Wanamaker Photography

The Baseball season and I haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye so far this year. Each time I’ve had a scheduled game to attend for Minisink Valley, it has either been postponed or cancelled because of the rain. After weeks of the game between the weather and myself, I finally got my chance to photograph the Minisink Valley Varsity Baseball team when they played against the Cornwall Dragons at home in a non-league game.

As this was one of my first Baseball games of the season, I decided that I needed to warm up the skills a bit and so I decided to shoot a few frames of Minisink during practice. A few frames turned into a few hundred by the time I was done!

As the game got under way, the clouds (which seemed to be messing with me during practice)  finally parted completely and it turned into an incredible day for a Baseball game!

From right next to the first base umpire, I grabbed this shot of CJ Callaghan just before he smacked this ball into the outfield …

And this one of Mat Hannon repeating the same move …

As the game went on, I started focusing on some of the action on second and third base as Minisink had runners pumped and ready to go. It was a good thing I did. I grabbed this shot of Nick Iannuzzi sliding into third as the thirdbaseman caught and was about ready to pitch the ball back to first.

As exciting as the game was, I left around the top of the 6th inning as I had other obligations to attend to … but I did find out later on that Minisink lost the game 11 to 19.

Yesterday, I photographed my first High School Lacrosse game at Minisink Valley. While I’ve photographed Lacrosse before (2007 Minisink Swap Stix Match), I had never covered a high school game where everything seems to be 10x more violent.

It was a cold, cloudy and overall dreary day as we headed onto the field. As we finished setting up our gear, the teams were getting ready to take the field. The Minisink Varsity team was about to play Hyde Park (FDR) High School.

As the game got under way, I quickly saw that Lacrosse was a mix between Football and Hockey. Players were getting whacked with sticks and body checked by opponents in a fight over a little white ball that could knock you out cold if it hit you just right!

The first half was played extremely well by Minisink as they scored a goal nearly every 10 seconds (or so it seemed). I actually had to move from one end of the field to the other as I had no action down by me and was starting to get bored!

Minisink wasn’t as strong in the second half, but still beat Hyde Park by a lot!

A group of Minisink and FDR players chasing a failed pass

A Minisink player going after a bouncing ball

An FDR player with the ball heading down field. The Minisink player in the middle actually lost his balance on the wet field after trying to catch up

A pep talk by the coach during a time out

Just as a little note, these games were actually photographed a couple weekends ago. We’ve just been so busy with everything lately, that we haven’t had much time to sit down and get new content up on the blog. I guess that’s a good thing because business everywhere else has been slow. However, its a bad thing too as I love to keep this blog updated with new stuff!

Anyways, these games were played between the U7 and U8 Divisions of the High Point Soccer Club on a field tucked away in the woods of Northern New Jersey. The day was absolutely beautiful (as you can tell) and both Loretta and myself got really nice sunburns!

Here are a couple shots from those games! We’ll try and get more uploaded in the next couple days or so!

Last year, our introduction to the sport of Lacrosse started with an invitation to photograph the annual Boys vs Girls Swap Stix Match at Minisink Valley High School. Unfortunately, that game was nearly at the end of the season for the teams and we only had a couple more opportunities to photograph them before it was all over.

During the off-season, after a couple phone calls, we had a contract with Minisink Valley to cover the 2008 season for the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams. Finally, Lacrosse season is here!

I love Lacrosse because its fast and action packed and reminds me a little bit of Hockey. Last Wednesday was my first game for Minisink Valley Varsity as they played Valley Central at home. These two teams have always been big rivals and the game they played was tough. Here are some of the shots …

As a follow up to my last post about becoming the official I9 Sports Photographers …

This past Sunday was Portrait Day for the Spring I9 Flag Football League. With temperatures hovering around 45 degrees, an 11-mph breeze crossing the field and no sun to speak of, we knew it was going to feel like one of our fall sports leagues!

In between portraits for the different groups of players, I would grab the Mark III with the 70-200mm lense and head over a snap a couple shots of the kids playing their game.

I love this one shot (that I captured by accident) in that the player in red has his eye intently focused on the ball carrier’s flags. I didn’t realize I had captured this shot until we took a look at it on the computer later in the day …

As I headed back to get ready to photograph the last group, some of them (while waiting for the rest of their teammates) decided to practice a little to try and stay warm. As they would pass the ball, I would follow the runner down the field a little to try and capture a jump-and-catch shot. Well … this was the only kid who was able to do just that …

And just before we headed out, I looked down one of the fields and couldn’t help but capture this one shot …