I spent much of yesterday in Ashburn at Redskins Park for the team’s first minicamp of the year. One of the media relations guys said he was surprised at the amount of coverage for voluntary workouts. Maybe so but I guess with a new coach, Donovan McNabb in burgundy and gold and a few new running backs, it was to be expected. Basically it took 90 minutes to get there, 90 minutes to get back and 25 minutes to shoot if you don’t count the hour-long press conference after practice, for which I had to wait another 90 minutes. I discovered early on that a lot of this job is waiting – waiting for access, waiting for the right light or composition to come together. It also took me a little while to learn that time spent waiting was not necessarily time wasted.

I recently wrapped up the winter All-Area sportraits. Of the bunch, I was really happy with this one of Avery Green, a basketball player for Courtland High School. He was fun to work with and was interested in the process of his portrait.  As I was writing this and looking at the other 6 photos in the series, all I could think of were excuses about why the pictures sucked. And since nobody likes hearing excuses, I’ll leave you with the one picture I actually liked. The rest were not bad; they were just average. It is definitely a bummer having to admit to a certain level of failure but I must say I came into the project without a clear plan or approach.  I think I’ll take the spring off and let one of my colleagues experience the joy that is All-Area while I cook up some ideas for our football preview!