Sunday, June 24, 2009: USTA Northern Illinois State
I started writing this post and ended up on a completely different topic and about dreaming that I will get back to in a few posts after I track down a few photos I can use with it.
So here is where we are today. It is 6:45am and I am sitting in the quiet on my hotel lobby in Romeoville, IL with a cup of coffee and a head full of thoughts. Sleep has not come easy this week. I have not gone to sleep in the same calendar day I woke up since Wednesday. Wednesday night I went to bed at 11am Thursday morning for a few hours, Thursday I fell asleep for about 5 hours from 5am to 10am and Friday I crashed for about 3 hours before heading out on my weekend.
Now I am not clearing out my liquor cabinet or sitting around all depressed I am just moving forward and I have a lot on my plate. I have always been a night person but working on the sports picture desk for the last 6 years mornings have not been something I have seen a lot of. This too will change.
Leaving the Tribune was a sad day for me but in many ways I am really excited about the journey ahead of me. I better stop here or I will be writing a completely different blog again and lose this moment.
This weekend is the Northern Illinois USTA Trampoline and Tumbling state meet. My wife and kids have been involved with the sport for a long time and I have been shooting photos at meets for about 10 years now. TNT tournaments consist of 3 events; Trampoline, Tumbling and Double Mini-Trampoline.
Saturday I worked about a 13-hour day of running and shooting. We got to the venue at 7:40am and went to grab dinner at about 8pm. As we were leaving Romeovile High School last night I was relieved that it was such a short day. You see if it were not for the events on Wednesday I would have shot till 3pm, jumped in my car to be at the Tower by 4pm and worked till 1am. So my 13-hour day would have been more like an 18-hour day, not including the drive time.
I began shooting tumbling and trampoline tourneys to keep in photo shape, refining my timing and focusing skills; shoot tight and shoot sharp. Making a few photos to use on the 5-Star Academy website now I am working it a little harder to shoot all the teams. Like all other sports I shoot getting a great action shot under poor lighting conditions is the goal but my favorites are usually the little moments on the side. I will do more on TNT in the future.
So I am off to races again. Tumbling starts at 8:30am and I will be at the venue by 8am. Since I still have to look though a few thousand photos to pick 3 for this post tumbling will be over by the time I get this posted. I will have to work on setting aside a few moments during the day so I can post faster in the future.
Three photogs over 2 days we shot about 26226 frames, now I have to look through the files, create thumbnails and upload them to the web. That is a bout three or four very long days with very little sleep, fits my schedule perfectly.
Here are a few I liked from the weekend.
john
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