All three Columbus-area guys soccer teams in each of the three divisions won their respective state games on Friday. Worthington Christian won 2-1 in overtime. St. Francis DeSales beat their opponent 1-0 in regulation. The third game, Gahanna Lincoln vs. St. Ignatius, remained scoreless after two overtimes, so they went to a shootout. The Lions won the shootout 4-3 to claim the state title.

Shooting three consecutive soccer games in the same day proved to be physically exhausting. I was in quite a daze through most of the two overtime periods in the third game. Thankfully the excitement of the shootout gave me a jolt of adrenaline that woke me up a bit.

Despite the limitations, I was firmly in my element at the pool. Since I grew up as a swimmer, lifeguard, and coach, I think there are probably still traces of chlorine in my blood. It was an assignment that I specifically requested and one that other photographers thanked me for taking. I had a good time shooting, and I hope that comes through in the photos.

As an aside, if you’re a photographer looking to buy rain gear, don’t buy Tenba. Anything heavier than a slight drizzle, and you’re gear is soaked. I hope ThinkTank will soon come out with something that fits lenses shorter than 400mm.

As far as the game went, it was a blowout. In the first meeting of Worthington Kilbourne and Thomas Worthington, Kilbourne came out on top 43-3. As expected, considering the conditions, it was a very sloppy game.

Glenn DeMott helps cut fallen limbs out of Denise Worthington’s Upper Arlington front yard on Sept. 15.

While walking to a friend’s house, Chad Mayhorn, 23, of Westerville stops to record a webcam video of a downed powerline and tree that fell on a car in the middle of Highway 161 in Worthington on Sept. 15.

While playing in Monterey Park on Sept. 15, Kornelijus Lesniauskas, 4, and his brother Emilius, 2, push their toys under a downed tree caused by wind damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ike that blew through town on Sept. 14.

I still don’t have electricity, so I’m posting as I’m getting ready to leave work. I think we’re going to make a campfire in our back yard and roast hotdogs and make smores for dinner. Hopefully the power will be back on before breakfast. The lines at McDonalds were ridiculous this morning. No one really saw this coming, so we were all caught unprepared.

Here is a shot of Ohio State’s Chelsea Davis, the reigning NCAA 3-meter springboard diving champ. As soon as I got the assignment, I began brainstorming how I could shoot this portrait. I’ve shot a lot of diving action but only a few portraits, so I asked a few of my diving friends if they had any suggestions. I knew I would have the luxury of being able to climb to the top of the diving tower, so this was the best idea we could come up with. Since I’ve only been in the OSU aquatics facility a few times, and never for diving, my biggest concern was that I wasn’t going to have a clean background below the diving board. As you can see, it turned out perfect.

Chelsea is on the 3-meter board, and I climbed up to the top of the 10-meter platform to shoot down with my 70-200mm lens. It took a bit of moving around atop the 10m platform to get the right angle without any overhead lighting glare. I know I lost a bit of the sense of height with the longer lens, but it did a good job of giving me a clean background.

I used two lights for this. The first is shot into an umbrella reflector at the base of the diving board looking at Chelsea. The second light is below the board pointed at the water. Both were at half power triggered by Pocket Wizards.

Climbing up and down all those steps with my gear in a humid pool on a 90-degree day left me awfully sweaty by the time I got back to my car, but I’m happy with the result.

CAPTION:
Worthington Kilbourne graduate Chelsea Davis recently placed 12th at the U.S. Olympic trials on the 3-meter springboard. The Ohio State senior won the event in front of her hometown crowd at the NCAA championships in March.

Funny story for a funny picture… After taking this photo and writing down all the caption information, I proceed to take it back to the office to upload in our system. After we finish working up the photo, our workflow requires us to print out a black and white copy and place it in the corresponding edition’s bin. Since we have 23 newspapers, this keeps things a bit more organized.

As I’m putting the photo of Sam and several other pictures from the Worthington Art Festival into the Worthington bin, I see another staffer’s picture that catches my eye. It was a shot of Sam at the Worthington bike race from the day before! Talk about random! Never once did Sam’s owners mention he had just been photographed by someone from my same paper. After calling the other photographer to share the story (and getting a pretty big laugh out of the whole ordeal), we decided to use my photo of Sam looking at the bird photos due to the irony of the situation.

CAPTION:
Sam the retired 27-year-old blue and gold macaw from the now-defunct Kahiki Restaurant admires David and Joanne Kelch’s bird photography while being pushed around the Worthington Art Festival by his owners Jim Rush and Beth Mitchell, not pictured, on June 21. Sam, who worked at the Kahiki from 1982 until it closed in 2000, was admired by festival goers young and old throughout the morning.

The state championship lacrosse game between Worthington Kilbourne and Upper Arlington provided some great shots of the players putting it all out on the line and smashing into each other. Here’s the shot I like the best.

CAPTION:
Upper Arlington’s Alex Pore (26) collides with Worthington Kilbourne’s Angelo Gutierrez (25) knocking the ball loose as Kilbourne’s Pat Riffee (2) takes a hit from UA’s Cal Case (45) during the Division I state championship game at Dublin Coffman High School on June 7.