charlotte for games 3 and 4.

Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard picks up a foul in the second quarter of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference basketball playoffs between the Orlando Magic and Charlotte Bobcats at Amway Arena in Orlando on Sunday, April 18, 2010. (Gary W. Green, Orlando Sentinel)