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.

A couple weeks ago I got a call from my friend Jared to cover the Pittsburgh Marathon this weekend. I had a great time making images that will be used by the organization for marketing and other promotional use.

Our team’s day began bright and early, as we headed out to our spots on the course at 6:30am, an hour before the start of the race.

My position was on the 16th street bridge, about a mile and a half from downtown.

After shooting on the bridge for a while, I headed over to the strip district.

Using the long end of my 200-400mm lens, I was able to compress the mass of runners down Penn Avenue.

While shooting in the Strip District, I found some cool reflections on the display case of a sunglasses vendor.

On my way back downtown to cover the finish line, I used my long lens to shoot this compressed view of the 9th street bridge.

Despite cool temperatures at the start of the race, the weather quickly warmed up during the run, causing some heat-related issues among the runners. Several had to be carried across the finish line after collapsing just a hundred yards short.

After the finish, I shot this frame of the first place runner, James Kirwa, who finished the race in an unbelievable 2:14:09.

The top two women, Malika Mejdoub and Alemtsehay Misganawm finished just a stride apart, and nearly collapsed into one another.

This week, I’m headed off to Akron to follow the Ohio softball team to the MAC Championship.

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.

As I wrap up my time at Ohio University, I’ve spent a good portion of the school year training and mentoring a new group of photographers at the athletic department. Recently, our team completed its first project of the football season, the poster for the spring game.

After a week of coordinating schedules between nine student athletes, facilities management, and the football staff, we decided on a 9pm shoot at Peden Stadium.

We settled on a spot a midfield facing the home stands, and Alex began with a series of exposures to capture the fading sunset.

Next, we shot the image of the athletes. Our lighting setup was simple, two front lights (key and fill), and two rim lights to mimic the stadium lighting.

Here, Alex checks his exposure while Maddie and Emily keep the main lights from being blown away in the wind.

Once we had our options of the athletes, we shot a few more images for use in the composite. The picture above was used for the stands in the final image.

The final step was to light paint the Peden tower. Emily took a light and walked across the stands, popping the flash while I shot 1/2 second exposures. In total, we used 7 images similar to the one above for the final composite.

A few hours in Photoshop later, and the final product was done, in plenty of time to be sent off to the printers for the game.

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.