Professional Boxing

This past weekend I photographed Professional Boxer, Kenny George in action as he pretty much pummeled his opponent in a six round event. This is the third time I've photographed a match for Kenny since he began his professional career and he just gets more awesome every time.

Boxing is a real challenge to photograph, you generally have to deal with really bad lighting, very fast action and the ropes of the ring which are almost constantly in the way. A fast lens along with high ISO setting and some patience are the secret to success.

WVU Vs NC State

Rob Summers and Frank "The Tank" Young salute the crowd

after winning their final game at the WVU Coliseum to propel them into the finals of the

NIT Tournament in New York.

What a game! A victory at the Coliseum for the Mountaineers to move on to the Garden to finish the job. The crowd really turned it on at the end of the game, sparked by what in my humble opinion were some questionable calls.





Alex Ruoff drives to the hoop.

WVU Basketball NIT Tournament

Two games down, one to go in Morgantown. The Mountaineers are on a roll!!

The crowd at the UMass game was awesome. They made as much noise as a 12,000

plus crowd. I'll be shooting the WVU Vs NC State game on Tuesday, Go Mountaineers!

Mid East States Convention

Just got back from the big city of Dayton, Ohio. My son Greg and I attended the Mid-East States convention and Regional Print Competition. He is starting to get interested in this photography thing. I hope he enjoys it as much as I do.

The print competition was a big success for me. I came out 10th in the top 10 MidEast photographers. That means of all the print cases entered from West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana and Michigan my case was the 10th highest of all!
Not bad for a sports photographer. My image Eat My Dust scored a 95 and I got 3 blue ribbons out of 4 prints. Needless to say I was very happy with the judging.

Arizona Vacation

Just got back from a week exploring Arizona. We spent the first of the week in the Sedona, I did a little hiking and checking out the art galleries. The end of the week was spent in the Tucson area. Tuscon was a busy place with the huge match play golf tournament going on and the big annual rodeo. I didn't realize either was going on until we arrived and got into the traffic. I wish I had planned on attending both, I'm sure it would have been fun to photograph pro golf and rodeo.......maybe next year. We checked out some of the cactus forests and rode to Mt. Lemon the top of a 9,000 foot mountain that has unbelieveable views. The best part of the week was the south rim of the Grand Canyon, I don't know what I expected but it was nothing like I thought it would be. I stopped at as many overlooks as I could and everytime I thought that it just couldn't get anymore beautiful the next stop would be even more spectacular. It snowed and was very cold so not alot of people were out and around, but the bad weather made for some real nice shots. I'm definitely going to go back again when I can spend more time and do some hiking into the canyon.

PPWV Spring Convention

Just got back from the Professional Photographers of West Virginia Convention in Oak Hill, West Virginia. We had a great crowd and got to mingle with many very talented photographers. Today the speakers were David Huntsman of Versailles, KY and Clayton Spangler of Charleston, West Virginia. Both are not only very gifted photographers but nice guys too. If you want to see some of the winners keep checking the PPWV Website at www.ppwv.org. The results should be posted in the next week or so.

The print competition was also lots of fun and we had many beautiful prints on display.

Personally, I took home four blue ribbons, second place in the commercial category and won the Phillips Rittenhouse Award for the best News Photograph for the 5th time in the last 8 years of competition.

Image Titled: Eat My Dust won the

Phillips-Rittenhouse News Photo Award

Image Titled: Gator Bowl Celebration

Won 2nd Place in the Commercial Category

Trip to San Antonio

Wow! What a weird week! We arrived on Friday, short sleeved shirts, eating dinner outdoors on the balcony of a typical San Antonio Riverwalk restaurant. 24 hours later, coats and ice, roads closed down and ice everywhere! And that was the weather story for the rest of the week. I could have stayed home for weather like that... but it was still alot of fun. The usually bustling Riverwalk was very quiet and I did get a few nice shots of the ice that formed on almost everything.

The Imaging USA convention was quite educational. I was able to attend many seminars taught by some of the leading photographers in the world. Celebrity wedding photographers Denis Reggie and Joe Buisink both gave very informative programs. I sat in on a couple other classes on photographing seniors and children and I was also able to take in some Adobe Photoshop seminars. The tradeshow was good but I didn't find any new earth shattering products that I couldn't live without.

The highlight of the week for me was the awards ceremony where I was presented with my Master of Photography degree by my lovely wife Christie and PPA President Michael Taylor.

Since the weather was so bad and the airport was such a mess we stayed an extra day and took in a San Antonio Spurs game against the LA Lakers. Lakers won in the last seconds and Kobe had over 30 points.

Starting the New Year!

One of my New Years resolutions was to improve my website and one way is to create a blog!
So here we go into 2007. Lets see how long I can keep this thing updated....

The year has started out on a great note!
The Mountaineers defeated Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl!
It was the third time to photograph the Gator Bowl in the last 4 years and the first win.
I still think last years Sugar Bowl victory was the most exciting. It was definitely a great day to be a Mountaineer.

We had a great time in Jacksonville and got some real nice shots of the game.

I may post a few as soon as I figure out how this works.

We mixed a little pleasure with business and took side trips to Savannah, Georgia and

St. Augustine, Florida. Both were filled with historical sites and I definitely need to go back and spend more quality time with my camera at both locations.