Missouri splits it’s Championship Basketball across two weekends to accommodate the 80 games played by 40 teams across 5 classes. So I was back and Mizzou Arena, and even Hearnes Center, to shoot some more High School State Basketball. This week I was stringing for the St. Joseph News-Press covering the Class 1 Jefferson girls and Class 3 Maryville girls. Didn’t get a whole lot out of Maryville, who pretty much shot exclusively from the perimeter, and lost their first game and won the 3rd place game.
Jefferson was a different story. They made it to the Championship game, probably with a few bruises too-Class 1 girls play rough. But they couldn’t win out so I got the whole range of emotion from just one team. It was fun and even a little gut wrenching. In all the dejection photos I’ve taken, I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time editing them. Partially because I had so much from just one girl, who was a freshman no less (there wasn’t even one senior on the team), and because I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so torn up about it.

I covered two teams for two different papers last weekend for the Missouri State High School Basketball Tournament. It was a lot of work, especially since both teams made it to the championships and the championship games were back to back. But I was able to get both ends of the spectrum since Notre Dame lost thier game, but Kearney won.

I shot a group photo of all the Tiger X instructors at the Rec Center (well the ones that showed up anyway, there are more than 70). I had some advance notice on this, but still had a bit of a last minute rush to come up with things. I didn’t find out until the day before the shoot that there would be 70+ people in the photo, which threw my plans for the shoot out the window. Plus one of the Rec’s Alien Bee 800s burnt out while I was doing a yoga shoot the day before (look for some of those to come tomorrow). So when I got to work, I basically had half an hour to find a new location and figure out how to light it for about 60 people using only one light and a softbox. No problem.

I grabbed a small ladder (about 5 ft) and cranked my light stand up as high as it could go, angled down about 35 degrees. I turned the softbox horizontal and gaff taped a 20×30″ piece of foam core board to the top to act as a bounce card to push the light back a bit. Little bit of guess and check on the exposure and viola!

I found out not one hour before I started writing this post that one of my photos, the photo of Ricky Kreklow hanging out playing video games with his friends before a game

was taken, from this site, reprinted in mass, and used as a way to taunt Ricky during a game tonight against his high school’s long time rival. Now, I spent enough time with Ricky to know that the action of these kids didn’t really phase him during the game. He is a very smart kid, a talented player, and knows what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Obviously, the actions anyone involved in this ‘stunt’, do bother me. The photos included the file name of the photo, which includes a coding of my name, mcav. It goes into the file name of every single photo I take as a way to identify myself. Never did I think it would backfire on me. See, I haven’t given Ricky any of the photos I took of him last December. I haven’t even shown them to him because I was waiting until a time where I could afford to make him some high quality prints as my way of saying “Thanks for letting me invade your life.” But like I said, Ricky is smart. He can easily put two and two together and know that the photo was the one I took.
Almost immediately after I found out about this, I texted him to let him know that I did not give permission to anyone to use the photo and that I was going to start looking into who did use the photo. Now here comes the sticky.
While the notice “All Content © Matthew P. Cavanah” appears on the bottom of every page of this blog, and sometimes in individual posts or even photos, depending on how likely I think they are to be stolen, (Let’s face it, I don’t think anyone besides me and my family really care to have photos of my nephew.) there isn’t a whole lot within the realm of Blogger that I can do to prevent people from taking my photos. It’s a chance a lot of up and coming photographers take. We can’t afford fancy websites that have built in right click protection or other methods that would have prevented this from happening. And I need a refresher course before I start tinkering with Bloggers html to attempt to put an invisible box or something to protect my photos.
But like I said, this is a risk that a lot of photographers take. Make a blog on a free website in hopes of getting noticed, and eventually gainfully employed, which is at the forefront of my “To Do” list, at the risk of people coming and taking our photos for our own use.
I’m curious as to what other people think about this and where do they draw the line with their blog. I’m not talking about putting in watermarks or sizing down photos to make it so hard copies are tiny (a tactic I obviously don’t subscribe to here…I like big photos). I mean at what point do you say, this is too valuable to blog, I need to save this from the millions of people out there that think taking a photo without permission is ok?

*Also-I’m aware that the color of the photo in this post, and the original post it came from (“Ricky Kreklow: No Looking Back”) may be very…scrambled…on some browsers. As far as I can tell, this has to do with how the photos were processed. I shot them using a 5DmkII but I do not have CS4 and could not process the .cr2 files from the camera properly. Using PhotoMechanic, I extracted jpg previews so that I could open them in Photoshop. I think at that point is where the problem happened, but at this stage, short of taking the whole lot of photos through a computer with CS4 and reprocessing them, there’s not a whole lot I can do. Sorry for the inconvenience

After a stint as an Assistant Director of Photography at the Missourian for four weeks I’m back at the Rec until I land myself a more permanent job elsewhere. I got asked to go out and shoot some bike racks for a proposal the facility manager was putting together and I found this lil’ guy.

He just wants to ride!

While on the road to Troy Buchanan High School in Troy, Mo., Rock Bridge senior Ricky Kreklow settles in for the hour and a half long bus ride by finding a song on his iPhone. “Nobody around Columbia wants to play a school our size.” Rock Bridge’s schedule involves numerous road games against Kansas City and St. Louis opponents. Being on the road has become something of a metaphor for Kreklow in his final year at Rock Bridge. Both recovery from numerous injuries sustained in his junior year and having verbally committed to play at the University of Missouri next year have Kreklow looking at what lies ahead.

During a physical therapy session, Physical Therapist Cynthia Komes works over Kreklow’s leg joints. Towards the end of the 2008-2009 season Kreklow suffered from a number of injuries included a stress fracture in his right ankle and a ruptured disk in his back, which led to surgery in August. Not to be put down by the injuries, Kreklow made a steady recovery and was able to start his final season at Rock Bridge without trouble. “You almost don’t need me anymore, Ricky,” Komes commented during the therapy session.

Kreklow listens as Rock Bridge head coach Jim Scanlon instructs the team on things the need to remember when they play defense in an upcoming game.

Before setting off for a road game in Troy, Mo Kreklow spends some time playing video games with childhood friends and teammates Trey Millard (left), and Justin Miller (right) at Kreklow’s home in Columbia, Mo.

Kreklow prepares for a game against McCleur North on Dec. 11, 2009 in the Troy Buchanan High School locker room during the Troy People’s Bank Tournament. “I always get nervous I’m going to forget something,” Kreklow said. “I have to check and make sure I have everything three or four times.”

Kreklow attempts to drive to the basket early in the second half of the Troy People’s Bank Tournament championship game against McCleur North. Rock Bridge would lose 67-78. Following the game Rock Bridge head coach Jim Scanlon said, “Ricky looked like the only one out there that wanted it all.”

While Kreklow’s teammates wait in silence for head coach Scanlon to enter the locker room following the team’s loss to McCleur North, Kreklow examines a bleeding rash on his hip from diving after a loose ball. “Its not like you can play the game over,” Kreklow said. “You just have to move on to the next game.”

Can I have a CPOY award now?