Last year, I went to the Texas Bowl in Houston as a spectator, when my alma mater (Rice) played and was victorious against Western Michigan.
This year, I went the Texas Bowl as an official part of the media corps. There’d been a lot of Internet commentary regarding Mizzou getting overlooked in the bowl selection process, and while I do feel this is true to an extent, I’m not upset with the game we were picked to play in…because it gave me a chance to go to Houston again and to actually photograph during a major (okay, mid-major) CFB matchup.
I’ve shot football exactly three times before today–once during a Rice-UHouston game in 2007 (when I was stuck shooting from the stands because my credentials were never processed correctly), once during Mizzou-Nebraska (when I didn’t get any game photos at all because I was focusing on fans), and once just for practice during a Hickman High game (when I was using just a 70-200mm)–and I was, shall we say, less than confident in my abilities to make any good pictures at all. I knew enough about college football and enough about how Mizzou and Navy both play (damn the unphotogenic running game) to not be scared completely out of my mind, but the idea that I would come back empty-handed kept nagging me. I wish it hadn’t.
This is not to imply that I took mind-blowing, paradigm-changing sports photos during the game (I didn’t), but what I took was by no means bad. I was honestly surprised by this, and in retrospect, it would have been nice to have had a little more faith in myself. I went back through the take after the first go-round of editing, and ended up finding a few MORE images that I liked, which, again, was a pleasant turn of events. All in all, at least from my perspective (not so much from Mizzou’s…), the Texas Bowl was a definite success.
In related news, I find it very strange to edit my own stuff for use in publication. I’d much rather have somebody else go through it all first.
Enjoy!
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