Coach Al Groh
Today, my alma mater, the University of Virginia, dismissed Al Groh as the football coach after a 3-9 season. As a sports photographer, I’ve covered Coach Groh over the last five years — compiling a wide range of images. There are many who have been calling for this change, particularly after loses to Duke, William and Mary, and Southern Mississippi. It seems, for me, that for all the bad losses, there was an equal number of great games — the Thursday night victory over then #3 Florida State in 2005, the 2007 season where the Cavaliers won 5 games by 2 points or less, and victories over PItt and West Virginia in the Tire Bowl and Minnesota in the Music City Bowl. I was particularly impressed with how Coach Groh handled his final postgame press conference — an appropriately reflective tribute for how the Cavaliers were coached over the last nine years.
Al Groh – Images by Jason O. Watson>Photographs of Al Groh
2009 Foxfield Spring Races
The weather treated the thousands of party-goers in the infield pretty well — it was 90+ degrees and sunny. The racing was fun and also sad when a horse had to be put down for breaking his leg. Toughkenamon jockeyed by Carl Rafter, pictured above on the second of three laps of his race, had his trail leg hit the timbers on the final jump of the race. It was a hard thing to watch and photograph. Needless to say, the rest of the day was a lot of fun — people in crazy outfits, watching students get drunk at 10AM in the morning and lots of beautiful horses (including the very successful Good Night Shirt).
Estimates were that 23,500 fans attended the races. There were new alcohol rules in place designed to limit the amount of consumption — namely the size of coolers were restricted, glass bottles prohibited, and random ID checks throughout the day replaced over 21 bracelets. From what I observed, that didn’t really have much of an effect on the party — people got drunk, some people got way too drunk, some people did stupid things and got arrested. Seems to happen every year.
2009 Foxfield Spring Races – Images by Jason O. Watson
Night Lacrosse in February… brrrr
I usually avoid wearing my winter coat to any sporting event — mainly because it makes switching between camera bodies cumbersome if not down right impossible. This is particularly true for lacrosse which is extremely fast paced. By the end of tonight’s NCAA Lacrosse game between #2 Virginia and Mount Saint Mary’s, the temperature dropped to a balmy 26 degrees — and dudes on both teams were running around in shorts. Even though UVA is ranked #2 in the nation, I quickly began to realize why I was the only (still) photographer there — it was a night game in middle of the week and it was downright cold. Virginia seems to always play Mt. St. Mary’s this time of year… in 2007, there was a night game against MSM and it was actually quite nice — “71 degrees, somewhat overcast, and breezy“… heck, 10 days earlier the official weather for the game was listed as “50 degrees, Sunny, Glorious“… yeah, umm, not tonight.
I actually had a great time covering this game — Virginia dominated with 60+ shots and won the game 10-2. Mt. Saint Mary’s goalie deserves a lot a praise — even though he let in 10 goals, he stopped a bunch of others and was under constant pressure. Virginia dominated the entire game and it looked as if they were headed towards a shutout, but in the 4th quarter MSM scored on a 2-man advantage… they then scored again at even strength a few minutes later.
This shot (above) is of Danny Glading (9) running past Ryan Shewell (14)… I’m particularly pleased with how my post-production is ending up — thanks to fellow photog Andrew Shurtleff and a lot of tweaking, the color is getting very close (I was having a bunch of issues with colors fading — particularly oranges and reds — in the conversion from CR2/RAW to JPEG) and with the help of a few tricks (aka Noise Ninja and a 1DM3) I’m able to shoot at much higher ISOs that I would have been able to in the past. Below is an example from the March 13, 2007 UVA/MSM game:
Hopefully, I’ve improved in the last two years 
UVA WBB Senior Day vs Boston College
This shot is of Carolyn Swords from Boston College — she dominated the interior with a game-high 31 points, but that wasn’t enough for BC as they fell 90-70 to Virginia on senior day. This was taken with a remote on the backboard — I usually shoot these remotes in a horizontal position and crop vertically, but this particular remote was vertical and then cropped horizontally… just mixing things up. This was pretty much one of two usable images from my 4 remotes that I placed for this game. Kind of a bummer, but that’s the way it goes — either there’s a ton of stuff or there isn’t. Also have noticed much more consistent firing of the strobes now that the flash tubes have been replaced – fewer misfires and it seems the remotes are synced much better and are hitting the light when they’re supposed to.
The past couple of games I’ve been using the 15mm fisheye on a 20D as a floor remote (the cropping of the 1.6x sensor takes out a lot of the distortion) and when working produces some sweet images. This frees up my Mark IIN to use either with the 70-200mm in the stands or with the 24-70mm on the back of the goal padding (I’d just really rather put a 20D on the court than a IIN, plus the 15mm fisheye is much more distorted at 1.3x vs 1.6x). Only problem is that the 20D only sometimes works with lagging with the fisheye — sometimes it’s either half on half off, or all the way off, or like 2 games ago, always working. Strange things possess these cameras sometimes.
It was senior day for the women’s team at JPJ, and it looks like there won’t be home post season action (a la NIT) for the ladies as the #21 ranked team is headed to the NCAA tournament after the ACC tournament. That leaves three regular season ACC games for the men’s team before wrapping up the 08-09 hoops season at the arena.
Pink Unis – for a good cause
The UVA women’s basketball team came out on the court against Miami on Thursday wearing all pink uniforms… everything, including their shoes was pink. This was all part of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Pink Zone campaign for breast cancer awareness. Last year they just wore the shoes and shoelaces, but this year was pretty cool with the entire pink unis.
The game was pretty awesome as well — first half was really ugly with UVA at point hitting only 2 of 22 from the field (9%). Fouls by Miami kept the ‘Hoos in it and they made a nice run down the stretch — Lyndra Littles hit a circus shot in the final seconds of the game to force overtime. Then, UVA dominated the OT session to pull out the home win.
All is well in Hooville…
…at least for right now. It’s been a long season for the Wahoo faithful with respect to men’s basketball. The last two games, however, have erased some of the bitter feelings with fans, first with a win over #12 Clemson then defeating in-state rival Virginia Tech 75-61.
Photographically, there was nothing special about this game compared to others other than it was a packed baseline and I had some issues with a couple remotes. Apparently, a fellow photog thought it was a good idea to move my floor remote out of position and turn it off for me, without saying anything. Not cool. I still managed to get a nice couple of frames from that remote, once I discovered it was out of place and reoriented it during a timeout.
The shot above is of the student section at the end of the game — they’re singing the Good Ol’ Song. Nothing special, other than having to lean over two rows of floor seats to get the shot… I like the score/graphics in the back drop.
Some new changes for the blog today as well — I’ve integrated my website look/feel and have abandoned the previous photoblog/monotone theme… it was too restrictive and would only allow one image per post and wouldn’t allow cool things like the embedded PhotoShelter slideshow like I’m including below. PhotoShelter has also added some sweet new upgrades to their Personal Archive product (which is the back end that powers my entire website archive of 31,000+ images). Favorites include 100 thumbnails per page (instead of the previous 25), user customizable displays (if you really liked 25 thumbs instead of 100, you can set your own personal preferences via the Display Options link), and mouseover previews of all thumbnail images. Rock on!
Assane Sene – Virginia’s intimidating 7 foot first-year
Assane Sene has played in most of Virginia’s games this season — eight games so far. I’m really impressed with this guy’s intensity on and off the court. When he and/or his team makes a big play, he shows it. When he misses a few free throws you can tell he’s ticked at himself. This shot is of him defending an inbound baseline pass against Brown University — an intimidating force for anyone to try and throw a basketball past. It’s great to see and be able to photograph someone with so much enthusiasm and emotion on the court.
Xavier’s Kenny Frease from Above
The #22 Xavier men’s NCAA basketball team came to town to play UVA. Remote camera and Pocketwizard Gremlins appear to have been tamed and things started clicking for the first time in several games. This image was taken from the catwalk above one of the baskets. Since I cannot consistently lag my Canon 1D Mark III (shutter lag values range all over the place), I occasionally use this body up from above with either my 180mm macro lens (as I did today) or 70-200mm and set to shoot on ambient light. I place it on the side of the court where I’m sitting shooting with my hand held — every time I fire my hand held camera this remote is listening on the same channel as the strobes are and it fires 4-6 frames each time. The result is that I often get several frames in an aerial view of a good play where I only can get one shot with my strobed hand held. It’s a nice combination.
