Wasatch High School’s Forrest Hill just keeps on running for me. One of my favorite photos from last year just took First Place, Sports Feature Photo, in the Utah-Idaho-Spokane Associated Press Association’s annual news contest.
The complete list of winners is here.
Since I’ve got nothing right now (write now), here are a few of the best things from elsewhere.
1. World Press Photo Interviews. A new set of video interviews where the winners of the top international photojournalism competition talk about capturing their award-winning photographs.
2. PDN Photo Annual 2008 Gallery. Some of the best photography from the past year, collected into galleries. Advertising, Editorial, Books, Photojournalism/Sports/Documentary, Corporate, Personal Work, Stock, Web, Student Work. Always a great resource, and you can pick up a printed copy for around $12 at any bookstore. Get it quick.
3. Raw Take Interview with James Whitlow Delano. I’m always down for any photographer who goes out and does thing their own way, without regard to conventional wisdom. Delano’s style literally makes his black and white photographs glow. Along with the photographs is a thought-provoking interview, as Raw Take always seems to deliver.
If you want to keep up on stuff like this on a daily basis, you can always check out my link site The Click, which is updated continually.
Look at all the cameras around Kobe Bryant after the game ended. I guess still photography isn’t quite dead yet. I wasn’t as interested in Kobe as in the Jazz players, namely Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams, so I left the pack focused on Kobe and moved left.
Lucked into Boozer hugging former teammate Derek Fisher. For the rest of these photos I was on the opposite side of each situation from the other photographers, and that’s where I’m most comfortable.
Kobe came over and I just happened to be in place. I followed Boozer and he walked off the court with Williams.
That (above) seemed to be the perfect photo to mark the end of the season. The two best players on the team walking off together with some fans giving them a somewhat standing ovation. A good moment that tells the story.
They’ll be back next year. Season opener in November.
Jazz lost big to the Rockets the other day. I’m just getting around to posting a few photos. Ronnie Brewer after having a call go against him (above) with the Houston fans going nuts.
Mehmet Okur dunks but gets the facial himself.
And Boozer from the sidelines. Wow. This was an ugly game for the Jazz.
A collection of pre-game images from last night’s Jazz loss in Houston.
Carlos Boozer on the bench.
Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer.
I usually shoot this pre-game huddle (above) by holding my camera up over my head. It’s always a lousy shot. So I went low this time. The guy below is yet another reason to not lift your camera up over your head:
Learn from Scott’s example. If you’re going to lift up, tuck in the shirt. Lift and tuck. Or, tuck and lift. It’s early now and it was late last night. My mind is fried. And so is this post. Bye.
That’s one of the last photos I made after game two, as Deron Williams walked to the locker room under the glare of the camera lights after the Jazz win.
As I look quickly through my take, I see hundreds of images that bore me to tears. It’s generic basketball action at its finest, with a few mediocre reaction shots mixed in.
Either I was off, or it was a poor game for photos.
Tonight will be better. I’m not going back to the hotel feeling like this:
Got this e-mail from my colleague Scott Sommerdorf, who took over the YFZ story when I left to cover the NBA Playoffs:
T;
Got to go to the ranch a second time last night. After a crazy 5 1/2 hour drive from Dallas with stops in Waxahachie and Abilene to see two of the homes where FLDS kids will be taken, we finally were 20 minutes away from the ranch on our way to see the press conference that was to be held at the gate with some women who were just released from the Coliseum after having their children taken from them.
When we get the call that says it has just happened and it’s over.
All the way from Dallas to miss this by 20 minutes. AGHHH!!!
So we continue on and sit outside the gate for a while while Brooke works the phones trying to get us on. Looks like the answer is no, and my heart sinks – cause this means it’s been pretty much a wasted day with tons of driving and not many pictures to show for it.
Then Warren Jeff’s brother drives up, says hi to Brooke, and says, “do we need to get you on the ranch?”
He then makes a call, and not long after that, the gate opens and we start to drive in, and Brooke says “we’re in but it’ll probably be no pictures.” Again I’m bummed, but we continue up the road. In the meantime the most beautiful orange light is raking across the place and I can already see in my head the photo of these two anguished women bathed in this light.
So we arrive at the house, and meet Rod Parker, who says, “Oh yeah, its ok, y’all can take some pictures.”
I look at the sunset and see we are racing this light with maybe 10 more minutes before its down and dark.
They were going to have the interview inside the house, but I convince them that this “is the beautiful light of the day” and that can we have the meeting set up on the west side of the house. They are really cooperative and say, sure….
So then out come these women, and they are so sad, and I can only imagine how I would feel if my Zoe or Miles were taken from my arms how I would feel. I immediately have so much respect for them to come out and basically do the press conference over again just for us.
I ask them to stand where the light will hit them nicely and then Ruth Edna looks right in the camera with these eyes that look sad, and heartbroken, but also spitting mad. Also right at that moment Velvet, the other mom looks down as she considers talking about her kids.
We go on to have a great interview, and make some more photos of them, and hear their experiences inside the Coliseum, but that one frame, and those eyes keep haunting me.
I thought you’d like to see it, cause it wasn’t in the paper or on our website.
-Scott
Countless times while I was in Eldorado covering the raid on the YFZ Ranch, I pictured the events that were taking place out of sight, miles beyond police roadblocks and Texas scrub brush. We could see dozens of police vehicles rushing into the ranch, the police helicopter hovering overhead, and we could hear reports that police were preparing to breach the sect’s holy temple. But we could see nothing. It was frustrating beyond belief.
I wished for a way to get onto the ranch and photograph the historic events taking place. Little did I know, the people of the FLDS church were documenting their own history. And now they have put photos and video from the raid on a new site called CaptiveFLDSChildren.org.
While they didn’t have my professional-grade equipment or years of experience, the photographers who took these photos had access. And as you can see, access is more important than equipment or eye.
These photographs give us just one side of the story, that of a people who feel their families were unjustly separated by overbearing government agents. Only time will reveal whether that is the way history will remember this story.
A new front in the battle for public opinion over the Texas Polygamy Raid opened up last week after FLDS spokesman Rod Parker released photographs of law enforcement taken during the raid by the people of the YFZ ranch. Parker told the Deseret News that officials confiscated most of the photographs and video that FLDS members took of the law enforcement operation.
To counter the images of helmeted, machine gun-carrying officers sitting in an armored vehicle, photos were released by the other side (I assume by members of law enforcement) to The Eldorado Success newspaper. These photographs were obviously intended to show you the lighter side of the raid, showing officers conducting a show-and-tell of the armored vehicle with a group of young FLDS boys.
Amazing how these images, both released to shape public opinion, tell such an opposite story of the armored personnel vehicle used in the raid. One side is telling me this was a military assault on a group of unarmed farm folk. The other side is saying that it was nothing like that, more like a carnival with free APC rides.
What a shame there wasn’t an objective photographer present to document the events. When the government undertakes such a large operation against a group they accuse of such insidious acts, we deserve a little more transparency.
Trying to get something a little different before the game. Chatted up a security guard for twenty minutes and finally the Jazz came out into the bowels of the Toyota Center before taking the court. I know the color is funky, but I like it. They did a quick little dance surrounding Deron Williams and they hit the floor…
