Karl Rove's ear and friends from California High School

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So many brilliant people came out of my high school. After a day like today, running around to three assignments that resulted in nothing but average photographs, it was good to get some inspiration from old acquaintances. I read an interview with fellow California High School* alum Phil Jaurigui, who runs Swing House Studios in Los Angeles. Those are some of his clients listed above. Read the list and weep. Phil was my partner in a high school Photo class (which I flunked). Phil probably got an A. He had skills, like so many Cal High students. For example, check out Cal High’s own F Scott Schafer, an amazing photographer who taught me everything I know about working in a darkroom.

Here’s a great quote from the end of the interview with Phil, which to me says as much about photography as it says about music:

If you’re a new band, just rehearse as much as you can, write and record as much as you can, and don’t look to anybody else to help you as far as building your sound and your audience. The only way you can do that is just by playing, playing, playing, playing relentlessly. The bands that survive—Wilco, AFI, Green Day, and a few others—they’re great bands, they’re valuable bands, and they’ll go on forever and forever because they never stopped touring and never stopped recording whether they had a record deal or not. That’s the way you gotta look at it, that it’s do it yourself. If you do it yourself long enough, you’ll eventually get good at it, and someone will notice it.

I needed something like that. As proud as I was of my photo of Karl Rove’s ear today…

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…I’ve got to keep shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting relentlessly.

Here’s the full interview: Interview with Phil Jaurigui of Swing House Studios | LA Music Blog

* That’s really the school’s name, see: Picture 3.png
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Pleasant Grove Over Timpview

While I’m waiting for the parking lot to clear out, here is my take from Pleasant Grove’s victory over Timpview, which snaps Timpview’s 36-game state record winning streak.

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Jason Fanaika celebrates his first half touchdown

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Jeff Harris knocks Timpview quarterback Trevor Brown out of bounds

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Timpview’s Ofa Latu (bottom) tries to rip the ball from PG’s Kyle Tucker

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PG quarterback Dallas Lloyd leaps to get the ball inside the five yard line

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Timpview’s Zack VanLeeuwen runs the field for a touchdown, under the eyes of sideline photographers

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Timpview’s Bronson Kaufusi (right) pulls down PG quarterback Dallas Lloyd

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PG’s Jason West juggles the ball after running in a touchdown pass

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Timpview’s Colby Jorgensen puts his head down after dropping a pass on the 2 yard line late in the fourth quarter

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Celebrating the win are PG’s Shoney Ivens (88, left to right), Ruben Garces (39), Mike King (51) and Donny Lewis (15)

Assignment: Darwin Lecture at BYU

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Provo – Prof. Daniel Fairbanks, a biologist at UVU, a devout Mormon and a sculptor, gives a lecture on evolution and the legacy of Charles Darwin while sculpting a bust of Darwin in BYU’s Maeser Building.

“But I can’t see his face!”

Yeah, he’s standing behind the clay head. Silly me.

In posting a photo from every single assignment I’ve learned about how I shoot and what I submit. I had expected to be posting some really awful images, but that was the medicine required to start making better photographs. What I’ve realized is that for every challenging assignment, I’m getting at least one interesting photograph. So maybe it’s not my photography that has been lacking lately.

That said, I’ve noticed that the interesting photographs that I’m getting aren’t always the ones that I’m sending in. And when I do, they aren’t always making the paper. So there’s something else to work on.

But I intend to keep posting lots of photographs, at least one from every assignment. Having this required outlet is causing me to push a little harder. If you are a photographer, I highly recommend challenging yourself in some way. And do it in front of an audience so that you’ve got the pressure to keep going.

BYU vs. New Mexico – Too Tight

Two awesome plays that didn’t pan out from last week’s BYU vs. UNLV game. I was way too tight on these, shooting with a 400 and 1.4x teleconverter for a grand total of 560mm (or 728mm if you count the 1.3 sensor crop). Don’t worry if none of that makes sense. It’s all physics and math so you can just tune it out.

First was this really nice touchdown leap by UNLV quarterback Mike Clausen:

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Ouch. That would have been a nice loose horizontal. Next up was this:

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BYU wide receiver O’Neill Chambers was running the ball upfield and did this wild running leap over a UNLV defender. To see what could have been, check out Mike Terry’s blog. He nailed it.

Which Fan (Or) Are You?

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BYU fans in LaVell Edwards Stadium, BYU vs. New Mexico, Saturday October 11, 2008.

I look through the fans in the photo above and instantly know which one would be me. It’s the guy in the tan jacket with his back to the game, staring at the snow falling in the mountains. I just can’t imagine sitting and watching sports. Without a camera my mind would be elsewhere. I’ll get to that at the bottom of the post.

If you came looking for photos of the BYU game, I apologize. I’m trapped inside this frame, looking for characters I can blow up into pixelized goodness. Like these:

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So do you have to be a sports fan to be a great sports photographer? The answer to me is clearly, “No.”

When I’m photographing a game, I don’t care whether the blue team or the red team wins. This is to my advantage because when the game gets close and tight I’m not worried about my team scoring the winning touchdown, I’m focusing on my photography.

After the Jazz lost their second shot at the NBA Championship in 1998, Sports Illustrated ran a double-truck photograph of Michael Jordan’s championship-winning shot. It was a brilliant photo, full of detail. You could see every face in the crowd and along the baseline. We immediately scanned the photo for the photographers we knew and noticed that every newspaper photographer but one were watching, not shooting. Only one had his camera to his eye, shutting out the emotion of the game, to capture the shot. The others were all staring in awe at the play like sports fans, missing the shot.

For the record, it was the Tribune photographer code-named “Cobra” who was shooting.

Okay, one more fan photo. I just noticed that this fan needs to get his zipper fixed:

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