Mike George—MMA Fighter
I had the pleasure of meeting Mike George this week. He’s a native of Grand Island, now living in Hastings, who has become a professional MMA fighter. We shot this portrait after he worked out at the Hard Knock’s Gym. This weekend he’s on the Tri-State Cagefighting card at the Heartland Events Center. Here you can read about Mike and see a couple of other images.
Track Meet
I love shooting track. No more hot and smelly gymnasiums from basketball. I get to be outside in the sun. Soaking up Vitamin D. Feeling the cool breeze blow around me, and sneezing at the pollen. There is usually plenty of sun which means I can shoot with lots of depth of field. It’s great! But there is always a downside. Lately whenever I’ve had to cover a track meet, I have also had to cover something afterwards. This forces me to focus on the early events. These are the field events from the long jump, triple jump, and high jump to the shot put the discus and pole vault. Add to that the longer races where runners don’t need to compete for the finals and it sounds like an easy day. Up until your third or fourth meet of the year. I’ve been finding myself shooting the same events like the long jump. We’ve got talented kids competing in it, but one shot of sand flying is very similar to another. Last Saturday I was finishing up at the Aurora Invitational and wandered over to the boys high jump competition. They were no where close to done, but I needed to get a shot or two. Needing a different way to shoot it from my previous meets I noticed the red mat and blue sky complemented each other. Toss in Aurora’s Sam Shaw in his red uniform and we’ve got something interesting. Clean background, nice shape to Sam’s jump, simple composition and simple color all adds up to a nice way to end the meet and show the same event in a new way.
Being Present
I often lose track of taking pictures of my own life and what I see. Sure, I work on outside projects and take scenic images on vacation, but more often than not I forget to photograph my own life and experiences. I get so caught up in documenting everyone else for the newspaper that I forget what is immediately around me. This weekend my inlaws hosted a family gathering to informally celebrate Easter. I remembered my camera (for once) and got it out to try some different settings. After shooting for a while, along came my sister in-law with her family fishing along the far bank. It’s just a nice image. While it won’t win any awards, it’s a piece of my life. A nice reminder to keep my eyes open and see what is around me in my life.
