SLC - UF takes 3rd place in NCAA

There were some sad faces in Salt Lake yesterday evening.
Including my own.
I expected the Gator girls to win the National Championship and you could tell they were very much hoping to as well.
There were no tears though and I think the girls remained strong throughout the evening. This can only drive the returning girls to try harder next year.
Georgia won for the third year in a row.

Salt Lake City Day 2

The Gators advanced today to the final six competition which will be held tomorrow.
Salt Lake is still Salt Lake though and the speed limits average around 30 mph.
I had to "join a club" tonight to have a drink.
The people of Utah are very nice and friendly thus far.
Shooting gymnastics is going better than anticipated and tomorrow I hope to focus on doing some close-ups with the 300mm.
Although I lugged it all the way here I haven't yet used it. But tomorrow I will force myself to do so to add some variety to the photos.

Salt Lake City!

Well I made it.
I'm safely tucked into my hotel room and enjoyed some room service dinner after a long day of plane rides leading up to a quick switch over to photo mode as soon as I touched down in Utah.
A 12:30pm landing gave me not much time to make it to the scheduled practice today but I made it just in time to catch a tail end of uneven bars and all of the beam.
1pm Mountain time tomorrow is competition.
That's 3pm back home.

Gator Gymnastics

Perfect 10 for Melanie Sinclair

She kicked butt once again on the uneven bars.

Gymnastics is getting easier and easier to shoot.
The hardest thing to conquer is the timing, but I've adapted to it much faster than other sports because of it's similarity to dance. The one thing I have figured out though is that in mid-flip the muscles sometimes look really distorted so even though it might be the perfect moment if their muscles look all weird I'll try to find another.

Flipping

Competition time for UF Gymnastics.

So this stuff is fun.
Hope I get to shoot it again.
And they are another Gator team ranked #1!

Gymnast & Rain rain rain...

First Assignment: UF Gymnast

Freshman Amanda Castillo has joined the UF gymnastics team from Orlando, Fla. I got to use my lights for this shoot and realized I need more extension cords or just need to get a battery pack so I don't have to rely on outlets.


Rainy Weather Feature

I followed around Buddy Barnard for about 30 mins in the pouring rain during part of his daily mail route in downtown Gainesville. He knows each one of the residents he delivered mail to and knows the history of the neighborhood. He's been delivering mail in Gainesville since the year I was born. And most of his time has been in the neighborhood that I walked with him through. He said, "If you don't know people, you don't know their mail."