Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. UAH professor Kevin Knupp and a team of graduate and post-graduate students chase and study storms. Ryan Wade sets up a data package inside the control van as the team gets ready to launch a weather balloon ahead of a line of thunderstorms.

The final story in our series for the two year commemoration of the April 27, 2011 tornadoes was a really fun story on storm researchers at the University of Alabama Huntsville.  Professor Kevin Knupp and his graduate and doctoral students deploy a small armada of mobile radars and weather balloons as they probe storms.  They have many goals, among them, improving forecasting and also determining why storms take the paths they take.

As most of you know by now, the hug F4 and F5 tornadoes that struck north Alabama on April 3, 1974 and the EF5 tornado that struck on April 27, 2011 covered almost exactly the same ground through two north Alabama counties.  There are rather predictable storm tracks in several places in Alabama where multiple tornadoes have hit over the years.  Why?  It is a great question but no one knows the answer.  Tornadoes are still relatively rare and being in position to study one in detail is difficult.  I can point to three major storm tracks in both Lawrence and Limestone Counties in north Alabama and an infamous storm track between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.

Ironically, I live in a little town where we have watched storm after storm approach then, at the last moment, deviate to the north and/or the south.  Sometimes a storm will split and go around Hartselle on both the north and south sides.  I have never ceased to be amazed at this phenomenon and no one can explain it.  Maybe there is some feature of the topography that funnels storms into certain tracks.  Maybe there are some weird pathways in the skies that severe storms follow.  No one really knows.

I spent a very long night with the UA Huntsville researchers.  I arrived at the offices across Sparkman Drive from the UA Huntsville campus.  I met Professor Knupp and his researchers as they prepared to launch a weather balloon.  The wind was simply howling and it was a very difficult challenge for them to get the balloon up.  I got a cool video out of the launch and I was never so glad as when one of the doctoral candidates set up a portable light in the very dark parking lot so they could see what they were doing.  I shot a combo of stills and video and it was great.

I then drove about thirty or forty minutes with some directions I hoped would lead me to a field research team that set up near Meridianville north of Huntsville.  I was given directions and told to look for them on a field road.  I was thinking all the way out my chances might not be great of finding them at 1 a.m. but I drove right to the spot.  My only disappointment of the night came when the lightning stopped just before I arrived.  I had visions of this great photo of the truck mounted radar with a lightning strike in the background.  The rain poured down as we sat in the truck for two hours.  Nothing.  Not a single lightning strike.  I got some cool photos of the radar truck in the middle of the driving rain but no lighting.

I finally threw in the towel at 3 a.m. and started home.  I should have waited about 20 more minutes.  I was caught in a blinding rain storm on a dark, dark two lane road.  I was driving five miles per hour hoping not to run off the road.  Fortunately, I got home with no problems and I was so excited to have been there.  I have always loved storms.  Perhaps I missed my calling and should have been a meteorologist.  I love the weather and being with this group of highly intelligent people was well worth missing my bed time.

With this story wrapping up the series, I began thinking about all we had done in the two weeks of work.  We talked to people whose lives were ruined, even destroyed, by the EF5 tornado.  We talked to others who didn’t want to be in the paper but who look nervously to the skies every spring.  I had been in the NEXRAD site at Hytop, Alabama and I had set in the dark middle of the night with weather researchers as they probed the stormy skies.  I had witnessed a timeless battle between man and the elements.  The elements still win but maybe the day is coming when the elements won’t have the dramatic impact on us they do now.  Maybe all the research and technology will pay off in models that allow forecasters to give better warnings or predict storm tracks before there is a storm.  Maybe lives will be saved.

In the meantime, I stood on the front porch with the Guzman family in Lawrence County at 4:05 on April 27, 2013, two years to the minute when their little girl was killed by the tornado.  Too many tears are being shed.  There are too many tears still to shed.

To make sure you get something, start with the pitcher, always.  He throws the ball to start every play. On the opposite end, shoot some of the hitters.  They are attempting to hit the ball on every play.  Now you have two guaranteed photos.  At least you won’t leave the game empty handed.  Now, you have a couple of photos in the bag, get into your favorite shooting position, the place where you are most comfortable, and look for action.

My comfort zone is along the first baseline just a few feet beyond the base.  I like shooting from this position for several reasons.  You get the best angle on first and second base and you usually have an unobstructed view of home plate.  A 400mm lens will reach most of the field from here and it gives you the best access to shortstop, a place where many balls will be hit in high school baseball.  You can also get shots of pick off attempts at first base.  You get a great angle on at least two outfielders.  From the first baseline you give yourself the maximum opportunity to get shots in a reasonably short period.

That being said, if I have time, I love to move around.  The wonderful thing about shooting baseball is you get the opportunity to set up and frame photos in ways you don’t get with baseball or basketball.  I love to move around and find a shooting spot looking directly up the third baseline from behind home plate and I equally enjoy going out behind the outfield fences and shooting, especially from behind right field and shooting straight down the first baseline.  You can get a different point of view on plays at second by shooting from behind left centerfield and looking down the line between first and second.  The only places I don’t enjoy shooting from are along the third baseline.  I can’t seem to get comfortable on that side of the field.  Not sure why but it doesn’t work well for me.  I will also climb anything I can to get a higher angle but that is rare at a high school field.

I have the bottom of the fifth to the top of the seventh to shoot – the home team is obviously going to win so there will be no bottom of the seventh.  As I am walking in the field, down the left field side or course, a kid hits a short fly ball into centerfield.  I whip the camera up and start banging away.  I got a shot but didn’t even look at my settings.  I think its was shooting at 1/60th at f16.  Not ideal sports settings.  I fixed that.  Before I got to the home dugout by third base, I got another photo of the pitcher picking off that kid who got the single on my first set of frames.  Now, before I have even arrived at my shooting position, I have two photos in the bag.  They will not be great but they will help fill the gallery.

I go to the press box steps and shoot my pitcher.  Got that.  Two decent frames and I now move on to the first baseline.  My team comes to bat and I am banging away furiously.  I get the star player being beaned by a pitch.  The ball hit his helmet and bounced straight up.  Ball in the frame!  Nice.  Now there is a kid on first diving back in on a snap throw.  Nice dirt in the face kind of frame.  My team is back in the field and a ball hit to second, second baseman charges and makes an off balance throw.  Nice frames but a bad throw.  Now the kid is on first.  Ground ball up the middle. Double play attempt.  Bang!  Another decent frame.

Our sports writer says our team hasn’t been to the playoffs in forever so there will be a potential celebration photo.  I moved back to the press box steps and sure enough, big dog pile on the pitchers mound.  Got that.  Two innings turns into a little slice of baseball heaven.  Have I mentioned before how much I love baseball!

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Justin Adams lost his left leg and his brother Chase when the April 27, 2011 storm struck the Mt. Hope community. Adams was blown from his destroyed him into a swampy area with severe injuries to both legs.

Two years can seem an eternity.  Five minutes later it can seem like yesterday.  Such is the nature of trauma and grief.

I was surprised when our editors decided to do a two year commemoration of the devastating April 27, 2011 tornadoes but I was all in.  For me, this is the most real story I have ever covered.  This is not some iffy government story where there may never be a definite outcome.  It is not a short term breaking news assignment that is here today and forgotten tomorrow.  This is a story that people will be living for the rest of their lives.

As soon as the idea to do this emerged, reporter Deangelo McDaniel and I simply said, “Give the job to us and we will handle it.”  Dee and I were heavily involved with the coverage from the outset of the tragedy and we have shared life and death with so many people over the last two years I would not have had it any other way.  For me, giving a voice to those who are voiceless is a great privilege and I would keep telling stories until there were none to tell.

We began the series with Tina Little whose son Chase Adams was among the 14 killed in Lawrence County, Alabama.  Day two featured her surviving son, Justin Adams, who lost his leg due to the severe injuries he suffered.  We told their stories on two days rather than one because their stories are so different, yet they share so much.  To do either story justice, they demanded two different days.

Doing visuals is a little difficult.  So much of what happened is now past it can be difficult to tell their story in photos.  Tina Little frequently visits her son’s grave.  I asked her if we could come with her.  She agreed and we tailed along as she kissed her son’s head stone.  Her story is tough to hear, especially having gone through the death of my own child three years ago.

Justin’s story is more visual, and I hate to say it this way, but having lost his leg and learned to use a prosthetic, there were more ways to photograph him.  There is a “cold” aspect to my job that bothers me but showing his prosthetic limb is part of the tragic story he lives every day.  Justin lives on the spot where the tornado took away his mobile home and his mother’s house and within a hundred yards of where rescuers found his brother’s body.  There is a small cross beside the road where Chase was found.  Even now, it is hard to look at that place knowing the pain his death caused both Tina and Justin.

I know I am going to shoot video on these stories but I frustrate myself from time to time not being ready to do so.  Simple things like not having a tripod out or not having at least a shotgun mic turn what could be really good video into so-so video.  I have to be more diligent.  I plan to do things one way but when things are happening I just jump in and shoot.  Not a great way to do it and I have to work on video discipline.  I recorded these interviews while Deangelo was doing his interviews and that is tough because I have to jump around his questions and the sounds he is making.  Ideally, I would do a separate interview for the video but things didn’t work that way this time.

Knowing that you are going to be digging into painful, intimate details of a person’s life, it helps more than you can imagine to be compassionate.  The stories are not about you.  We tried to get a couple of people to open up and talk to us and they would not do it.  I mean, they were very polite but didn’t want to open up.  There is a man in southern Limestone County who Dee and I have gone and talked to twice and he won’t let us tell his story.  He told us this time he is always glad to see us and we are welcome any time but he doesn’t want to be in the news.  That has to be fine.  It breaks the heart though.  He has given us two of the most telling quotes anyone has given us and we can’t use either.

Since I am not telling you his name, I can tell you when we went by last year he told us he felt like he was still in the storm a year later.  This year we dropped by and he said he didn’t want to jinx himself by talking to us.  It is April and what if another storm came.  We realized this man, who was hit in 1974 by an F5 tornado and again April 27, 2011 by an EF5, has spent the last 39 years watching the sky in fear every April.  That is the thing you have to respect.  The man has an amazing story but doesn’t want to share it.

On the other hand, Tina and Justin want to tell their stories.  We go, we listen, we tell the story and, yes, we cry.  Journalism, real journalism, involves you in the lives of the people you cover.  The camera and the notebook are no shield.  That compassion thing goes a long way toward opening doors but it can also lead you into places of pain and suffering that are almost beyond imaging.

Below the photo gallery you will see the two videos that accompany the stories.  I hope you take the time to watch both.  They are moving stories.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Hartselle High students, teachers and administrators settle into the new high school Monday, April 1, 2013. Nicholle Smith, Will Payne, Kayula Norwood, Mary Filiatrault and Greg Filiatrault enjoy a little first day tailgate in the parking lot before they enter the school.

Life in many small towns revolves around the schools, particularly the high school.  Painted on water towers all over the place you see something like, “Welcome To Hartselle, Home of the Tigers.”  We all take pride in the schools and towns identify with them and, in many cases, the schools are the life-blood of the community.  Hartselle, Alabama is just such a town.

Hartselle closed out the old school and opened a new one over spring break a few weeks ago and we played it up big time in the newspaper.  We did a double truck of photos for the opening day and sent another photographer to shoot video.  We also did a photo page one the final day at the old school as the students and teachers moved out.  For opening day, we sent two writers and two photographers which is a nearly unheard of level of coverage for our newspaper.

No one does better video than my colleague Jeronimo Nisa and his video is very good.  He followed the senior class president around and let him show off the new school.  I wandered the hallways and classrooms and did the still images.  I think the four of us produced a very nice opening day package.  But why pay so much attention to a new high school opening?

The city of Hartselle has a population of about 14,000 and a pretty limited revenue stream.  The school, at a cost of more than $40 million, is a significant investment that will take a generation to pay for.  The political wrangling to get the money for the high school was part of the news for at least a year and the continuing struggles with design and contracting and Title Nine issues to make sure the girls programs got the same facilities as the boys played a big role in the newspaper.

I think too, the decision to build a new high school in Hartselle will significantly impact whether Decatur builds a new high school and Decatur is our primary market.  Newspapers play a role in influencing public policy by what we decide to cover and how we decide to cover it.  By playing up the new Hartselle High, one would expect the people in Decatur to react in a way that would increase demand for Decatur to build a new school in order to not be outclassed by a much smaller neighboring town.  There are already some natural rivalries there so a new school in Hartselle could provide the impetus to build in Decatur.  We shall see.

The photo gallery attached to this post features some images from the last day at the old school and also from the first day at the new school.  I found the assignment very interesting.  First of all, I live in Hartselle and my children will likely benefit from the new school.  Secondly, so many of the people in town graduated from the old Hartselle High there are great feelings about the old school.  Those feelings will now be transferred to the new school along with the new generation.  In other words, I am bearing witness to a passing of the torch, a generational change.  Any time one has such a privilege it is special.  Sometime in the future the community will decide to replace this new high school and people will then be looking back at the pictures I shot, probably long after I have gone from this earth.  That is a tremendous privilege and I am thankful I was there to bear witness.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Alicia Hunter is a survivor of stage 3B non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was diagnosed 13 years ago.

Let me begin here by saying unequivocally, I HATE THE STUDIO!  There, I got that off my chest.  I love shooting portraits but I hate the studio.  I am a location lover.  Some folks really geek out in a plain, blank room.  I don’t.  A plain, blank room speaks nothing about the person you are photographing.  I want them in their own environment.

That can’t always happen.  We did a series of portraits of cancer survivors.  The person I was assigned to shoot was asked to come to the studio.  I had no intention of putting this woman in front of a piece of blank paper and making her picture.  It was a cold day but I simply didn’t want some bland portrait.  The photograph should speak to who she is or to what she has endured.

I took a stroll around the building then outside the building.  The shadows on a fence that borders one side of the property looked good to me.  The trees had no leaves so all you had were stark branches weaving this menacing patter.  I figured that was a decent enough metaphor for a woman who had been through the darkness of a life-treatening disease.

I asked her if she would mind enduring a few minutes of cold to do the portrait.  She was agreeable so I set up outside while our writer interviewed her in the building.  I used a single SB28DX with a shoot through umbrella.  I had to get it pretty close to make sure her face was light enough and I had to put her in a little spot of shade but not too close to the fence.  I couldn’t have my light bleeding over into the shadows.

I rolled out a chair and placed her about 25 feet from the fence with the light nice and close.  She sat down and I worked as many angles as I could to get something that felt right.  She has a beautiful face and hair and that part was easy to work with. I used an 80-200 and I think I shot most nearly all the way stopped down to preserve enough detail in the background to keep the shadows in tact.

I could never have done this inside.  I could have created some shadows on the background but never anything like this.  I would still have preferred to have done the picture in her environment but I think this worked out okay.  I didn’t keep her out in the cold weather too long and we were all happy.  When you are tasked with a portrait, let the portrait speak.  The photograph has a language that can be communicated with the face, the light, the environment and the pose.  Use them to your advantage and don’t just settle for a quick snap in a studio when you can do something better.

What this has to do with photojournalism is obvious, isn’t it?  Okay, maybe some of y’all don’t think like I do so I will explain.  After all, when I do the dishes after dinner I plot the overthrow of small nations so some might not quite follow my logic.  Keeping fresh daily in the photojournalism world is one of the greatest challenges you will face as you plough through your career.  Think about it.  You will do the same kinds of assignments over and over and over again and you will shoot the same events over and over and over again.  It can get a little boring.  We had an editor once who used to say, “We need a good murder today.”  I never want that to happen but there are days when I would sure enough like for something to happen.

Staying fresh is tough.  So how do you do it?  I am so glad you asked.  Please turn in your Bibles with me to…  oh, sorry, I forgot.  This isn’t a sermon but a photo lesson.  I will try to stay on point.  But like a good southern preacher, I do like to run down rabbit trails every now and then.  (If you don’t know what that means, GO TO CHURCH EVERY NOW AND THEN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!)  Okay, enough, enough.  I know.

There is nothing like giving yourself assignments to help you stay fresh.  That or getting a new piece of photo gear but the photo gear tends to be expensive.  However, when you combine a new piece of photo gear with a self-assigned project you have pure freshness gold!  I am not joking.  I purchased an iPhone 5 earlier this year.  I am easing into its amazing photo capabilities and much of what I am doing is not for publication; however, there is this cool project I am shooting all on my iPhone and it was inspired by a guy named Brad Mangin who is a big time sports photographer.  He covers the San Francisco Giants and he recently published a photo book shot using the Instagram app.  That didn’t click for me.  I played with Instagram and like it but I wouldn’t use it for the paper, or would I?

My ten-year old decided to play baseball this year and we live in one of the baseball craziest towns I have ever seen.  These folks are serious!  I thought, “No way I can do a Brad Mangin book on major league baseball, but what about a photo project on my little baseball town?”  At about the same time, I found a really nice app for my iPhone that lets me do the cool toning stuff that Instagram does but without having to make everything square.  A project was born.  I am calling it, innovatively enough, Baseball Town.  I am shooting it all on my iPhone and processing the images using Photo Toaster.  And I am having a blast!

Each time to the ball field I am collecting a new image or two and I am having fun.  THE KEY TO STAYING FRESH IS TO HAVE FUN!!!  Okay, did anyone miss that because if you did I can always crack open the Bible to where Jesus said we are to all have fun.  Gotcha there didn’t I.  Some of you are running to get your Bibles to see if Jesus actually said that.  Others of you are so stunned that Christians are allowed to have fun that you need a resurrection because your hearts just stopped.

Now you know the secret to fresh photojournalism and you know how to scare Christians to death.  Just have fun!  Keep a project or two working.  Make them something you are interested in because you will do best at projects that interest you.  I happen to love baseball.  I am learning how to shoot with the iPhone so there is magic there for me.  It will be something else for you.  Find it and enjoy it and have a ton of fun and surprise your boss with a really cool photo essay.

Enjoy this sample of my project which is just now getting started.  By the way, keep an eye out throughout this year.  I have another set of special projects I am working on that are going to be phenomenal.  I can’t wait to share them with you but I can only hint now.  This is a project I have dreamed of doing for many years, for most of my career even, and it is actually under way.  If I may paraphrase the Black Eye Peas, this is gonna be a good, good year!  (That good looking kid in the catching gear is my son!)

I decided to go a little early and shoot some matches that were completely irrelevant to our readers.  I quickly found there was nothing to worry about.  No matter what the sport, there are some universal truths that apply to pretty nearly all of them.  There will be periods of action.  There will be periods of reaction.  There will be moments around the edges that make great pictures.

I approached the first match with the intention to simply shoot some frames of the action to get used to what was going on.  It wasn’t all the difficult.  They have a ring to work in and most of the time the action is more in straining, pulling and twisting than in running like you would find in a field sport.  The second thing I noticed is the coaches are very entertaining.  By the end of the first match I already had some nice action, an excellent coach photo and a very nice reaction shot.  Wow, this ain’t so bad!

Quickly, I scored a good prematch photo of a kid praying before his event.  Then that same kid gave me a great action moment and an even better celebration moment after he won.  I hadn’t even gotten to a match I was supposed to cover.

By the time the four matches I was assigned to shoot rolled around, I was totally comfortable and was looking for the best angles and shooting positions.  One of my four assigned matches gave up great action shots but I was in the wrong spot for reaction.  He faced away from me toward where his school’s fans were sitting.  Lesson learned; find the fans and put them at your back because your kid is going to react in their direction.

The final match was also the heaviest weight class I was going to shoot.  I got a nice psych shot of one of the wrestlers before the match.  I decided to start wide and then shoot tight action.  I did a few wide frames of the match and suddenly the ref is signalling a pin.  Whoaa!  The kid won in 21 seconds and all I had was a few wide shots.  Of course, this was the most important of the matches I was to shoot.  The young man was so psyched up he really didn’t even celebrate much.  The match was over so fast he didn’t have time to burn off his pre-match psych up.  He left the mat looking mean.  I was only hoping he wasn’t about to take me down!

I found out wrestling is pretty fun.  Not as much fun as covering a rodeo, but pretty fun none the less!  I have still never shot ice hockey or Australian Rules Football or Cricket.  Now there is a weird game.  Doubt they bring any Cricket matches to Decatur but you just never know.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Trevor Davis smiles as his mom, Jennifer Rainey hugs him at the regional Special Olympics swim meet at the Aquadome Friday, February 15, 2013. The event is a qualifier for the state Special Olympics.

I love special people.  I was just like most of you before my wife and I had a son with special needs.  Our little boy Reece was born with Down syndrome.  In his too-short life he taught me more about love than I had learned in all my years of living.  Now, even though Reece has left this life, I carry him in my heart and all the lessons of love he taught.  Now when I see someone with special needs, I embrace their love.

I had been exposed to people with special needs both mental and physical, perhaps more than most in the general public, due to a variety of photo assignments.  I did not know how to embrace them.  No photo assignment could do that for me.  I never allowed myself to really get inside their world.  It was a strange and alien place to me and I allowed myself to be pushed away by the physical and mental issues.

I learned my lesson through Reece’s life.  I now understand there is no purer form of love than the love a special needs person gives every day unless it might be the pure love of God.  I might even be so bold as to say that God allows special needs people to exist because He wants to demonstrate that extremely pure love to us and I don’t know of any other human being who could possibly show such love.  Or maybe that pure love can only be shown through pure people. Now, on to Special Olympics.

I had the chance to shoot the regional qualifier for the Special Olympics State Games at the Aquadome pool.  I have done this event several times but this year I paid more attention to the special part and a little less to the athletic part.  Some of the swimmers are quite fast.  Some float along at a snail’s pace.  You know what, it really doesn’t matter.  The very act of competing is an accomplishment that should be lauded.  There are winners who qualify for the state meet and some of those will qualify for the national games and I am pretty sure there are international games as well.

One of the more remarkable things happens outside the pool.  Look around and you see special needs people who have great friendships, who carry on about like anyone else would.  You see others who are completely dependent upon someone else and have to be helped in and out of the pool.  It is a remarkable mix of people.  I decided to look more for those interactions this year.  One of the mysteries I could never explore with Reece was the question I had of how he perceived the world.  I still wonder.  I wish I could ask someone with special needs, “How do you see the world, how do you perceive it?”  It would, of course, be an absurd question.  How could anyone answer such a question without having both my frame of reference and his own to compare.

So I watch and I wonder and I wish.  There is a lesson here that all of us so called “normal” people can learn.  We all perceive the world a bit differently.  The world comes to us through different sets of filters.  Some are genetic and beyond our control.  Others come from our environment.  Some are religious.  Some are political.  Some are given us by our parents.  Some are given us by our friends and social relationships.  Some are even given to us by the media we consume.  The bottom line; we are all different.  The Bible has this really interesting quote from Jesus.  He said for us not to judge others because the measure we use to judge others will be used to judge us.

We are all alike and not alike.  The line between a person with special needs and a “normal” person is pretty thin, sometimes it is only a chromosome.  We have much to learn from one another and if we will try to see the world from someone else’s point of view we might be surprised at how very right they suddenly seem.  Who knows, it might make the world a better place.

One thing I learned in doing a special section on people with Down syndrome a few years ago was how diverse their interests are.  One or two of those guys are in these photos.  Lucas Compton was one I interviewed and photographed for that section.  He is a big wrestling fan.  I asked him if he still like wrestling and he still does but he has changed heroes.  Now the guy he used to like is a bum!  How very like us.

One thing I will share with you about photographing people with special needs.  They are the most unpretentious people in the world.  They are generally so open with you it is stunning.  I think it comes from they way they see the world.  They are very trusting people and I have usually found the parents or guardians to be very easy to approach and get along with.  So many caregivers and parents and guardians want people to know their children, brothers, sisters, whatever the relation may be, and know what great people they are.

I will never forget being at a basketball game one time and seeing a woman caressing a young man who was in a wheel chair in what most would consider a completely helpless and dependent state.  The love that woman had for her son was amazing to me.  All I could see were difficulties.  She saw those too, I am sure, but the love made the difficulties seem not so bad.  Having some experience in this area I can tell you that your capacity to love grows exponentially when you love someone with special needs.  It is amazing and I will never the same.

Sometimes I write a post that isn’t so much about photography but good photojournalism is empathetic at its core.  I can’t tell you anything here about the x’s and o’s of photography but I can tell you about being a human.  That always comes first whether it is photojournalism or life.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. East Limestone student Seth Fowler goes crazy in the stands as he and other fans try to distract a Wenonah free throw shooter during the Northwest Regional Basketball tournament at Wallace State in Hanceville Tuesday, February 19, 2013.

I had my first basketball assignment of the season yesterday and it came at season’s ending.  For the first time in my career I did not shoot a single regular season basketball game.  I shot regional tournament games yesterday, four in a row, and all four teams lost.  I think I see why I didn’t shoot hoops all year.  Perhaps any teams remaining will pay the boss to keep me at home!

Basketball is both an easy sport to shoot and a numbing sport to shoot.  There is no prep sport that has more games over a longer period of time.  Baseball, by comparison, seems over in three weeks.  Basketball drags over four months beginning in November and finishing in February.  And that is only because we don’t cover college hoops which extend into March and sometimes even April and pro hoops which never actually end.  I am personally very ready for baseball and I hope I get some games.  I love baseball.  I wish I could go shoot spring training but, alas, that is rather a long shot unless I do so on vacation.

Still, basketball in the autofocus era is fairly easy game to shoot.  There is certainly no shortage of movement and collisions and the emotion at tournament time is very high.  Now that we are not tied to strobe lighting, you can crank up the motor drive and really rock and roll.  This moves basketball from a one shot and wait for the strobes sport into a sport like any outdoor game where you can just shoot.  Gotta love that.

As in all sports assignments, don’t tie yourself to a single shooting position.  I try to move around and get some angles and, when possible, climb up into the stands and shoot some frames from up high.  The catch with tournaments is you may be shooting several games in a row and you have to be constantly moving pictures back for web updates so you have a little less freedom of movement because of the tight deadlines.

Let’s talk about getting stuff and moving it quickly since in this age we have a continual deadline.  First tip is obvious; don’t overshoot the games.  I generally shoot most of the first half of the first game then edit and transmit which usually takes the half-time and the third quarter.  I then shoot the fourth quarter and any reaction/emotion photos that come at the end of the game.  I then edit and move those photos which takes me into the first half of the next game.  I keep up the process and by the end of the day, especially if I am shooting multiple games back to back, I will end up just shooting during the second half and at the end of games.

That may seem like a problem but it really isn’t.  You want to get your action shots done as quickly as possible and then focus on reaction shots during the tournament.  The season will be on the line and you can usually, not always, but usually get some good emotion win or lose.  The sports pages which have been running action photos all year will eat up the reaction and emotion shots and the action shots will fill the online galleries.

Don’t forget the fans.  As much as fans are not part of the event, they are part of the event.  Let me explain.  The fans are not playing the game so they are not nearly as important as those who are; however, the fans are really invested in their teams, especially the students who come to the games.  Yesterday, East Limestone was getting blown out by Wenonah and the East fans were totally engaged all the way to the end.  For some odd reason, with the team down by something like 30 points, they began singing the ABC song we all learned in kindergarten.  My neighbor teaches at East so I am going to have to ask exactly what those high school kids are learning these days!

Did I mention that editors love fan photos.  I have no idea why they are so fixated on the fans, like I said, they don’t play the game, but editors love seeing fan photos.  Shoot a few from your games and you will be the photo hero, at  least for five minutes or so!

One final thing, over the years I have migrated from shooting basketball exclusively with telephoto lenses to shooting now more frequently with a wide lens, often times from floor level.  I admit, I saw other people doing this and didn’t think much of it until I started to really look at the photos.  I really liked the players flying through the air with a sense of context.  There are tons of great basketball images done with wide lenses.  I decided to add this to my shooting and I think it has really improved my basketball work.  This gallery is a selection of some of my favorites from the Northwest Regional games I shot Tuesday.  Hope y’all enjoy.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. American Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer Gino Sherrey served in the relief effort following Hurricane Sandy.

There is one pretty nearly universal truth in the newspaper world.  A literal photograph will be selected over a metaphorical photograph nine times out of ten, or maybe, ninety nine times out of a hundred.  It really takes two things for a newspaper to consistently run metaphorical photos.  First, you obviously need photographers who can communicate this way.  Second, you have to have visionary editors who will presume their readers have a high degree of visual literacy.

The fact is, a metaphor, by definition, is not literal and the newspaper business is a literal business.  We make our money by telling people factual stories and showing people factual pictures.  To introduce metaphor into the paper requires some serious guts.  The other thing about a metaphor is it must have a pretty direct connection to reality in order for it to be interpreted.  In all honesty, I don’t frequently even look for metaphorical photos.  Every now and then; however, I do get one.

The photos with this post are a good example.  I had an assignment to do a portrait of a Red Cross volunteer from our community who did disaster relief work after Hurricane Sandy.  The day was raw and overcast and our Red Cross office is not exactly a place of extraordinary visual potential.  When I got out of my car, I noticed the Disaster Relief van sitting in the parking lot.  The back windows were huge and the overcast sky was reflecting nicely in the windows.  I had and “Ah, ha!” moment and decided to try a portrait.

When I brought my subject out for the portrait the sky had changed, of course, and the scene was less attractive.  Still, I loved the metaphorical portrait I could work here.  I tried it with flash, a disaster in itself even with the strobe inside the van, and I tried it without strobe.  The image was very, very flat and required quite a lot of work in Photoshop to make it look anything like what I was seeing.

Then I shot a lit portrait beside the van which worked out fine.  Now I had two images, one I loved and one I liked.  Guess which one I loved!  Yes, the metaphorical portrait of the disaster relief volunteer photographed through reflections of clouds in a window was my hands down favorite.  I turned in both knowing the chances of my favorite portrait running were slim.  I was not disappointed or surprised to see the lit portrait beside the van run on the section front.  I was delighted and surprised to open to an inside page and see my metaphorical portrait displayed nicely.

Here is a tip when you shoot something that is less than obvious.  Sell the photo to your editors before you show it to them.  Build some sense of expectation for something that is not “normal.”  When they see the picture for the first time they will be mentally prepared for something that is not literal.  This will increase your chances of the photo running.  If you have enough lead time you can work on your photo editor first and have him help you sell the picture.  You have to remember that most section editors and most managing and executive editors did not come through the visual side of the business so it takes a lot for a “word” person to take a visual risk.  And, when an editor does take a chance on one of these type photos, make sure to say thank you.

I owe an editor a big thank you right now!

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. American Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer Gino Sherrey served in the relief effort following Hurricane Sandy.