I wanted to share some photos from Spring Training 2001 - Alex Rodriguez had just signed a 10 year, $252 million free agent contract with the Texas Rangers - the pressure to live up to the “best player in baseball” moniker is, he says, the reason he turned to Performance Enhancing Drugs..
I spent about 20 minutes with him shooting a variety of photos - the interesting thing, to me, was his personality. I’ve photographed many famous people over the years, and for a variety of reasons, my time with Alex was memorable. Here are a few of my photographs from that day..
The folks at Livebooks (a very popular photographer portfolio website company) have posted a new entry in their “Photographers In Focus” video series - this one featuring world renowned photography legend, Harry Benson.
If you don’t know who he is, know this: Harry Benson has photographed pretty much every icon of the last 50 years - a long time LIFE magazine staff photographer, he toured with the Beatles in 1964, has photographed the biggest names in world politics and celebrities from all walks of life.
This is a short piece, and definitely worth watching..
*** EDIT - if the video won’t play, please click HERE ***
I have not yet been fortunate enough to meet Mr. Benson, however I have fond memories of a joke that Rich Clarkson (another legend) told at his Sports Photography Workshop which was in Oklahoma City in 1989, and it goes something like this.. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, part three happens to be the end of this year’s display of the “Tribute In Lights” and it marks a few firsts for me..
I made a somewhat spontaneous decision on Thursday night, abandoning my previous game plan, and electing, instead, to attempt to create a time lapse “montage” of photos of the display..
I will admit, that while I’m pleased encouraged with the results - I made a number of mistakes in hindsight - some of them the result of overthinking the project and thus talking myself into one setting when another would have worked better - and others just in the course of it being a “blind date” of sorts.
In any event, I’m now planning to make another stab at it with a bunch of lessons now learned..
I’ve embedded the video below - you can also find it on YouTube (another first for me!)
Please, let me know what you think.
Special thanks to Michael Lawlor, Ryan Krieger and Drop Thud Oops, a portion of whose “Phrygian Waltz” is featured as the sound track..
A few photos from earlier this evening.. I was starting to make dinner for Molly and I and was keeping an eye on the storm clouds that were making their way across the sky… I was thinking about the lights.. would they be on tonight? Better get ready, I decided.
I got the stuff on the stove situated for a break and grabbed a D3 with, an old favorite, a 105mm 2.5 MF lens that used to practically live on an F3.. due to the dinner prep that was underway, I didn’t want to stray far and elected to just sit (ok squat) by our windows and see what would develop..
This is one of the first exposures I made, I intentionally underexposed the frame in order to make the clouds darker and try to make the lights stand out a bit - it was still fairly bright out.
I continued shooting for a few minutes, since I was on the move to catch the fleeting light, I didn’t stop to grab a cable release so most of the time was spent waiting for the timer to count down - which is a great trick if you’re shooting with a slow or long shutter release and are concerned with camera shake.. (just set the camera on a tripod or sturdy surface and use the time release function) - anyway, while I liked the composition with the 105mm, I saw some more clouds approaching which I thought might pass through the beams of light and maybe give a little accent to the photograph… So, I made a quick decision to switch to a wider lens as the clouds looked like they were too high in the air to be visible even if I went vertical with the 105.
Tags: 2001, A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, baseball, MLB, New York Yankees, photography, Spring Training, steroids, Texas Rangers 
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