Capturing the action. It's 90 percent mental.

Attending this past weekend's NASTAR national Alpine ski championships (www.Nastar.com), I am reminded why I love shooting sporting events. Being close to the action. After all, shooting sports what's made jump into photography with both feet.

Sometimes, I'm close enough to become a part of the action. Like on Saturday, when the skier from Detroit caught an edge rounding a post and came flying at me full speed. Before me I saw he eyes widen through his red-tinted goggles, and his arms and legs flailing out of control. I regrettably abandoned getting the shot and did a quick reverse pivot and outstretched dive headfirst. I planted myself and my camera equipment off-course and into the ski slope. The plume of snow covered us both, with the skidding racer's head stopping at my feet. All was good.

Of course, as a photographer I love being in the action as long as I don't actually affect the action. Being invisible is perfect. The nice part of carrying a big enough camera around at sporting events, or most events for that matter, I almost feel invisible.

With adequate credentials and an attitude of belonging there, I can gain almost unlimited access and get close to the action. Court-side at basketball. Sidelines at football. On the deck at swim meets. Along side the apparatus at gymnastics. Inside the dugout at baseball. On the running surface at track & field. Behind the net at soccer. Inside the velodrome at bike track racing. And on the trail in Nordic skiing, cross-country, cyclocross and mountain biking. Best seat in the house! Better yet, I'm often embedded. Right within the teams. I hear the sideline chatter, from the players, the coaches and between the coaches and the game officials. As such, I get a real sense of the vibe, the feeling. The attitude.

Yogi Berra said it best, "Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical."

Thanks Yogi. So much of sport and athletic performance is mental. Those who win are separated from the rest in large part by how they develop and flex the muscle between their ears. And that point of view was undeniably confirmed in a recent dinnertime conversation I was able to have with Olympic Nordic Combined gold and silver medalist Billy Demong. "Sometimes I actually get up in the morning and actually feel sorry for the person I'm competing against," Billy explained as he talked about how powerful attitude is towards winning. Some days you have it. Others you don't. Billy explained that as an athlete, you just have to hope it peaks at the most important times. Believe me, getting to talk with Billy for this time I can confirm, he wasn't bragging. He was just making the point that the real action of sport is mental.

So with camera strapped around my neck, I keep doing what I can to get close enough to capture the physical and mental action of sport. Then I'm sure I've got the best seat in the house.

Live each day as a tourist. (Visitez le jour)

Anytime Scott, my brother, calls me, my first question to him is, "Where are you?"

His answers range from being on his way home stuck in Chicagoland traffic to his telling me he's walking the Red Square in Moscow, to driving Dubai (while at the same time I was at a Green Bay Packers game), to being in Singapore, Bangkok, Capetown, Tokyo, Manila, Kuala Lumpur ("Again?" I ask), Saigon, Sydney. . . . Well you get the idea.

Scott's a worldly traveler to say the least. As I write this he's towards the end of one of his trips, I believe today in Tokyo. He's in something like 1o to 20 countries a year and at times his travels have taken him literally around the globe. And because he works in industrial manufacturing, he's not jumping off an airplane and taking a cab to the nearest skyscraper. Rather, he's got tales of riding trains overnight (in sleeper cells that are great if you're about 5' tall) and hours of car rides to places most of us have never heard of, much less pronounce.

I love hearing about his voyages, because as a twin, I have to admit I live vicariously through them. While my photo tours take me to the depths of foreign Minneapolis neighborhoods with unrecognizable dialects, I know I'm just 5-10 minutes from a familiar cafe where if necessary I can digest all I've taken in. Conversely, I realize he's in places where he's no closer than a 15 hour flight away from the comforts of his local Starbuck's.

"Live each day as a tourist." It's long been a motto of mine. For when I'm a tourist, my senses are open and accepting of all that's out there. It's not so easy to do. I realize sometimes that the hardest part of travel are the little navigations that trip me up. Like the time I tried to drive out of the Brisbane, Queensland parking lot after a 24-hour series of flights, only to realize I was driving on the wrong side of the road. (As opposed to the "right" side, as we Americans like to call it.) Or on the same trip when I constantly tried to use my turn signal only it was my windshield wiper. And then there was the time Camille and I tried desperately to purchase train tickets in Vienna. After repeated failed attempts to purchase our passes in a cigar shop as instructed, I spotted a vending machine at the rail stop. Running across the street to the machine, I proudly felt like the problem-solver and began inserting coins into the box. After all, we were just in Frankfurt for a week and I was getting used to the ever-efficient German systems to purchase tickets. Only, I was in Austria, and as I inserted a second coin I realized I was purchasing a pack of condoms. Ah, the nuances of being in new places.

Today's shot comes from the birthplace of Minneapolis, the shores of the St. Anthony neighborhood. The Stone Arch Bridge is a wonderful tourist attraction, affording beautiful views up and down the Mighty Mississippi. It's a bit of a cliché shot, but it did take a little getting off the beaten path to capture this vantage point. But well worth the trek through wooded brambles and lying dead trees that blocked clear passage.

I take a lot of what I do each day for granted. And that's not so much a bad thing. After all, I appreciate not having to learn how to make coffee each morning. But it does limit me from realizing who and what surrounds me. The camera around my neck and pack of lenses on my back is a good reminder.

Visitez le jour!

Sometimes I can't see what I can see.

There's an oft shared exchange between photographers shooting a sporting event.

"Getting any good shots?"

"I don't know until I get home."

"Yeah. I hear ya."

The fact is, even with all the planning, observation, equipment, positioning, adjustments, shutter flaps, monitor peeks, and luck that goes behind shooting an event with hopes and dreams of capturing the perfect shot, way often I get back home, or to the hotel and can't wait to see what I caught. I mean, honestly, it's almost like Christmas morning opening up a present that has a shape I have no clue about what's wrapped inside.

How can this be?

The fact is, those disks are little bundles of surprises.

Some not so good.

How did that light pole end up coming out of the side of her head? Why isn't that horizon line level? Do you think I could figure out how to not get a blurry shot, even when using a tripod? Ooooh. I don't think I'll use a fisheye lens when shooting people at an event again, unless it's about a circus family.

But sometimes, thankfully, those surprises are just . . . wonderful.

Where did those yellows in the ice come from? Cool reflection off that windshield. Look how those shadows lay against that textured surface. I like the pattern from the ceiling beams. Ahh, look how those lights sparkle like stars. The photo for today was taken on the St. Croix River. The springtime breaking up of the ice was so amazing. I loved the different shapes and textures. But to be honest, I never saw all those colors. They were only revealed after uploading the shots to my laptop. I popped up the vibrancy to help make the colors come more alive and thought it turned out way different than what I actually saw.

Writing today's entry compelled me to pull a couple dusty books off the bookshelf, and reminds me of third, Defensible Space by Kevin Lynch, that I think I'll leave up there for now. It's too text heavy and too many flashbacks to Land Use Planning CRP845. I struggled in that class until I finally figured out by mid-term that the class met Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. (I had another class scheduled at that time on Fridays. You're supposed to be smart enough to not have to need guidance counselors in grad school to be sure you're not double-booking classes, right?)

Where was I?

Oh, the first of the two books is How to See, A Guide to Reading our Manmade Environment by George Nelson. I see Amazon's got a copy of it dated Jan 2003. My dusty one is from 1977. I've long appreciated this book as a wonderful prompt of thinking about what to look for when out wandering aimlessly, or even while driving hard to a determined destination. It's a good read and filled with lots of photographs to illustrate design concepts.

The second one is Interaction of Color by Joseph Albers. I'll start by re-review with the text I highlighted in this book. And wow, there's still has the receipt in it as a bookmark; Walker Art Center, July 22, 1983. That was like the first week I moved to Minneapolis. What was I thinking back then?

Seems maybe even back then I was seeing something I didn't know I was seeing. Some of my future.