SportsShooter Academy VIII (SSA VIII)

The past 12 months have been extremely busy on the sports side of things and have resulted in me being able to shoot for a large variety of services and different organizations. I’ve had the chance to cover everything from youth cheerleading, to all of the high school stuff I can stand, to NASCAR, UT (that’s THE University of Tennessee for you out-of-towners), NFL, MLS, etc. The good part is a lot of my work is getting quite a bit of use, including the Sports Illustrated Cover mentioned here.

With all that said, what follows was definitely the most fantastic five days of sports photography on the planet. A few weeks ago I was able to attend SportsShooter Academy VIII in Irvine, CA and it certainly lived up to it’s billing as “The COOLEST Sports Photography Event of the YEAR!”

Let’s start with the staff and faculty, which instead of listing separately just take a look at this link  and think what it would be like to hang out with this “Whos-Who” list of photographers, let alone have them instruct you, shoot with you, and then critique your work, all on a daily basis. There’s just nothing like having your toes in the Pacific Ocean, photographing surfers, and being able to turn to John McDonough and ask, “How many focus points are you using, John?” In addition, we students were continually pushed to “See better, Shoot better”, which kinda sounds like standard workshop stuff, but they have really helped me with the ability to see things outside of the normal everyday grind of sports photography.

Just noticed that a few folks were not on the list I linked above, including Tim Mantoani, Shawn Cullen, and Jordan Murph. Three more awesome people that I learned a TON from. Also NPS (Nikon) was there with crates (yes, crates…well at least one great big crate) of equipment that was available for us to use every day. Need a D3s and a 500mm f/4.0 lens?…sure thing, here you goIn addition Nikon, Samy’s Camera (also on site), and Think Tank were huge supporters of the workshop, so big thanks to them.

OK, enough atta-boys…if you want to further your education and networking in Sports Photography, you need to attend this workshop! On to the goods…

Here’s a short video showing the workshop in action.

SSA VIII: On Location, Cal State Fullerton from Sports Shooter Academy on Vimeo.

 

Here’s a gallery of some of my favorites from the workshop.

 

And one more video, from a Go Pro Camera that was mounted on a 70-200 lens hood (pointed back towards the photographer). Be sure and watch the crash at the end

Sports Shooter Academy VIII: Football POV from Sports Shooter Academy on Vimeo.

 

This Link will take you to all of the videos. I really can not stress what a great experience this was…to have the staff on the sidelines shooting with you and then having them critique the images (every day) was a remarkable learning experience. Huge thanks are due to Robert Hanashiro and Matt Brown (and everyone else), they have really got this one down right!