I joked with friends that I should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket after calling Ryan to set up our shoot. Ryan is a fantastic guy, one of the refreshing few on tour who is a genuine pleasure to work with and who understands what a photographer needs from a shoot and is willing to put in the time and effort to make it happen. As we’d worked together before a few years ago, I knew all of that, but that still didn’t stop my jaw from hitting the floor when he a) actually answered his phone on the second ring and b) asked, “What day works best for you?” If you haven’t guessed already those are not two things you often experience when trying to work with a professional athlete.

Thursday was my first look at TPC Scottsdale in a year. It always amazes me how the infamous 16th hole there grows–the skyboxes and bleachers seem to multiply exponentially. But this year Golf World writer Geoff Shackelford was concentrating on a different hole–the far more strategic 17th, and my task for that day was to make an image showing not just action but the layout of the hole and illustrating the decision making process which faced the player on this drive-able par 4. It didn’t hurt that as the day went on the harsh desert light settled down a bit so that by the time Phil Mickelson approached the tee, most of the tee box was in shadow, allowing him and his wisely-chosen bright blue shirt to stand out.

Friday and Saturday were my days to work on a new project for Golf World involving the Gigapan process (more on my work with that here). The high resolution and user-interactive potential of the images made from it make it a natural for the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale, one of the most crowded, and certainly the loudest and rowdiest, holes in all of professional golf. Thanks to the benevolence of a security guard who bore a striking resemblance to the Sopranos’ Big Pussy Bonpensiero, I was able to find a perch in the penthouse skybox overlooking the green, and came away with this 17-gigabyte monster of a panorama, comprising 720 individual images stitched together:

Sunday was back to the golf–enough lounging around in the corporate tents! TPC Scottsdale is a hard course to shoot, with few clean backgrounds and even fewer shortcut opportunities when chasing leaders around the course, and I never like to only devote one day to actual game coverage but in this case I didn’t have much of a choice. After a relatively peaceful front nine of following the two lead groups all hell broke loose, with Hunter Mahan, Y.E. Yang, and Rickie Fowler puling away from the pack and putting themselves in positions to win. Naturally, they were all playing in separate threesomes. So after much running around I settled on Mahan, who did me the courtesy of hanging on for the win.

Nice to be back on the golf beat again after a little bit of a break. But as I was discussing with a colleague out on the course, this is definitely not the ideal event–or place–to get your feet wet as a golf photographer. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the phenomenon of the “Jumping Cholla”–a type of cactus that, if you get too close to it, will literally dislodge barb-filled pods of stinging pain onto your person. Ignore me at your own peril; I scoffed at the notion at first, too. It only took one encounter to make a believer out of me. But if you can get past that, the World Match Play Championship is a long trek over a bland course that is designed to be played in a cart, not walked in the fairway, let alone outside the fairways in the rocky, cholla-filled desert. It takes a lot out of you; I usually feel guilty when I don’t have time to run while I’m on the road, but not here. Thirty-six holes a day (or more) on this course is plenty, thank you very much.

And for what? Well, I’ll give it this much: the beautiful, crisp, clear desert light is unmatched. At least, for 45 minutes right after sunrise and 45 minutes before sunset it is. The rest of the day is an exercise in futility, plodding around the course in harsh, high-noon sun that turns the space underneath a cap or visor where half of a player’s face would normally be found into a nice, even, black abyss. But it’s match play, so you slog it out. Anything can happen, as they say, and the golf gods don’t ever seem to take photographers’ prayers for good light into consideration when they decide that it’s time for an upset.

Or do they? Maybe that’s why the competitors doff their caps for the ritual post-match handshake…

Anyway it’s always good to get back to Tucson for a week. I love the pace of the city, sort of like Arizona’s Austin to the Dallas/Fort Worth of Phoenix. Those who know me (or have read since the beginning) know that one of my favorite places to eat is in Tucson, and as usual my trip to Cafe Poca Cosa did not disappoint. So let’s recap: Very few opportunities for good pictures. Hard golf course to walk. Nice town. Great food. Not really a bad week after all. Just watch out for the vengeful cacti.

ROB BELL, 2001 NATIONAL FINALS RODEO
Bull rider Rob Bell got himself hung up on Real Deal, a bull who was not in the most favorable of moods, at the 2001 National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. I’ve covered the NFR every year since 1998 for Sports Illustrated, and this image is my all-time favorite from the event. Captured at the moment Bell lost consciousness, and shot using arena strobes (in other words, single frame, with no motor drive) from an elevated position that I’ve come to like for bull riding, it certainly involved a little bit of luck. But there’s a lot more that went into it than that, which calls to mind Louis Pasteur’s reasoning that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1V with a Canon 400mm f2.8 lens, Fuji Provia 100 film, Speedotron 2401B strobes with quad-tube heads).

BYRON NELSON, 2006
Photographed as part of a Sports Illustrated portrait series on former United States Ryder Cup Captains, I had the opportunity to photograph golfing legend Byron Nelson at his home in Roanoke, Texas shortly before his death in September 2006. Kind, outgoing, and not to mention patient with me as I photographed him in his garage on a hot late summer afternoon, this was easily my favorite portrait assignment of the decade. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Linhof Master Technika with Schneider-Linhof 240mm f 6.3 lens, Polaroid Type 55 film, Profoto strobes with an Elinchrom Octa-bank).



TIGER WOODS, 2003 WESTERN OPEN
Say what you want about the guy, given the past month’s turn of events–but Tiger is still arguably the greatest golfer to have ever walked the planet. He’s so good that he can tell whether his shot is good, bad, or horrendous in the time it takes his club to get from the point of impact to his follow through. And when it’s horrendous, the pictures can be pretty interesting… (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1D with a Canon 400mm f2.8 lens, available light).


SMITHSON VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL LOCKER ROOM, 2004
Following a David vs. Goliath-type victory over rival Westlake, the Smithson Valley High School locker room erupted in cheers. Photographed as part of Sports Illustrated’s 50th Anniversary project, the game was played outside of San Antonio and was used to represent Texas’ primary contribution to sports in America–high school football. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1D with a Canon 14mm f2.8 lens, available light).

THE GREAT TEXAS BIRDING CLASSIC
Bill Baker and Greg Mason team up during the 2008 Great Texas Birding Classic near Galveston, Texas. Photographed on assignment for Texas Highways magazine, I had the chance to spend three days with that year’s winning team, and to be introduced to a “sport” with which I was not familiar–and pleasantly surprised at the passion and camaraderie exhibited in the process. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Leica M6 with a Leitz 21mm f 2.8 lens, Tri-X 400 film, available light).

OPENING TIP-OFF, TENNESSEE AT TEXAS
Rigging a remote camera triggered via radio in the scoreboard hanging over mid-court at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center in Austin yielded a rarely-seen view of the opening tip-off of the Tennessee-Texas basketball game in December of 2005. As this was shot using arena strobes I was a bit apprehensive about getting this as a single frame, but everything only had to work once, and it did. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1D with a Canon 17-35mm f2.8 lens, Pocketwizard Multi-Max transceivers, Speedotron 2401B strobes with quad-tube heads).


TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, 2007
I really don’t have anything against auto racing, but there are only so many times I can watch people make left turns while zipping past my trackside position at 150+ miles an hour. So as the sun went down over the Texas Motor Speedway during the 2007 Dickies 400, I climbed up to the roof of the grandstand, and for good measure brought my tilt-shift lenses along with me. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 5D with a Canon 90mm f2.8 tilt-shift lens, available light).


ROBERT EARL KEEN, 2008
It took a move from New York to Austin to learn to appreciate the music of this Texas songwriting legend, but I’m glad it worked out that way. And speaking of things working out, his agreeing to make the two-hour trip from his home to New Braunfels and Gruene Hall, Texas’ oldest dance hall, for the portrait shoot allowed me to finally make a picture that I’d had stored in the back of my mind for years. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Linhof Technika III with a Schneider-Linhof 150mm f5.6 lens, Kodak TXP 320 film, Profoto strobe with beauty dish mixed with ambient light).


THE MIKE COOLBAUGH STORY, 2007
By far the hardest series of portraits I’ve ever had to do. Sports Illustrated assigned me to illustrate a feature on the death of Mike Coolbaugh, former major league baseball player and first-base coach of the minor-league Tuslsa Drillers, who was killed by a foul ball hit by Driller’s catcher Tino Sanchez (on the left), leaving behind his pregnant wife, Mandy, and sons Joey, age 5 (left) and Jake, age 3. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II with a 28-70mm f 2.8 lens, Profoto strobes).


DOUG SANDERS, 2004
A flamboyant golfer of the 1960s and 1970s who stood three feet from golfing immortality–or at least a major championship–at the 1970 British Open before missing the putt to win, Sanders still likes to think of himself as a man about town. To others, he’s still stuck back in the glory years of his heyday. While he’s still funny as hell on the set and a rather harmless charmer toward any female crew member in the studio, I’m inclined to believe the latter. This shoot, for Golf Digest, was my third time photographing him; each time he opened up a bit more and the facade began to crack. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Mamiya RZ-67 with a 180mm f3.5 lens, Fuji Provia 100 film, Balcar strobes).


PHIL MICKELSON BLOWS THE U.S. OPEN
“I am such an idiot,” he said, and truer words were never spoken than on that Sunday afternoon in June after Phil Mickelson double-bogeyed the 18th hole at Winged Foot to lose the 2006 U.S. Open. Photographed on assignment for Golf World magazine, I was actually positioned behind Mickelson when he crouched down and ever so briefly held his head in his hands after realizing the enormity of what he’d just done; fortunately I had a remote camera clamped to the grandstand which was able to capture a wide view of the scene. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1D with a Canon 28-70mm f2.8 lens, Pocketwizard Multi-Max transceivers).


JUSTIN LEONARD, 2005
Assigned to photograph golfer Justin Leonard at home for a Golf World cover story, my assistant and I showed up at his house loaded for bear with cameras, lights, and whatever else we could fit in the truck. After scouting out the house and determining which elaborate setups we’d like to do and where we wanted to do them, I asked Justin if he wouldn’t mind giving me about twenty minutes or so to set things up. No problem, he said, and promptly plopped down on the sofa in the living room, whereupon he began tossing his daughter, Reese, into the air. “Forget the lights,” I told my assistant. I grabbed a camera and we were done in the twenty minutes I thought I’d need to set things up. (Info for the gear-obsessed: Canon EOS 1Ds with a Canon 17-35mm f2.8 lens, available light).


About the photos…

2008 ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

Tiger Woods and caddie Steve WIlliams are silhouetted against the sunrise outside of Tucson, Arizona as they prepare for the final round of the 2008 Accenture World Match Play Championship at the Gallery Course at Dove Mountain.


TIGER WOODS WINS THE 2005 MASTERS
As the lone freelancer hired to cover the Masters (along with three staff photographers) for Golf Digest and Golf World magazines, I was “stuck” with the reverse-angle position on the 18th green at Augusta National GC. With the traditional Sunday pin placement, this normally means getting the image of the winner’s back as he sinks the final putt. On this occasion, however, Tiger decided that a 180-degree spin, complete with a fist pump, was in order. Which was fine by me.


2006 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP, FINAL ROUND
Covering the 2006 PGA Championship on assignment for Sports Illustrated, I had the opportunity to shoot the final round from the air–more specifically, from the MetLife Blimp Snoopy One. Here, Tiger Woods and Steve WIlliams walk between the shadows in the 14th fairway en route to Woods’ victory.


TIGER WOODS, 2003 WESTERN OPEN
Say what you want about the guy, given the past month’s turn of events–but he’s still arguably the greatest golfer to have ever walked the planet. He’s so good that he can tell whether his shot is good, bad, or horrendous in the time it takes his club to get from the point of impact to his follow through. And when it’s horrendous, the pictures can be pretty interesting…


2005 BRITISH OPEN AT ST. ANDREWS
A remotely-triggered camera set up on a balcony of a building overlooking the 18th hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews captures the overall scene as Tiger Woods raises his arms in celebration upon winning the 2005 Open Championship.


PHIL MICKELSON BLOWS THE U.S. OPEN
“I am such an idiot,” he said, and truer words were never spoken than on that Sunday afternoon in June after Phil Mickelson double-bogeyed the 18th hole at Winged Foot to lose the 2006 U.S. Open. Photographed on assignment for Golf World magazine, I was actually positioned behind Mickelson when he crouched down and ever so briefly held his head in his hands after realizing the enormity of what he’d just done; fortunately I had a remote camera clamped to the grandstand which was able to capture a wide view of the scene.


PHIL MICKELSON’S FANS, 2009 U.S. OPEN
Phil Mickelson loves New York, and the feeling is mutual. After three soggy, rain-delayed days the the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage State Park, the fourth round began at about 7 p.m. on Sunday night–and Phil’s loyal fans stuck around to watch. On the second tee, they express their approval (and amazement) at a tee shot.


MICHELLE WIE, 2007 LPGA CHAMPIONSHIP
Most of the decade was a rough one for teen phenom Michelle Wie, as illustrated by her frustration following a (very) wayward tee shot on the tenth hole during the third round of the 2007 McDonald’s LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock GC in Havre de Grace, Maryland.


MICHELLE WIE, 2006 KRAFT-NABISCO CHAMPIONSHIP
On what used to be one of of my tee boxes for shooting, now altered beyond recognition, Michelle Wie reaches the top of her backswing before hitting a drive on the 15th hole at the Kraft Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California.


MICHELLE WIE, 2005 SAMSUNG WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
Michelle Wie’s professional coming-out party, via a sponsor’s exemption into the 2005 Samsung World Championship at Bighorn GC in Palm Desert, California was marred by a disqualification for taking an illegal drop and consequently signing an incorrect scorecard. Prior to that, she exuded the confidence (some might say brashness) of youth walking off of the sixth green during the third round.


LORENA OCHOA, 2008 MASTERCARD INVITATIONAL
Construction continued around the periphery of Bosque Real Country Club outside of Mexico City during the 2008 Mastercard Invitational; on Friday afternoon during the second round, two stone masons took a break to watch national icon Lorena Ochoa hit her tee shot on the second hole.


LORENA OCHOA, 2008 KRAFT-NABISCO CHAMPIONSHIP
2008 was a breakthrough year from Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa as she secured her position as the top-ranked female golfer in the world. Here, she is surrounded by family and friends during the traditional champion’s leap into the pond fronting the 18th green at Mission Hills CC in Rancho Mirage, California following her victory at the Kraft-Nabisco Championship.


PRE-DAWN ON THE RANGE, 2007 FBR OPEN
I always loved covering the Phoenix Open back before Arizona observed daylight savings time, because the late sunrise made for some spectacular pre-dawn images that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Players with early tee times were forced to practice under artificial light on the driving range; here, Camilo Villegas and Jesper Parnevik hit balls on the range at TPC Scottsdale prior to their rounds.


CAMILO VILLEGAS, 2008 BRITISH OPEN
As what’s left of the late afternoon sun barely peeks over the grandstands, Camilo Villegas takes a full swing, and a full load of sand, as he blasts out of a bunker on the 18th hole at Royal Birkdale during the third round of the 2008 Open Championship.


2009 U.S. KIDS GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP
Golf World magazine sent me to Pinehurst to cover a golf tournament like I’ve never seen–the U.S. Kids Golf Championship. Hundreds of kids, ages 5-12 with their parents, learning the game and sportsmanship in a historic setting made for a great time and some nice images. Here, kids warm up on the driving range before the start of the second day of competition.


Favorite images from the 2009 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

A lot has changed in twelve years, and I’m not just talking about the skyline of the Strip–although it never ceases to amaze me how things change, and how quickly the concrete and glass jungle foliage can spread in that city over the course of a year–let alone a dozen of them. Professionally, in the way I and Sports Illustrated cover the event, things have come a long way as well.

I made my first trip to the Thomas and Mack Center in 1998. At the time, I was one of the S.I’s traveling lighting technicians, and former S.I. staffer Layne Stewart invited me to come along. From the second I set foot in the arena, and took in the sights and, just as noticeably, the smells, of the NFR, I was hooked. This was something different. The people were engaging, the athletes were accommodating, and the organization was happy to have us there. In short, it was everything you’d hope any major sporting event could be, but never thought you’d see. Over the next three years, I spent two long December days hauling more than a dozen Speedotrons up into the catwalk in an annual ritual of the hardest, most meticulous arena lighting job I’d ever have to do during my tenure as a lighting assistant for the magazine’s photographers.

I can’t remember how, or why exactly, it happened but after a few years of lighting and assisting, I began to contribute regularly as a photographer to Sports Illustrated, and the NFR shooting assignment fell to me in 2000. Ever since then, S.I. Picture Editor Jimmy Colton has had the confidence in me to send me out to Las Vegas year after year without a specific assignment, the only instruction being to come back with a two-page spread image to run in the magazine’s “Leading Off” section.

I don’t want to give the impression that that’s an easy thing to do by any means. But at the same time I always want to give my clients a little more than they’ve asked for. So at the Rodeo I’ll try to do something other than just straight action–maybe I’ll try a few portraits; maybe a remote camera in a unique position. Sometimes those things run; more often than not they don’t; the limitations and expense of magazine real estate tend to create distinct boundaries; despite Jimmy’s love for the NFR and his tireless advocacy for including its images in the magazine, if one picture is all we’ve planned on, that’s usually all the space we’re going to be given.

Behind the scenes with 2009 World Champion Bareback Rider Bobby Mote.

The advent of a viable online component, however, has given us the opportunity to expand our coverage a bit. This year I proposed the idea of a portrait series of the winning cowboys, tied in with my ongoing “Manual Labor” portrait series, and, with the help of my friend Ann Bleiker (who has worked in so many capacities with the NFR and its participants over the years I’ve lost count), arranged to spend some time going behind the scenes with Bobby Mote, the 2009 World Champion Bareback Rider. SI.com provides an outlet for projects like these that was previously unavailable.

We don’t light the building anymore; with digital imaging technology being what it is these days strobes have become almost obsolete. And the week-long assignment has turned into a weekend. But that won’t ever keep me from heading to Vegas if the magazine will send me, and from always trying to get as much out of the trip as possible.

Images from the 2009 Texas-Texas A&M game, shot on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

I grew up in suburban New York City, and I went to school at a university that barely had a football team, so I never “got” the whole college football thing–let alone the whole Texas college football thing–to begin with. It was only upon moving to Austin in the mid-90s that I began to grasp (by necessity, if I wanted to make a living at this) the importance of football. I was, admittedly, an athletic snob; a fan of sports of solitude and self-reliance like tennis or golf or, when I ventured into team sports, games like baseball which I considered cerebral and therefore, worthy of my intellectual consideration. Football was, to my uninitiated and now, in retrospect, simple, mind, eleven very large men on either side of a ball, wearing school colors and beating the crap out of each other on a weekly basis.

And then one day, shortly after moving to Austin, I threw my cameras in the car and made the lonely 90-mile drive from Austin to College Station and wound up at a Texas A&M football game. Talk about a baptism by fire. From the second I saw the giant press box and light towers of Kyle Field rising up into the flat, desolate middle of nowhere as I rolled toward town on Highway 60, I got this inkling that I was in for something special. Then the Corps of Cadets marched in, the (“Nationally Famous”) Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band started playing, and for the first time in my life, I heard the Aggie War Hymn-and, when I wasn’t feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, felt myself getting seasick as I watched the alternating rows of spectators lock arms and sway to and fro in opposite directions, giving way to a sense of panic that the grandstands were about to topple over. It occurred to me that this football thing might be serious business down in these parts.

And then the game started.

I can’t remember who the Aggies played that day in 1994. I can’t remember who won. And I don’t care. Sorry, Horns fans, but it was the Aggies who got me hooked on college football. And perhaps because I am now an adopted (or is it adapted?) Texan, I can’t think of a better example of what football is all about than the annual Texas-Texas A&M grudge match. It doesn’t matter where it’s played, doesn’t matter what the point spread is, doesn’t matter who’s better, doesn’t matter who’s ranked where in the latest polls or who has the Coach of the Year or the Heisman trophy candidate. Throw it all out the window. This is when it all gets serious. And this year, the game, or the teams, didn’t disappoint. Sure, Texas won. But not without a scare, and not because the Aggies rolled over and let them. They never do. Neither team ever does in this one.

I still maintain to this day that there is nowhere better to see a football game than at Kyle Field, and there’s no better game to see at Kyle Field than this one. I can’t tell you anymore than that. No, I didn’t go there, so I can’t fully understand it. And as for explaining it? That’s about the best I can do.

Gigapan panoramic image of Kyle Field during the 2009 Texas-Texas A&M game, shot on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

After last weekend’s Texas-Kansas game, I can honestly say that Texas wide receiver Malcolm Williams is the largest man I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. (You Texas fans thought I was going to say someone else, didn’t you?)

Yes, for the first time in fifteen years of covering pro and college football, I almost bought the farm–on a fourth quarter Colt McCoy to Malcolm WIlliams corner route into the end zone. I must have executed the drop-duck-tuck-and-roll (and ignore whatever that was that hit your forehead) routine flawlessly, because I’m not any worse for wear. Note to Miguel and Dee back at Sports Illustrated, though: there’s a 50mm lens headed your way that needs to go back to Canon for repair…

Other than that, it was a game that went exactly as expected. Well, as long as you expected Colt McCoy to punt (let’s see Tim Tebow or Mark Ingram do that…), or Earl Thomas to be one defender away from returning a punt for a touchdown, or to see McCoy and the seniors take a jubilant victory lap around DKR following the game. My favorites are below. Enjoy.

Pablo Garcia, pit master and 14-year veteran dating back to the original Kreuz Market.

Schmidt retained the Kreuz name–as did his progeny who took over the business and, in the mid-1990s, moved the by-then famous barbecue enterprise about a mile up the road to a cavernous, gleaming paean to commercial restaurant modernity. Enter Smitty’s daughter Nina, her husband Jim, and her son, John, who in 1999 decided to take over the original shop and make sure it kept doing what it had always done. It’s those pits in the back, still in existence and operating on a daily basis, that have provided nearly a century’s worth of the smoke which fills the rooms and cakes the walls of the restaurant with a rich, silvery brown hue which today’s most technologically advanced color sampling programs could never duplicate.

A slice of the siganture brisket, best enjoyed with no sauce and more importantly, no fork.

But that’s what a place like Smitty’s is all about–the realization that there are some things that a machine could never do. The ingrained belief that it’s not a matter of being old-fashioned (although the customer experience it creates is a good by-product), but that authenticity means being genuine to the core and not taking even the slightest technological shortcut. There’s something to be said for not giving in to the lure of automation, and standing by the credo that good barbecue depends simply on fire, a well-built smoker, good cuts of meat, and someone who knows how to put all three together without a timer, a thermometer, a computer program, or a propane tank.

Of course it’s simple to break it down that way, and to an outsider it appears an easy thing to do. But spend enough time watching the pit masters and the sausage-makers and the butchers relying on nothing but their senses and intuition to consistently deliver the quality and the sensory experience that makes a visit to the place memorable, and you realize that it’s not so simple to put it all together.

John Fullilove, Smitty's grandson and the shop's manager, takes a break in the hall that used to house the market's main dining area.

But don’t take it from me. Next time you’re in Austin, take a drive about 30 miles south to the little town of Lockhart. Drive past the giant tourist trap of Kreuz Market and pull off U.S. highway 183 into the dirt and gravel parking lot. Walk through the back door and let the smoke hit you as you stroll past the open flame of the pit, and order your meat. It’ll be served up on a pieice of butcher paper with nothing but some white bread and a knife–there are no forks here. Plunk down your cash (no credit cards, please), take your package, and have a seat at one of the community tables in the dining room. Dig in.

It’s just that simple.