I haven't blogged at all since switching to my new site. Part of that has to do with the blogging system and not being quite a big fan of it, and second was the fact that I've been shooting less frequently while in a management position this semester at the Columbia Missourian. But I do have shooting assignments for classes and personal projects that keep me going and though I won't be sharing any of those today I wanted to share an assignment I shot on Friday.

The paper is short on photographers this semester. What this means is that we on occasion call on other photographers to step in for an assignment or sport event to be able to cover everything that we need to do to make sure we're doing every story we can justice.

Tonight, I joked about joining one of our photographers at the Missouri men's basketball season opener against Southeastern Louisiana, since we have two passes. Our sports photo editor Greg thought that might not be a bad idea. I would go, take a photographer, who was new to basketball, through the process, and try to get a few good images to round out our coverage.

I shot once prior at Mizzou Arena, the first women's basketball game of the year, an exhibition where they trounced their opponents. It was thoroughly empty at that game, and despite Friday's attendance being reported as over 7,000, it didn't look that full. There were however, plenty of photographers, and since many like me were new to this place, and many were newer to photographing basketball, securing our "assigned" seat was a bit of hassle. Once I got settled though, things started to go smoothly. I shot the first half with Mizzou coming at me, just to allow Fareeha, the main photographer, a chance to get used to the pace of the action and allow me to secure some good shots early.

One of the things I try to impress on newer shooters is that it's fine to get photos of players dribbling, especially when you're getting acclimated to the game, but eventually, we want more than that.

Southeastern Louisiana came to play, or so it seemed in the first few possessions. Devonte Upson didn't need much more than his ups... son, to throw down a hard block. In fact, this game was a lot more high-flying than the Wisconsin swing offense I shot while an undergrad and allowed a lot more chances at some great action than I felt I ever had before.

Didn't hurt that these players played up-tempo, versus Wisconsin's slow style, and put up a lot of points to match some fancy ball handling.

The high-flying style of play also gave me one of my favorite things in sports: the "missed dunk/weird rebound/what the heck is going on here frames".

And a lot of rebound frames like these:

The night also provided the thing that I look for most to round out some good basketball coverage: features. That included a few injuries like an accidental eye poke while fighting for a rebound and a hard landing that looked like it might have caused a concussion but ended up being a leg injury that required an entire team to carry a player off the court.

And with all that struggle a little celebration too.

In the end, the story of the night, something the other photographer, Fareeha, did a good job covering, was the interim head coach Tim Fuller's job of leading the team in the first of five games for which the head coach, Frank Haith, is suspended. I made a few frames too and while he looked nervous he was able to lead the Tigers to a dominating 89-53 win over the Southeastern Louisiana Lions.