Photography usually
takes a back seat in January as the winter weather turns vegetation dull and
uninteresting and snow is intermittent in the mid-Atlantic. Of course, there
are chances as a few storms come through and leave blankets of snow, ice, or a
mixture. Maybe I am just not imaginative enough to see the opportunities. Nonetheless,
January is usually a time where I don’t take a lot of photos. That is until I
started shooting the girls basketball team last year. It is more of the same
this year. But this January has some additional activity and success – My boss’
retirement ceremony and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. March here in
Leesburg added lots of opportunities. All this has led to a backlog of photos
to sort through and edit.
One of my goals
for the year was to get more photos published in the paper. Lucky timing has
helped to meet that goal. Yesterday’s edition of the Loudoun Times Mirror was
the fourth straight edition to publish one or more of my photos. First, a shot
of the football coach was used to announce his resignation. The next two weeks
saw one of the photos for a blurb about a player breaking her school scoring
record followed by three photos for a feature on her and her sister. Yesterday’s
edition had a photo from a game where the undefeated team was upset. The pictures
were good, but being at the right place at the right time was the biggest
contributor getting them posted.
Time to go edit some photos and post them later.
More decades ago
than I care to admit, our high school girls basketball games were slow and not taken very seriously. They played right after school was done for the day and used a running clock, which shortened the playing time. Participation was limited primarily to the season. They never had the opportunity to fully develop their skills. Thanks to Title VII, girls now have opportunities in sport that their grandmothers never did. The level of training and coaching has elevated their play dramatically. The level of intensity on the
faces of these girls from Tuscarora High School and Stone Bridge High School
earlier this week shows how serious they are about the sport. 
