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..
A portrait of Alex Rodriguez after signing a 10 year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers. ©2009 M David Leeds
Just a quick post with some links to share of images from the Olympics..
This is particularly cool – it’s been shown on the NBC broadcasts a number of times, but in case you missed it (or if you want to check it out directly) – it’s a frame by frame sequence of Michael Phelps 1/100th of a second victory in the 100 meter butterfly – by Sports Illustrated’s legendary Heinz Kluetmeier from an underwater remote camera looking straight up at the finish.. amazing.
Additionally, Sports Illustrated has an extended online photo gallery of the games – here
A very nice frame from the Laoshan velodrome, by Mike Powell, is Newsweek’s Picture of the Day – here.
If you like that one, look for the photo also from the velodrome, by Nick Laham of Getty Images from a couple of days ago – it is in this gallery of wonderful pictures from Stern Magazine – please note, some of these images are a bit graphic or risque and may not be “Safe for Work” viewing.. here.
Chicago Tribune staffer Scott Strazzante shares the experience of the 2008 Summer Games.. here.
Hope you will enjoys these -
mdl
PS – If anybody reads this that knows how trackbacks work, I’d appreciate any help you are willing to provide – I’ve had them work and had them not work.. I’d like to know how to make them work. Thanks!
Ok, I’m back with another note regarding the campaign that I assisted on last week.
Tonight, I’m giving the WordPress iPhone app a trial run. (I think) I can post a picture from my phone, and it gave me an idea that sparked Part 2 of the story which I think you’ll agree has a sort of completed circle vibe to it. ( if that doesn’t make sense, hopefully it will by the time you read the story and if not, hopefully, I will come up with a more sensible analogy for you by then.)
During the four day shoot, I snapped a number of photos on my iphone – in all honesty, I wished I’d had a P & S in my hand, for more control (ie manual settings) however, the job was assisting not shooting, and I was travelling as light as possible.
Anyway, I was flipping through the pictures while on the train today, and one of them is the one below. (that must have been taken while the phone was en route to my pocket)
The orange colored device is called a Vagabond II Portable Power System. This job was my first experience with them. The Vagabond is essentially a battery (cell) with a built in Inverter which provides AC power – outlets – from which you can power a laptop or re-charge a battery, or, in this case, power the lights we were using.
This posting is a little late to the party, but if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance that it will be of interest to you.
Newsweek DOP Simon Barnett has assembled a “Dream Team” of photographers to cover the Beijing Games for the magazine – and in an inspired and original way they are covering the Olympics from a very unique perspective (an increasingly rare feat). The “Dream Team” as Mr. Barnett has deemed them, consists of three former Allsport colleagues of mine, Vincent Laforet, Donald Miralle and Mike Powell. When I first began working with Allsport (now a part of Getty Images), these four were staff members, whom I got to know and admire.
In the planning for Newsweek’s Olympic coverage, it was decided to create an “open book”, a behind the scenes, photographers POV coverage of the games. They’ve been blogging and posting their selection of photographs and telling stories of their trials & tribulations, successes and failures. It is a wonderfully honest look at life as a photographer, 3 photographers, as they cover the biggest, most organized event in the world.
For a bit on the story behind the blog please see this interview with Simon Barnett by Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor blog here.
This is a link to the Newsweek blog Visions of China: A 2008 Olympics Picture Blog
Just so you know, the front page is the most recent posting, so you’ll have to skip to the end if you want to read their tales from the start, which I strongly recommend.
For those of you that may think that being a photographer is easy, I hope you’ll read some of the journal entries from Donald, Vince and Mike as well as the notes from Simon, Beth and the other Newsweek editors – it will be a real eye opener.
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