Pacific Life Open

Last week, I had the pleasure of making the trip out to Indian Wells, California to cover the Pacific Life Open. The Pacific Life Open is the largest tennis tournament in the world outside of the four majors (Wimbledon, US, Australian, and French), drawing over 300,000 fans to the southern California desert every year. And why not? As an ATP (men's tennis) master's series event, and a WTA (women's tennis) Tier I event, all the biggest names in tennis like Roger Federer or Maria Sharapova converge on this beautiful desert resort area.

But Jerry, you never cover tennis... why were you down there? Well, a couple reasons. First off, building up the company library of tennis images. Especially with the Olympics coming up, getting shots of international stars is very important. So because tennis is not covered very often, one of my primary goals was to shoot the early rounds like crazy. Second reason for doing there kind of relates to the first reason. I am currently scheduled to go cover the Olympics this summer in Beijing, so this also served as a "practice round," of sorts.

Now, tennis can be a very easy sport to shoot. In fact, just about anybody can do it. Give a monkey a camera, and it would be able to crank out image after image that looks like this:



What makes a good tennis shooter, is the same as what makes a good golf shooter. Move around and make something different! Because seriously, it's not that hard to get a picture of somebody hitting a ball back and forth. So some ideas of how to "make something different...." Set the scene....



Use the lines on the tennis court to add some context to the images as well as to clean up those backgrounds....





Use the shafts of light and shadows during the different times of days to make for some dramatic images....




And of course...EMOTION!

Madhouse on Madison

Well, it has been almost two months since I have added an entry to this blog... that is way too long. It's not because I haven't shot anything interesting... because I have been out to a bunch of events since I last posted something here. I was down in Atlanta for the NHL All Star Game (mostly as an editor though), the 150th Chicago auto show, and even a public appearance by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

But the subject of this post is going to be about the resurrection of the Chicago Blackhawks. No, they are not currently in playoff position (although they are close). Led by two sensational rookies Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, as well as new management, the fans have been coming back to the United Center. I think I read in the paper the other day that the United Center has been sold out six times this year. I don't think the Hawks have had six sell-outs total this decade. It's clear that the players have noticed, as a tradition of saluting the fans after victory has been born...



As I mentioned above, part of the reason why the fans are coming back is because of new management. The first step was to start putting home games back on television. The second step was to welcome back long-estranged legends and hall of famers Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita by naming them club ambassadors in a public ceremony before a home game last Wednesday.




But anyways, onto some game action! As I've mentioned in the past, hockey is arguably my favorite sport to shoot. The action is fast and hard hitting, so the pictures (when you nail them), are some of the best sports photos you will make. However, it is for those reasons that it is incredibly difficult to shoot. That said, I hate to sound cocky, but I think I have really come into my own this season and have developed into a great ice-level hockey shooter (because anybody can follow the action and shoot from the concourse). Now that I am an editor as well, I see so many hockey 'action' pictures where there is no puck. A lot of "skating up the ice" or "battles for position in front of the net" garbage pictures. Seriously, why shoot and submit that? They are boring, and quite frankly, any old fan in the stands could do that. After shooting enough games, you should realize that the best action always ends up in two places... in the corners after teams dump the puck and try to chase it down....





Or in front of the goal as they try to scramble for the puck and push it in the goal...




And because goals are so hard to come by, the reactions of the players after scoring them is usually very nice. I love this next shot because this essentially sums up every sports contest... where there is a face of victory... there is also a face of defeat...