Madness!

College basketball is officially heating up and two guys that I got shoot last year for SLAM Magazine are right in the middle of it. Mouphtaou Yarou and Isaiah Armwood, shown in that order below, now play for the tenth ranked Villanova Wildcats. 

Both guys attended Montrose Christian School which is just North of D.C. and has produced several NBA players most notably Kevin Durant. 

Isaiah, who is originally from Baltimore grabbed a bit of highlight time early on by getting a number one play of the day on ESPN with a dunk over 7 guys at a contest you can see here. We tried to recreate it with Mouphtaou, but as you can see below it didn't quite work. After doing it like two times Isaiah kind of pulled up lame with his leg. I of course immediately put an end to that shot idea, the last thing I needed was to end some kids career over a photo shoot! 

So as a second idea I had Isaiah dunk while Mouphtaou threw the ball off the backboard, spun around in the air with the ball over his head like he was looking to pass down the court while still in the air. Yeah...sometimes the ideas you get in your head probably need to be run by a czar of common sense. In the end I think we actually got a decent shot, you can see it in the last set of pictures. 

That being said trying to time two people jumping in the air is fairly hard. Trying to time two people jumping in the air doing different things is harder. Trying to time two people doing two different basketball skills in the air at the same time is really hard. Trying to time two people doing two different basketball skills in the air (one of those skills being the rebound outlet pass combo being pretty hard) and not have some weird face or shorts bunching up or an elbow covering up there face is just STUPID HARD! But sometimes you just got to figure out the hard way that what's in your head is not the easiest thing to recreate. In the meantime you still might get some sweet images. 

Mouphtaou, who goes by Mouph is actually from Benin, Africa. He came to the U.S. in 2007 after only playing basketball since 2004. Apparently being 6'10" and 250 lbs translates well to basketball. Of course before basketball his thing was soccer...I think he made the right choice. And to just make you feel a little more humbled Mouph speaks five languages. 

In a cool move, after both playing at Montrose where I shot them, the two decided to both go to the save college. It's always exciting for me to turn on ESPN and catch a Nova game and see them. They were both very nice to work with and it's harder to imagine a nicer Goliath than Mouph. Oh and before I left they introduced me to a teammate of theirs who was also from Benin. He was seven feet tall and in the tenth grade. I got the shaft being born in Avon Park, Florida for sure! 

All the best to the guys in the tournament! I'm sure they'll be thinking of me every time they have to simultaneously dunk a ball and rebound another basketball, spin around in the air and look to make an outlet pass down court. 

Mario Pino

One of the most interesting jobs I have got to do since moving to Baltimore was shooting portraits of people involved in the Maryland horse racing industry. In recent years the industry has struggled and then the owner of Pimlico, the crown jewel or Maryland racing filed for chapter 11. 

I shot a breeder, trainer, assistant trainer, gambler, activist and a jockey. These are some photos of the jockey Mario Pino. Mario came in second in the Kentucky Derby in 2007 riding Hard Spun. Turns out he's pretty legendary in the area as a jokey. Amazingly too he turns 50 next year! 

My knowledge of horse racing before this was nonexistent so it was so interesting to get such an intimate and wide ranging peak into the sport of kings. And you quickly see why it is the sport of kings and why it probably struggles now financially. I was told it can cost in the area of 40 grand a year to train a horse. So of course if you have 10 or more horses that adds up fast! 

Mario turned out to be very nice. We took these shots a little before and after his races. The original idea was to have a horse in the shot but amazingly this turned out to be nearly impossible. Due to track edict and the fact that race horses apparently basically will not stand still for much time we ended up shooting these instead which I thought came out wonderfully.