Tag: 2008 UNC lacrosse project

Weightlifting

Practice

UNC Lacrosse Project: Weights and Motto Vote

I arrived to the locker room a little earlier again this day in my persuite of my quest to get some better photos in the locker room before practices. Today provided some interesting photos ops. Andrew Moss showed off his juggling skills while Michael Jarvis showed off his lack of skills. Mike Burns was working on the stringing of his stick which provided some nice photos.

After weightlifting, the team gathered straight into the team room, adjacent to their locker room in the Kenan Stadium Fieldhouse for a players-only meeting. Well…players-only plus a certain photographer. Fletcher Gregory, with some help from Nick Tintle, led the team in a voting session to pick this year’s motto. There were about seven or so options that were slowly pared down to a small list. After a lively discussion and ideas being thrown out, the team finally picked their motto.

UNC Lacrosse Project: Sophomore Dinner and the joys of Adobe InDesign

Last month the freshman had their class dinner at Coach Haus’ house, and tonight the sophomores had their chance to enjoy Mrs. Haus’ home cooking. On tonight’s menu was lasagna, salad and some of Coach Haus’ famous garlic bread. I say famous because Mrs. Haus showed us all a cookbook from the eighties where UNC athletes and coaches contributed recipes. In there was Coach Haus’ recipe for the bread, written when he was in school at UNC. Also in there was the recipe for I think crab cakes from some little-known basketball player and UNC alum named Michael Jordan.

Before the dinner the sophomores thought about ideas for what the team should do for their next big trip. Before they arrived on campus as freshmen the team went to Japan the summer before. During their senior year, the sophomores will likely go on their big trip along with the rest of the team over summer. Ideas like Australia, southern France and Italy were all considered. After the team left, I was suckered out of a dollar by Grant Haus, the youngest of coach’s four boys, for a raffle. I thought he was going to show me a magic trick but the only trick was making my dollar disappear. Seems the dollar was for a raffle at his school. Dave Lohse was also hit up by Grant and put in his dollar.

I also showed Dave a prototype of the book I’m putting together. The content and design was thrown together so the point was to show Dave what the size of the book would be, and what the casing would look like. Coach Haus wasn’t allowed to see the book as I’m not showing any coaches or players until the final version is ready. But that didn’t stop his wife and kids from checking it out.In regards to layout, last week I purchased a copy of Adobe InDesign. I struggled with trying to learn the program when I initially installed it. There are some similarities to Adobe Photoshop, but plenty of differences to keep it interesting and confusing. For example. I looked and looked for how to change the background color of the paper. I expected to find a fill tool like Photoshop has but never found it. After much head scratching and even more Googling, I found the solution. With the basics now mastered, I’m having a great time learning the power of this program. I am trying to layout the book little by little as I go through the season so I’m not stuck with a lot of work to do in the summer. Given that I’ve probably spent 50 hours already in the past week working in the program, I’m glad I started now.

I am a little behind on posting so the post encapsulates two days of events.

October 02, 2007

The team had a dual lifting and practice today. In the weeks before fall ball, it is not unusual for the team to lift for an hour then drive over to Finley Fields or walk to the turf field for a scrimmage. I skipped the weightroom and arrived at around 4:45 at Finley Fields for practice. A couple of the guys said as I arrived, “You missed weights”. I said, “Well, I do have a real life beyond this!” Of course, that is getting harder to believe myself. With the time spent shooting, editing the photos once I get home, and writing in this journal, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of me “free” time on this project. That said, I would rather do this than come home early every day and watch TV. I’m trying to shoot as much as I can for the time being because I know that once basketball season starts, I will be fairly busy with that. ACC basketball tends to keep the local sports photographers busy with three schools near each other.During practice sophomore Michael Jarvis let me know that he and some other players were participating in a flag football game. Michael, Fletcher Gregory, Tim Kaiser, Grant Zimmerman, Nick Tintle, Jack Ryan and Sean Burke were on an intermural team playing another team of UNC students that was sorely over matched. Even though the guys had started lifting at 3:30 and then had practice, they showed up to the flag football game at 7pm looking like they were full of energy and had rested all day. They absolutely clobbered the other team. Out ran them, out played them, just out did them in every quantifiable aspect, including the final score. I saw Sean and Tim outflank the other team like Terrell Owens with sheer speed and scoring touchdowns. Only downside of the game was that it was at night under the lights of the Michael Hooker fields. The light was so dark that I was forced to pushing the film speed on the camera to ISO 3200, something I’ve never done since I’ve owned the camera. Hopefully the guys will have another game during the daylight.

October 05, 2006

This was another dual lifting/practice day. I got to the locker room a little earlier than normal as I’m trying to do a better job of getting photos of the players interacting in there. It adds to the “behind-the-scenes” feel, but it is hard to get photos in the locker room. Players are changing and such so there are lots of times that I have to keep the camera down. Then right after they change they walk out immediately to head to the weight room. Getting their earlier at least gave me a chance to get some photos of those who arrive early. Coach Haus spoke to the team for about 10 minutes and the guys then headed to the weight room. An hour later, the team drove out to Finley Field for a soggy practice under the rain. From the start of practice till about 10 minutes before the end there was a steady rain falling. North Carolina is still under a severe drought so it was hard to complain too much. It was hard for me to photos though under the rain. I’m always worried about getting my camera wet both from a electronics-and-water-don’t-mix standpoint, but also because water on the front lens of the camera will create blurry photos. So while the players ran and practiced in the rain, I walked around with my umbrella shielding my camera. I had the handle of the umbrella tucked in my belt while I braced the umbrella with my left elbow, and took photos with both hands. I looked like a complete geek, but I was a geek with a dry camera.After practice, Tim Kaiser had a load of water dumped on him by his teammates, presumably because today is his birthday. I didn’t realize that would happen so unfortunately I missed the event. Next time I’ll have to keep a better eye out for when people have their birthdays.

UNC Lacrosse Project: Practice

Not really much to write today. Guys had practice today at 3:30. Some drills and the like. I will say I am learning more and more about strategy in lacrosse as the weeks go on. Although, I’m way behind anyone else on the field.

UNC Lacrosse Project: Saturday Morning Practice

The guys had a 8am Saturday morning practice last weekend, a 8:30am one today and another one is set for next weekend. As much as I like sleeping in on the weekend (and I do love sleeping in) I wanted to get out to at least one of these practices.

During practice Chris Hunt had asked me what it was like to photograph with the sun low in the horizon. I said it was much better than photographing at noon when the light was directly above. The main reason I came at 8:30 am was not for the novelty of doing a morning practice, but because I knew the light would be too good to pass up. When one photographs a game at 1pm, a standard start time for many games, the high sun casts shadows from the helmet onto the faces of the players. So the face of the player can be blacked out (unless it is an overcast day). But with a lower sun the light is cast more in their face, so you can see the faces clearly — making the early wake-up call worth it. (Although at 7 when my alarm went off, my body tried hard to talk me out of coming).

The last practice I was at there were no numbers on the jerseys. I made a comment to one of the coaches that I found it amazing that they can recognize all the players, especially the freshman, with no help from numbers. I later found out that they were not given numbered jerseys because the coaches wanted to assess the players’ skill without being biased. With no numbers, even they had a hard time picking out players so there were no favorites to pick. Everyone started equally and everyone had a chance to impress, from the freshmen to the seniors.

With the initial assessment now done, the players now are wearing their numbered warm-ups. During practice the team had a “blue white” scrimmage.

UNC Lacrosse Project: Freshmen Dinner

Coach Haus’ wife, Mrs. Lisa Haus suggested a new tradition for the team this year: A special dinner at the Haus’ house for each of the four classes. Tonight’s dinner was for the freshman. Next month the sophomore will have their dinner, the juniors in November and the seniors will wrap it up in December.

Before dinner, Coach Haus’ youngest son Grant played a game of paper football with Milton Lyles on a coffee table in the living room. The goal was to take a piece of paper folded up into a triangle and try to slide it across the table, leaving it partially hanging off the side of the table without falling off. If you managed that, you got to shoot a field goal for extra points. No doubt Milton had a lot of experience before tonight playing the game. If Milton ever approaches you to make a bet to play him in paper football, don’t take it. He will beat you handily.

With so many hungry mouths to feed, I was expecting Mrs. Haus to have the dinner catered. But I was impressed to see she was making everything on her own. On the menu tonight was chili available in both beef and chicken.

Michael Burns

Scott Bollert

Bobby McAuley

Billy Bitter

Tim Kaiser

Matt Davie

UNC Lacrosse Project: Weights and Practice

The team both lifted weights and had a practice out on Finley Field today. The practice could not come soon enough for me. The weight lifting routine was for me getting, well, routine. While the strength and conditioning staff does an excellent job of mixing up the sessions with different workouts, I was getting to the point that I felt maxed out creatively on what I could do in there. I knew that would going to be a challenge: To find new angles in a repetitive environment. But I have been pushing myself to come out at least once a week regardless and push myself to find something new to do. The first couple days of weight room I took the machine gun approach and took a ton of photos. Now however, I take way fewer photos — taking them now more deliberately after studying the environment and trying to think outside the box. It’s not unusual now for me to just watch the players do a few reps on an exercise before even picking up the camera.

Today broke up the monotony as it was my first practice to photograph. The team started last week but I missed it while I was out of town. Even without the benefit of a calendar to tell me that outdoor practice had started last week, my olfactory intuition would have clued me in. The locker room typically had a neutral smell to it. But when I walked in today, the equipment and padding worn out to practices brought a certain, well, striking scent to the air.

It was great to see the lacrosse team in lacrosse gear. I was freshing to be in a new environment and feel like a kid in a candy store. So many photo opportunities…so little time. It was also a relief to be away from the terrible lighting in the weight room.

I split my time during practice taking the “sports photographer” approach and the “creative photographer” approach. As the sports photographer I took action photos of them practicing and running drills using a lens with a long focal length. The creative photographer in me took photos with a wider lens and focused on the human aspect rather than the action.

UNC Lacrosse Project: Weight Room and Team Photo

I returned from San Diego yesterday and was ready to get back to the project after being gone for some time, although I wasn’t ready to leave the great weather behind. Returning to North Carolina reminded me of what humidity is — a reminder I could have done without.

After lifting weights the players returned to the locker room to vote for their choice of captain for the upcoming season. I was trying to get a photo of a player filling-out the ballot but they all turned away to vote and voting only took about 5 seconds. But I did get some photos of them dropping off their ballot.

The missed team photo due to rain last week was looking like it would again be missed as clouds loomed over Chapel Hill. No rain fell however and the team photo went on as scheduled. Jeffery Camarati, the UNC staff photographer, would typically do this photo but he was with the football team down in Florida. In his absence I did the photo and I have done many, many team photos in my days starting with my career at Georgetown University. But today had to have been the worst experiences doing a team photo yet. I set up four monolights on tripods to properly light the team. In the course of setting up though, one of the tripods tipped over taking with it a $350 light and a $250 radio. All were smashed and all were broken. To add insult to injury the battery power pack that I was using to power the lights went bad so I had no strobes to use. 

All that said the photos came out fairly well. It would have been a little better with the pop that strobes would have added, but I was overall pleased. Dave Lohse and Jeff had a great idea of having players wear either a blue or white jersey. In general the offense wore blue and the defense white. The players also brought their stick, helmet and gloves and were given the option to hold their stick and helmet however they wanted. It was refreshing and contrary to the usual team photos where players are lined up and stand in a uniform manner. We took multiple set-ups, asking the players to change positions each time.