This past weekend I headed back to my home in Kent, Ohio to take a couple days off from school. While I was around, I spent some time shooting our softball and baseball teams as they played at the University of Akron.

With our limited shooting positions for softball back at OU, I relish any chance I can get to shoot the team on the road.

Firestone Stadium in Akron, the host of this year’s Mid-American Conference championships, has a lot of great elevated options, and great light to boot.

On the second day of the tournament, Ohio fought hard but made an early exit, losing to Kent State.

Even with the loss, I was happy to get a decent frame out of my home plate remote camera.

The following day, I headed out to cover the baseball team in their first of three games against Akron over the weekend.

Since the game was early in the day, I worked angles that allowed me to shoot backlit.

My favorite frame was after the Bobcats’ win, as a lone Akron player walked back to the dugout.

After the game, I headed back over to the softball tournament to shoot in the last moments of light for the day. With Ohio out of the tournament, I was able to experiment and play with the light.

I was especially happy when Central Michigan celebrated their win in a pocket of light on the first base side.

This week, I’m back in Athens for the final week of the spring sports season. It’s amazing how fast these eight weeks have gone.

Hot on the heels of returning from the Peter Read Miller Workshop, I headed out to California last week for the Sports Shooter Academy, a workshop in Orange County put on by Robert Hanashiro of USA Today and freelance photographer Matt Brown.

For the first day of the workshop, I picked the high-speed sync lighting session with photographic genius Dave Black, one of my favorite shooters in the business.

By using a neutral density filter and the wireless high-speed sync feature on my PocketWizard FlexTT5 radios, I was able to shoot wide open at f/1.4 on a loaner 85mm lens from NPS. Above, fellow student Clayton Hotze helps me test one of the lights.

By shooting at a high shutter speed, I was able to easily balance the light on the soccer players with the deep blue skies.

It also allowed me to effectively stop the fast-moving action of the player’s foot.

One of the best parts of the workshop is the support students receive from the sponsors. It was great to see my friend Ian Ray from PocketWizard, who I met at Eddie Adams in the fall. I have worked with Ian and the PocketWizard team in the past on testing some of their new products, and they have been incredibly helpful to me both as a student and as a working photographer. Here, Ian helped me test my lighting before I made the portrait below.

Dave Black’s advice for lighting was simple: only light parts of your image. I used a feathered SB-900 zoomed in to 200mm to focus a tight beam of light on my subject, Cal State Fullerton senior Andrew Afia.

After the shoot, we had to climb the grandstands while carrying our heavy roller bags. Fellow student Lorenzo Zemella shared my pain.

Day two began with a snafu. After arriving at UC Irvine for the track meet we planned to shoot, we were informed that the meet had been moved to the following day. Luckily, Matt was able to line up a baseball and lacrosse game for us to shoot instead.

I spent most of the baseball game exploring how I could use a 600mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter (850mm total) to take a fresh eye to covering the sport. My favorite shot was when I used the long focal length to compress the perspective between the pitcher and an American flag in the outfield.

At lacrosse, I dropped the teleconverter and shot from behind one of the goals as the sun set across the field.

As we headed back to my rental car after the game, a couple of us stopped to enjoy watching the sun set over the baseball field.

After several dozen failed shots, I made this frame of Lorenzo, Jane, and I. As you can tell, I got quite a bit of sun that day! Jane and I covered a couple Sounders, Mariners, and Storm games together in Seattle last summer while I interned at the Times, and it was great to see an old friend again.

Day three began with shooting portraits at Long Beach State. LA Times staff photographer Wally Skalij showed us how to work with the pockets of light created by the sun filtering through tree branches.

With his help, I made the image below of volleyball player Laura Ratto, using only natural light.

Our second setup was in front of the Walter Pyramid, a peculiar blue structure that houses a basketball court.

Our second shoot was back at UC Irvine for the track meet we attempted to shoot earlier in the week. Needless to say, we made it look like the gold medal heat of the Olympics with all of our remote cameras.

My favorite image from my remote came on the first lap of the men’s steeplechase.

With the help of Ian, I attempted to light the steeplechase with wireless high speed sync. Here, Jane stands in for a test shot.

I say attempted because it was incredibly difficult to time the landing of the runners hitting the water. My favorite image from the lights came from my corner remote that happend to catch one of the flashes.

For the final day of the Academy, I picked the portrait session with roller derby athletes.

As I was testing my lights for one of the portraits, Nikon’s Ronal Taniwaki walked in with a cigar and helped us hone our setups.

After the shoot, Lorenzo, Annika, and I headed out to Huntington Beach to shoot surfing.

Unfortunately, heavy cloud cover made it tough to shoot. We decided to call it a day and spend the rest of our time relaxing on the beach.

Needless to say, us photographers don’t spend much time in the sun with our shoes off!

Back at the hotel, we turned in our edits and said our goodbyes. After just a couple of days, it was amazing how much we had grown together as a group of photographers.Of course, none of this would have been possible without the incredible support of the companies who help make the workshop happen. Thanks to Nikon, students were able to attend the workshop tuition-free, making the weeklong adventure affordable for those of us still in college. I’ve been lucky enough to go to two workshops supported by Nikon this year, SSAIX and Eddie Adams. It’s great to see companies support the education of their current (and future) customers.

Just as we reached the point of total exhaustion, it was time to call it a week. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I learned so much in such a short amount of time at the Peter Read Miller Workshop.

The best part of the experience for me was working with an incredible group of instructors, assistants, and students that all share a common love for sports photography. It was great to see how the lectures and lessons in the field helped us grow leaps and bounds as a class in just a week; the difference between our images on the first and last days of the workshop was stunning. As we worked past technical hurdles, you could see how our work started to focus on specific moments, whether it was peak action of quiet dejection.

In the end, my favorite image from the workshop was from our lighting session at Denver East High School. Shooting hand held from above the hoop was a new experience for me, as was learning about arena lighting. I hope the new perspectives I gained from my time in Denver can help me grow to be an even better sports photographer.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of the staff at Western Digital. From the moment I got the call that I was the winner of the contest, I knew I was in good hands. I cannot thank them enough for their efforts in helping me learn from this one of a kind experience.

For our last shoot of the workshop, we headed out to make portraits at a local boxing gym. With the help of super-assistant Shawn Cullen, I learned a lot about working with subjects while refining my lighting techniques. The athletes were grateful and patient, making the shoot a nice relaxing way to end the workshop.

It’s been an incredible week, and I’m now just beginning to take in how much I’ve learned. I’m sure it will be several weeks before it all sinks in. It’s truly been an amazing experience learning from the best in the business.

Our first event was track and field at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I’ve always enjoyed covering track meets because of the visual variety in such a concentrated space.

At any given time, there were as many as four or five events going on at once. With so much confusion, I set out to make specific images I was looking to try. One of my favorites was from a remote camera I set by the hurdle during the women’s steeplechase.

The second event of the day was shooting the spring football game at University of Colorado. I got to try out some Canon long glass I don’t normally I have access to, and was really happy with what I was able to produce with gear I wasn’t familiar with.

Earlier in the week Peter talked to us about shooting football from as low as possible, and today I tried one of the techniques he recommended. By shooting with my 70-200mm on the ground, I was able to see under the player’s helmet, while making him look more dominant.

Tomorrow, our final shoot is boxing. It’s amazing how fast the week has gone!