Superman Flash Back

Yesterday I had the sad experience of making my only venture outside my dwelling be to watch the Orlando Magic lose their first playoff game to the Boston Celtics. Ughh and it was sooo close! They dug themselves a 20 point hole and then just couldn't quite make the comeback and lost by four. UGGGHHHH still maddening!!!

The Magic's star player is Dwight Howard, a physical freak who has muscle that previously were reserved only for action figures. Back in 2005 I got the chance to interview and photograph Dwight for Listen Magazine. At that time I think he had just turned 19 and I was 20. He turned out to be just a genuinely nice guy, one of the few professional athletes I've ever met where I left thinking they would be fun to be friends with regardless of their fame. 

For the piece I went to a game in Orlando and interviewed Howard and shot game photos. The next day I went to a practice and did the portraits. For the portraits I had my mom assist me. As you can see from her picture she was out of her mind excited to do it. Although, when I introduced her to Dwight he called her Mom and that won her over. She doesn't know a thing about him otherwise I don't think, but if we're watching him on TV she always points out, "He called me Mom!" 

I did the portraits in about 5 minutes with my mom holding up white foam core as the backdrop. Natural light and a basketball from my school's old P.E. closet. I ended up really liking the bottom one and at the time think it was one of the best pictures that had been taken of him for publication. Since then he has blown up nationally as a sports star and tons of great pictures have been taken. But, I can always say I knew him when...well when he was only the size of a truck...now he's more like a semi. 

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.