Faces of Football

QT Preston

The first time I saw QT I liked her because of that smile.  She was smiling then, she's smiling now.  One of these days, if okay with her, I'll profile her in this blog. 

This was her rookie year in football and she did good.  It will be fun to get to know her and tell her story to you.

Today's post is just a collection of photos of Outlaws, up close.  Photos I like.  I hope you like them, too.

This is Tiffany, another happy player.  She's been with the Outlaws a long time, which is why I know her name.  I'm not going to name all the players below.  I'm terrible with names and player numbers don't show up in many of these photos.  Tiffany and QT are happy Outlaws.  I think the rest of the Outlaws in this post are also happy but you'll see that some are a little more serious.  At least they were when I snapped the photo.

I hope you can see the photo above the way I see it on my computer.  I love the serious expression.  This young Outlaw is fully engaged just about an hour before kickoff.  And I like is the quality of the focus, the clarity of the image.  I shoot action and candid shots.  Often the exposure is imperfect, the focus slightly off.  This photo is sharp and clear, about as good as I get.  So I like her expression and I like my perfect picture.

Football is serious.  Fun, sometimes funny, but it involves hitting and hitting is serious.  Many of my candid shots involve various forms of serious.  Such as the three below.

Smiling Outlaws.  Serious Outlaws. Silly Outlaws?  Well, normally I'm the silly one but sometimes...

In my previous post I acknowledged something you've already noticed - I'm kind of silly.  Silly thoughts, silly photos.  Football is serious but I'm not playing or coaching, I'm a (wannabe) photographer looking for pictures to post on my blog. 

Ereka Howard has become one of my favorite photo subjects.  She represents the range from serious to silly to interesting.  Here are two photos of Ereka.  The first is silly.  She saw my camera pointed her way during a game and knew I needed help getting a fun photo.  Silly?  Thanks Ereka.

Ereka Howard, clowning for the photographer.  I don't like the black mouthpieces.  When I played
I don't think we used mouthpieces.  Now players use a variety of colors.  Who would think the moutpiece
would become a fashion statement.  "I matches your uniform,,,"

Ereka also gave me one of my all time favorite photos.  This was accidental  led to an interesting shot that fits the faces of football theme.  Ereka's facial expressions are always interesting.  Always expressive

She was running a pass pattern with her usual exuberance.  The ball was sailing toward her and her facial expression says it was going to be a difficult catch.  Unnoticed by her and by me one of the coaches stepped in front of my camera appearing as a ghostly apparition in the right side of the frame.  Everything came together for a perfect picture. Ereka's eyes appear to be on the ghost.  Her expression shocked, frightened, appropriate to the situation.  I don't know if this really fits the theme of "faces of football" although it truly is just that.

Finally another accidental faces-of-football photo.  My last post was a playful look at the biggest Outlaw, Maile, and the smallest Outlaw, Rubi.  I had asked them if "they'd join me in a little fun project."  They agreed and we spent a little time at the park shooting dozens of photos intended to playfully illustrate the size differential.  Most of the photos didn't get used.  There's only so much space in the blog and, sadly, many of the shots didn't do what I was trying to do. 

As I looked for photos for this post, I revisited the Rubi/Maile photo shoot and I found the picture below.  In fact, it is part of a larger photo we didn't us.  Remembering when I was a kid (a loooong time ago) I recalled parents having sons, daughters, cousins, stand back-to-back to see who was growing fastest (a contest I often won).  I figured if it worked for kids it would work for Outlaws and I had had the players stand back-to-back.  I was wrong.  I didn't work with Rubi and Maile.   

But the theme of this post is faces and when I revisited the back-to-back I zoomed in to faces.  And I like the result.  Not silly, not serious, not eerie.  Just two Outlaws, a quarterback and linewoman, enjoying teaming up, this time not to win a game but to help me with my blog.

Rubi and Maile