CaryEdmondson.com

By being a bad son and missing Mother’s Day with my own mom… I was able to witness a day in baseball history on May 9, 2010. I had the good fortune of photographing the 19th “perfect game” ever pitched in Major League Baseball history. Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden faced 27 batters from the Tampa Bay Rays and retired all 27 of them.

I was already trained for something like this a couple of weeks earlier when the Yankees Phil Hughes took a no-hitter into the 8th inning before giving up a hit. But this was something even more special considering the A’s Braden didn’t give up any walks and his team committed no errors. By about the fifth inning I was paying close attention to what was going on. I think I was in the same boat as everyone else… at some point you just expected the other team to get a hit, or a walk… something to mess the day up. But Braden just kept getting everyone out… and when it was time for the 9th inning to begin I couldn’t believe that a Perfect Game was three outs away from becoming a reality.

All of the veteran photographers were talking about how they remember when a hitter broke up a “no-hit” attempt in San Francisco with two outs in the ninth inning several years back. Everyone was being a pessimist. No one thought Braden was actually going to become a part of baseball history.

But he did… and I still can’t believe I was there to see it… let alone get pictures!

After all the photos were transmitted for the day… I called my mother and thanked her for letting me shoot the game without guilt. Funniest part of the call was that she thought I meant I had “shot” the perfect game rather than “witnessed” a perfect game. Couldn’t help at laugh at that one… but it was indeed a great Mother’s Day. Thanks Mom!

I had another “senior” shoot with a student from Stan State this last Monday when we went out and took some shots of Marisol who is graduating in June with a degree in business. I’ve done plenty of shoots with Marisol for the university, but this was the first time we went off campus to take some photos. We started out by driving up into the hills, but once we stepped out of the car we quickly learned that we should’ve brought some insect repellant because the mesquitoes were in full “attack mode” that afternoon! But Marisol toughed it out and got some great shots despite the amount of ‘biting’ that was going on up there.

Once we finished a couple rounds in the hills we were forced with a decision. My assistant and I were trying to decide if we should keep shooting in different locations throughout the hills, or even if we should take some shots out by a haystack we saw just before driving into the hills. We had to decide fast because we didn’t have too much light to work with at this point. There was a location full of crates I saw in town near the railroad tracks which I really wanted to shoot… but I knew it would be pointless if the light was gone. So I made an executive decision and we skipped the haystack and headed out towards the crates. Once we got to the location the light was perfect and we started taking some cool shots… and we were all super happy with the photos we got from that spot! I was really happy with the shoot at the end of  the day.

Oh… and it’s Marisol’s birthday today… so happy birthday Marisol… hope you enjoy the pics!

Last week I went out to take some pictures with Katrice… a student from Stan State who is graduating next month. Katrice was looking for some “not-so-normal” senior pictures to use with her graduation invitations. So I did some scouting with a co-worker the week before and we found a couple of cool spots in town to take some photos. We didn’t have much sun to work with in the evening… but there were definitely some nice clouds that we ended up taking advantage of. But to be honest, I almost didn’t take full advantage of the clouds because after arriving to our second location, I was ready to get started and get some photos against another colorful wall. But my assistant, Jas, convinced me to cross the street and take advantage of the beautiful sky… and I’m glad we did because we got a couple of great shots out of it. Overall I was really happy with the shoot and I have to give extra credit to Katrice who did a great job modeling and ‘toughing it out’ in the cold because it got pretty chilly by the end of the night. Looking forward to doing some more portraits in the future after this.