OK, admittedly I was more lucky than skilled to get this cover. US Lacrosse wanted a picture of two rivals for a photo shoot and lucky me lives right in between UNC and Duke, two of the biggest rivals in America. So getting this cover this month was a product of geography than my skill. Â Still, I’ll take a cover when I can get it. Â Anyway, here’s the story behind it:
US Lacrosse emailed me and said they wanted a picture “Ramses” and “The Blue Devil” together. Â From the moment I heard about it, I knew this would be a fun shoot; something very different than what I normally do. Little did I know that the hilarity would ensue with the initial emails between the mascots. The Blue Devil for example has his own email address and never uses his real name in email. Ramses enjoyed taking some jabsat the Blue Devil when responding to emails. Â For example this email came across on Feb 4th: Â
“If the current schedule doesn’t work for a Blew Devil in training, then we might still be able to work in a time at Dook on Friday afternoon. Â I am currently trying to find transportation to Dook for Friday afternoon…”
The shoot would be held at Duke on Friday, Feb 6th. I was a little worried about Ramses. Dressing up as the UNC mascot on Duke campus (and less than a week before the UNC at Duke men’s basketball game) is what only the suicidal consider doing. Confounding my worries was that we were doing the shoot less than 30 yards from where the Duke men’s lacrosse team was practicing. Amazingly it went better than I thought. The person dressing up as the Blue Devil met with the person dressing up at Ramses. He took him to a place to change and the Blue Devil and Ramses walked with each other to the shoot. I thought that was pretty classy of Blue Devil to have his rival’s back. Proof that while the schools are rivals, there is a lot of respect between the two. The lacrosse players, while certainly doing a double look at the sight of Ramses walking on their field, never gave him any grief. In fact, Duke laxer James Goldberg worked with Ramses and Blue Devil to show them how to line up and hold their hands for a face-off.
Despite the planning that went into the shoot, I was unprepared for one surprise: Once the guys were in character and had their mascot uniform on, they would not be allowed to talk. I had planned on having them suggest ideas to me. That was obviously out of the question. Thankfully I had sketched out ideas the day before so I wasn’t totally unprepared. Still, having a one-way conversation with two models is awkward.  But they were good sports and did a great job doing everything. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about them blinking or making awkward faces.
My only regret? I forgot to get a photo of me with the two mascots.
Special thanks to Erin Cobb, Coach John Danowski, James Goldberg, Mike Rock and of course Ramses and Blue Devil.