My Mom, 12/25/46-7/28/08

My mother, Rose Mary, lost her year-long battle with cancer on Monday. I've written a column that will run in the newspaper this week and after it runs, I'll post it on the blog.
Please pray for my family. It is going to be a rough time for us all.

Mom, I love you and will miss you. You are my tag-team partner at the Carlisle paper and always will be.

Mark

Baseball

Well, football season will be here soon so I wanted to show a few of my favorite baseball shots from the last two weeks.

They were all shot with a 40D and 70-200 2.8 with a 1.4 extender. Unfortunately, I shot all these pics rather loose so I had to crop but with the 10MP camera, it is semi-easy to do. I'd almost kill for a 300 2.8 but most of $$$ is going towards our adoption, except for the Pocketwizards I got on Ebay three weeks ago...but still haven't gotten. Thanks UPS

The first shot is in the top 3 of my all-time favorite baseball shots. I was sitting in a chair on the third base side next to the coaches and sorta lucked into the shot.

All-Star Games

I recently shot the Arkansas High School All-Star games at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. It was a lot of fun shooting sports in Bud Walton Arena, Reynolds Razorback Stadium and Baum Stadium -- three of the best facilities in the SEC and the NCAA for that matter.

I also got to visit with some old friends and meet some new ones like Jason I and Sarah B.

Thanks for looking.

spring high school football

The Carlisle Bison Class 2A football team held its annual spring game on Friday night. Carlisle is the only school that I cover that held a public scrimmage. It was a lot of fun shooting football other than regular spring practice. It is fun getting to see the players put on the jerseys even if they are the old ones that haven't been used in game situations in more than 5 years.
I used my Canon EOS 40D and a 70-200 2.8L non-IS lens with a 1.4 extender. The game started at 6 p.m. so I didn't have to use a flash. It was overcast so I think I was using 1250 ISO most of the time.
I can't wait for September to get here for junior high and high school regular-season action.

Mark

Climbing the ladder of success

Photographer Andy Shupe of shupepartyofone.blogspot.com stands on a ladder while shooting the Class 7A state softball tournament in Russellville on Saturday. We were told, for the second year in a row, that photographers couldn't be on the field and that the Ark. Activities Association had a rule for safety sake.

Well, I guess the lower classifications, like 2A baseball, for the second year in a row, didn't mind b/c they wanted all the publicity they could get. I did, however, bring a short stool and was able to shoot over the fence. Andy was able to get a ladder from the Russellville AD. That is why Andy rocks! and he needs to join sportsshooter.com too.

Mark

The Golden Bear

On Monday, May 5, I was fortunate enough to shoot the Jackson T. Stephens Charitable Golf Tournament kids clinic and golfing legend Jack Nicklaus was there to conduct the clinic.
Getting to see the Golden Bear was one of the highlights of my career. I was just glad that Tiger and his caddie Steve Williams (not to be confused with Dr. Death Steve Williams) wasn't there! ha ha

spring sports

This is my first post in a while (at the urging of Marc Henning!).

I've been busy with trying to get the paper out each week, going to the new office in downtown Little Rock on Tuesdays while also covering sports in Cabot, Lonoke and Carlisle. It can be difficult to do a 16 page paper on Tuesdays (minus 4 classified pages and the editorial page -- thanks Jesse and Geoff) then do three sports pages in Lonoke and Cabot each week.

All the photos were shot with the 40D and 70-200 2.8. The pitcher I used a 1.4 TC. I was pretty proud of these photos, which all ran in the paper this past week.

Mark