Last Saturday I had a rather unusual assignment to cover the 2010 Conference USA Swimming and Diving Championships hosted by my Alma-mater, the University of Houston. As I prepared for the event I realized that out of all the things I have shot in the past and out of all the sports I have shot in the past, I had never shot a swim meet or competition diving. For years I had seen great swim meet photos from local newspaper photographers all the way up to the Olympics, but never had I shot it myself.

So I called some friends for some inspiration.

A few told me that it would be dark and damp (it was) and that I should bring in some lights to light the place up. I would have, but there was little time and the Campus Recreation Center where the meet was being held was a little hard to navigate. Since the competition pool is sandwiched between the dive pool and a training pool, angles for shooting are pretty slim. Even though the conditions were not ideal for photographs I enjoyed myself. I must say, I have complete respect for someone who can swim 66 non-stop laps in an Olympic-sized pool, not to mention one who wins that heat.

After I had made plenty of proper (and identifiable) images of swimmers leaving the block, celebrating, etc, I decided to play around a bit and shoot some more abstract stuff from the venue. With the obligation of identifying the schools and individual swimmers behind me, I felt inspired to follow my instincts and shoot a series of images that played with the color of the water and the natural motion of the event.

This is my second installment of my 2 part favorites post highlighting my favorite images taken during Houston Chronicle assignments. This post contains images from roughly mid-May 2009 through this past weekend taken from my Houston Chronicle assignments only. I am a regular contributor to my hometown newspaper and get to shoot all kinds of things. A few months ago I posted my January through mid-May favorites and I thought now was a good time to post some selects since then. Some may have made it into the paper, some may have not. They were all taken from images sent to the paper from my various assignments.

*Note: I have consolidated my favorite images from all of 2009 into one nice and neat Photoshelter gallery. View the slideshow of 57 images below!

What a great few weeks. This is my first Fall back in Houston in 3 years. Fall internships have kept me away and its great to be home during this time. I have certainly missed the days when the Houston weather starts to get mild(er) and more importantly I get to cover my hometown Houston Texans and my alma mater, The University of Houston Cougars. I haven’t covered the teams since 2006 so its great to finally get back on the field. I enjoy shooting sports, but its especially exciting when you are shooting a team you root for.

While I was in Florida a few weeks back, my Cougars were beating a then 5th ranked OSU in Oklahoma to propel them to their first AP ranking in about 20 years. The upsets in our bye-week pushed us from 21st to 17th. Everything all week has been building up to Saturday night’s matchup against Big 12 rivals Texas Tech. The atmosphere in and around Robertson Stadium was unlike I have seen since the 2006 CUSA championship game. Former and famed alumni Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler showed up and hung out for the game as well. We had our ranking and we wanted our team to prove it wasn’t a fluke winner and could hang with the big boys.

The game was great with lots of game action and like many other college games, lots of other things to shoot other than the game action. I didn’t get a lot of feature(y) stuff prior to the game, but I highlighted a few of my favorites over on my SportsShooter member page. It is actually featured on their front page as of this morning.

After an incredible 29-28 Houston win and an on field celebration via rushing the field, we were up in the press box editing and transmitting at 12:30am. I left Robertson at 1:30am or so and after celebrating with a few friends, was in bed at about 4:30am.

I woke up 5 hours later to shoot the Texans, Jaguars game.

With high hopes and the meat of our schedule behind us, UH is now ranked 12th in the nation according to this week’s AP poll.

Go Coogs!

So I got a call from a friend and newspaper photo editor to cover the high school season opener (aka Week 0) game between the North Shore Mustangs and the Katy Tigers at Rhodes Stadium in Katy last night. I don’t shoot as much sports as I used to given the fact that my primary work isn’t newspaper stuff, but if I was going to shoot any high school games this year, this was a good one. Texas high school football is legend and this rivalry would prove to be as good as I had hoped. North Shore is in a lower income, eastern Houston neighborhood, with a primarily minority/blue-collar base whereas Katy is in a middle to upper class, primarily white neighborhood. This rivalry means more when you are made aware of the fact that Katy has many state titles under its belt including 2007 and last year, 2008, however last year North Shore was one of Katy’s few losses of last season.

Rhodes Stadium in Katy is one of the nicest high school facilities around (and we have plenty in Houston…Berry Center anyone?) and a little over 14,000 people came out to see this game. That is practically the attendance numbers you would see at many smaller collegiate level football games. To put it in perspective, the catered Italian food in the press box was better than most press box meals I’ve had the pleasure of tasting over the years.

There was a lot going on before the game and since I showed up with plenty of time before the actual game started I tried to shoot some featury stuff. Lots of nice color to play off of.

After I had edited and transmitted my images to the newspaper, I played a bit with a few of the images. I edited a set of diptychs that I put together called “Saturday Night Lights”. The diptych series appears in the gallery below, followed by the single images from the game.

As a regular freelancer for The Houston Chronicle, a major metro daily, nearly half a million people see my pictures from day to day, but the next day many of the photos are either used as kindling, pooped on by pets or recycled. Of course they are archived by me, but are rarely shown. It is now May, and 2009 has flown by thus far. I have covered everything from courtroom drama to baby rodeos. Below are 22 of my favorite images that I have taken on assignment from The Chron in 2009. These were taken from my SENT folder which means they were selected only from the images that I have sent to the paper. There are a handful of images I can think of that are not in this “favorites” post because they were not sent to the paper for whatever reason. I oftentimes shoot photos during an assignment that don’t bare any relevance to the story, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. For the sake of time and effort I simply chose from my SENT folder. Some of the images made it into print or online, others did not.

*Note: I have consolidated my favorite images from all of 2009 into one nice and neat Photoshelter gallery. View the slideshow of 57 images below!

I’m dipping my toes into all kinds of stuff in this new year, 2009. I don’t really do engagements all too often, but this was for a friend and her fiance who happens to work for the greatest baseball team of all time, The Houston Astros, so for that, I will. It also didn’t hurt that we would have free reign of the Astros home field and my summer home, Minute Maid Park in Houston. I was really excited about the shoot the whole week. The weather forecast looked good and I was confident that I could really knock the session out of the park (you see what i did there!) but come Saturday morning, the weather was cold, windy and overcast.

All was not lost when we noticed that the roof of the stadium was open as we approached downtown. Having the roof closed would have made things even worse. When we got there I scouted locations and met the couple, Dave and Sondra in the press box. They weren’t really dressed for the cold so the shoot went a little quicker than planned, each shot was sporadic some using a small light I had brought, others using just natural light. I tried as much as I could to play on the composition of the stadium, shooting some obvious shots that revealed the locale and other, more abstract images that played more on the composition. We were able to get their names on the outfield screen for a few shots too. Some of my favorites were taken in the manual scoreboard. They spelled out the date of their wedding on the scoreboard for a few. We shot some images on the diamond and in the dugout as well.

After the couple had enough of the cold stadium, they changed and we did a few impromptu shots on a nearby street in the warehouse district.

What a weekend! I’ve been pretty busy shooting the past week. After shooting several assignments this week for the Houston Chronicle, I decided to take Friday night and shoot something for myself. I had seen that the Half Pint Brawlers were coming into town for a midget wrestling show and I knew that I had to check it out. I saw Puppet and his crew go at it a few years ago and walked away with some interesting images so it was a no-brainer. Steven aka Puppet, the owner of the group was gracious enough to grant me access to the show and everything else I wanted. Much to our surprise, the crowd at the Meridian was heavy and ready for a show. The show was pretty amazing to say the least. Puppet, his trainee Turtle, and Kato gave a heck of a performance that left everyone’s jaw on the floor. The show started off with Kato, who was celebrating his 46th birthday, giving 2 girls (who paid $120) a collective lap dance, continued with one girl paying $1020 cash to staple a twenty-dollar bill to Puppet’s scrotum, and finished up with a few rounds of actual wrestling. An otherwise dark Meridian was furnished by a nice wrestling ring and lit by some powerful spots so the images were pretty neat, especially given the look of ISO 4000 out of the 5D mark II. The photo essay entitled “The Bloody Midgets” can be viewed over at TODDSPOTH.COM.

Coincidentally the same event (an import car show) I saw the guys perform at a few years back was happening again on Sunday.

I knew the event owner and managed my way in on Sunday. It was an import car show that I hadn’t attended since the first year. The actual car show was pretty tame (the import car scene in Houston has died out as of recent years) but Puppet and the crew put on another great performance. Where Friday’s show was rated R, Sunday’s show was rated PG, given the “family” atmosphere. It was definitely nothing compared to Friday, but the outdoor light was nice and the clouds added to the mood and feel of the images. I arrived early, positioned myself in a spot where my backgrounds would be at least semi-clean and got some neat stuff.

As for today, happy Inauguration Day!

*Note: The first 11 photos in the gallery below is the edited essay that appears on my main portfolio website. The additional photos are outtakes from the essay. The second gallery features images from their performance at the car show.

l’ll admit here that I know OF the sport of cross country, but really have not shot it until coming up here to PPC. I shot one quick race for the first time a few weeks ago that was a little hairy as I did not know how everything was set up. Its also pretty tough for PPC in that we publish 20 different papers in a HUGE coverage area so you have to know every school and all of the all-stars to really get what the editors are looking for. Cross-country meets are always huge deals with several different high schools so it’s always a challenge. I have a cousin out in California who is all about it, but running to a point where you’re almost near-death is pretty ridiculous to me, but props to these kids.

I had an assignment to cover the Maryland State Cross Country Championships on Saturday and it was a challenge, but I think I came out pretty good. I pushed myself, shot a lot of variety, and even tried out some odd remotes that I would usually not have the time to set up. I was getting pretty close to some of the racers after they ran and a few high school kids pleaded for me to “give them privacy” etc, but I knew I was doing my job and that was confirmed when I felt a pat on my back and a “don’t worry about those kids, you’re just doing your job” from an older, wiser shooter. Besides having to park on a sketchy flattened corn field, it was a good day.

**UPDATE**

The series of images shot at the cross-country meet won 1st place in the multiple category during Region 8’s National Press Photographer’s Association monthly clip contest. Click HERE for details.