Spent a few minutes with Academy Award winning actor Robert Duvall at his Revolutionary War-era, 362-acre farm, known as Byrnley Farm, in The Plains, Virginia. Mr. Duvall was doing press for the upcoming film “Get Low” due out in a July 2010. Meeting Robert Duvall was a hoot but I have to admit, I was beyond words walking around his farm mostly built in the mid to late 1700′s. Without a doubt some of the most beautiful scenery in Virginia.

On the way home, I watched the trailer for his new movie and I am pretty excited about seeing it. Two of my favorite actors star in “Get Low” — Bill Murray and Robert Duvall.

Sunday’s final round at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia is hard to beat. The weather is usually beautiful and some high drama always plays out on the green at 18. I am not a golf crazy fan and insane as it seems, I have only been on a golf course as a player maybe a handful of times. No matter, getting to experience Augusta National Golf Club during Masters week is definitely a highlight for me no matter how difficult it is to cover the tournament. It really is a special place.

I think most of the professional golfers are just happy to make it through Sunday. Many would call it surviving. I know many of the photographers covering the Masters would agree. Covering the many practice rounds and the Par-3 tournament is a full week right there. Then the whole thing starts over again with the serious business of golf starting with the first round of action on Thursday ending up with Sunday’s final round and the late evening green jacket presentation.

The biggest drama for photographers is where to be on Sunday afternoon on the 18th green when the final couple of pairs usually decide the winner. For the last few years, I have always been on the wrong side of the green looking at the backside of the winner celebrating the win or blocked by an absent minded photographer. Usually, your spot is decided when you place a chair along the green’s ropes at 8AM in the morning along with hundreds of other spectators and that is where you return late in the day to shoot the eventual winner on the 18th green.

This year, I decided on making sure I got a spot in one of the three photographer pens positioned around the green. Usually full early in the day, it is a gamble finding room in one of them late in the day. The plan was for me to position in the pen opposite the photo towers where our other photographer/editor would be able to get up high over the green late in the day. After getting into my spot late in the round, I looked over the green and noticed there was still room in the most desirable photo pen. I hoofed it around the top of the green and around the thousands of patrons already in their seats and had to keep walking back down the 18 fairway in order to get past the fans in order to duck under the ropes and get back up the fairway to the green and into the photo pen. A pretty small space but room enough for maybe six or seven photographers.

Just as I got situated, the leader board threw up Phil Mickelson’s birdie on 15. Mickelson had a pretty commanding lead and probably on his way to his third green jacket. Good for him but bad for me. With the Sunday pin placement on 18,  “Lefty” Mickelson would probably be putting in for the win with his left-handed stance and his back to me now that I had switched to the opposite side of the green.

Mickelson did putt in on 18 for the win but I wasn’t completely shut out. My angle had a bit of a profile when Mickelson celebrated with both arms in the air. It wasn’t great but I wasn’t going away empty handed this year.

I am down in Augusta, GA for a week of Masters golf coverage. The only golf I really shoot these days is shooting the first major tournament of the year here at Augusta National Golf Club.

The Masters organization really keeps a tight grip on the number of credentials issued to photographers and writers. The number of photographers here is surprising small for a major championship. USA TODAY actually has had only one photographer credential for years. This year, we are fortunate enough to have been issued another.

Everything here is deep in tradition. This tournament is the only major golf event where photographers are not allowed to work inside the ropes and in front of the thousands of gallery patrons. This makes covering an event this size with thousands of people packing the greens a tough task.

But, it all comes down to Sunday and being lucky enough to be in the right place on the 18th green for that final photo.

I was down at the Richmond Coliseum for the Colonial Athletic Association championship game between Old Dominion and William and Mary. Hoping this cinderella story was the making of something big, I was there in case William and Mary knocked off favored and regular season conference champions Old Dominion gaining an automatic bid into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the first time in the school’s history.

William and Mary has never made it into the “Big Dance” and the school is one of five original Division I teams that has never made the national field.

The Tribe has some pretty impressive alumni,  guys named George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe but I guess none of them ever had much of a three-point shot.

In many ways, this conference championship game had the feeling of old time basketball. The Richmond Coliseum just feels like a true basketball barn and the fans are loud and up close to the action. The public address announcer before the start of the game “invited” the fans of the winning team to celebrate on the court following the game but please remember to be respectful and in control. The crazy thing was, the Old Dominion fans were respectful and in control following the 60-53 win over William and Mary. They celebrated their victory in style and class.

The fans of William and Mary knew their team was close to something big. A close game down to the final minutes kept the Tribe in reach. Old Dominion had just written their own ending to the cinderella story.

It was a very wet night in a pouring rain as “The Great One” entered the plaza to bring the Olympic flame from the BC Place and the Olympic opening ceremonies to Coal Harbour after getting a ride on a flatbed truck.

The funny thing was that Olympic officials allowed only a very small number of people to witness the lighting. I am sure it looked much more crowded on television but in reality, there were not more than 150 people in the plaza.

At one point, people on the outside of the security fences began to rip the fabric on the fences which was blocking the view from the general public. Police initially tried to stop people but finally figured out how futile it was to keep people from attempting to witness history.

Overall, we did pretty well. My colleague Robert Deutsch had a really unique shooting angle from directly in front of the cauldron and made some remarkable pictures.

My take from the evening was pretty boring stuff. Shooting through a ton of rain with long glass is not always pretty but at least I got to see Gretzky make history one more time.

Getting to Vancouver a few days before the Olympic opening ceremonies is always a busy time. Spent part of the morning running over one hundred feet of ethernet line in the rafters of the Canada Place Olympic hockey venue with my coworker Bert Hanashiro. The ethernet line will connect remote camera in the overhead catwalks in order to transmit photos back to USA TODAY remotely. I really didn’t realize until after looking at the photos that the rafters in this place are really up there.

I didn’t really dawn on me until I arrived in Los Angeles for the 2010 BCS Championship game between Texas and Alabama that I have not been back on the west coast working since moving to Washington, DC in late 2008. It was like being home again. Getting to see and work alongside dozens of friends from the west coast made for a fun week.

In the ten years of living in California, I covered numerous games down at the Rose Bowl. That stadium in Pasadena is one of those places I hold dear in my heart for many reasons, some other than just football.

1985 – My freshman year at Ohio State, my first ever trip west along with my college roommates for the January 1st game at the Rose Bowl against USC. Before the game, we even spent the night camped out on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena for a front row seat to the Rose Bowl Parade. It was also the first major sporting event I ever photographed getting a photo credential requested through the Greenville (Ohio) Daily Advocate. I remember shooting with my Nikon F2 and Sigma 500mm/f8 mirror lens but can’t remember any of the photos I took from that game. I do remember being unable to locate our car parked on the Rose Bowl golf course following the game. I ended up searching for three hours only finding it after I climbed a tree to get a better vantage point. All of my roommates were asleep inside the car.

2002 – I can honestly say I remember zero about what happened in the championship game between Miami and Nebraska. It turns out Miami beat Nebraska 37-24 to win the title. I do know I was a nervous wreck before, during and after the game because I had an engagement ring stuffed away in my pocket and planned on proposing to Amy Kinsella, a picture editor at USA TODAY who was editing the game photos, following the game out on the giant rose painted on the Rose Bowl Stadium 50 yard line. Amy thought our crew was just going out in the middle of the field to take a group picture following the game. She was shocked but she did say yes.

2006 – Texas Longhorns 41 – Southern California Trojans 38 : Many sports “know-it-alls” call this one of the greatest games ever played in any sport. USC took a 38-26 lead with 6:42 in the final minutes of the game. However, Texas wasn’t giving up, as Texas not only scored a touchdown that got the Longhorns back into the game, but Texas QB Vince Young scored the game-winner when he scrambled into the end zone with 0:19 to play. Young rushed for 200 yards and three TDs and going 30/40 for 267 yards through the air. I am not a huge football fan but this probably was one of the greatest college football games of all times and I somehow made a pretty decent photo.

I spent the better part of a morning and afternoon this week getting up well before the HOV lanes heading into DC kicked into gear at 6:30am in order to get myself to the White House before the work day traffic hit. Working at the White House is not an everyday event for me. Just getting around the area is still an adventure for a guy who has spent the past ten years working on the west coast.

USA TODAY and The Detroit Free Press had a “one on one” interview with President Obama scheduled for 11am. Myself and a crew from fellow Gannett TV outlet WUSA had to be ready to set up by 8:30am in the White House Map Room and then wait a few hours for the President. This is just another day at the office for most White House press photographers but for me, it is a treat.

By 9am, all set up, so we sat and waited.

The really cool thing about sitting in a room just off the Oval Office for close to three hours is the opportunity to get to just take it all in. The Map Room gets the name from its use during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt used it as a situation room where maps were consulted to track the war’s progress.  One of those maps from World War II still hangs on the wall and shows what is thought to be German troop strengths in Europe. Definitely much less high tech than today’s information systems. There is actually a drawing on the wall showing Roosevelt in his wheelchair in the Map Room going over the situation in Germany during the war.

I really didn’t bone up on my history but some pretty important things have happened in this room in recent years according to a wiki search.

• Bill Clinton gave testimony to Independent Counsel Ken Star regarding his role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal from the Map Room on August 17, 1998.

• Recently, on January 21, 2009, the day after the inauguration of Barack Obama, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts re-administered the oath of office to President Obama in the Map Room. The oath was flubbed by misplacing one word during the ceremony the previous day.

The actual interview was nothing spectacular. I had five minutes to make a few pictures during a twenty minute interview. I had actually been set to shoot from an angle which would have made better pictures but was told at the start of the interview I would only be able to shoot from off to one side by White House officials. No one else was inside the room taking still pictures besides the official White House photographer but there still are limitations even while being a “one on one” interview.

I did use a specially designed sound blimp enclosing a Nikon D3 to hide the sound of the camera firing while shooting in close with the Nikon 70-200mm. In situations like this, I can’t wait until I can get my hands on the Nikon D3s complete with the quiet mode function as silent as the Canon 5d’s quiet mode. Now, the sound of a D3 shutter firing in a quiet room during an interview is as loud as a cannon going off.

The best angle I could manage had to be shot with the non-soundproofed D3 and the 200-400mm lens while hanging out over the edge of the WUSA television camera.

This was going to be loud.

I looked at my watch which I had started the stopwatch at the top of the interview and waited to the very end of my time before pulling up the 200-400mm. It was quick and dirty but I fired off just three frames before getting the nod to finish. Two of the frames were completely unusable, the President’s eyes were shut. Only one frame from this angle was usable and it was the one used by the Detroit Free Press on their front page.

The most memorable thing about the Map Room besides a rare 1755 French version of a map charted by colonial surveyors Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson’s father) hanging on the east wall is the “out of the way” lavatory which looks like it hasn’t changed too much since Roosevelt. As it turns out, this restroom is officially a women’s lavatory. After three hours of waiting, no one seemed to mind if the trio of all male photographers took turns. And, all of the paper towels are embossed with the Presidential seal.

Very classy.

Missions can be long. Specialist Don Ezera Cruz Plemons, a medic with the 2nd Regiment, 87th Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain
Division spends hours inside the confines of an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle currently deployed in Afghanistan. His role is to come to the aid of combat injured soldiers quickly via the MRAP. He may never step out of the vehicle on a mission if all goes well.

To pass the time on a mission with his platoon on the ground asking survey questions of local villagers, Plemons read Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” from his enclosed cabin seat.

Not typical soldier reading material.

Plemons, it turns out has a masters degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He along with a number of other enlisted soldiers in Comanche Company earned college degrees before joining the military. He sees more and more college educated soldiers due in part, he thinks, to the current down economy.

As well as reading classic literature, Plemons sketches and draws to pass the time while monitoring the company communications during missions some lasting an hour others an entire day.

I really didn’t unpack completely from the last trip in August. I have been seriously meaning to pack for the past three days. As usual, I put off the most intense packing until the very last minute only going at it first thing this morning.

Around 8am, I worked at sorting the gear in the garage I would need for this assignment. Having a 17-month-old wanting to help is fun but a bit challenging too. I want to get things done but it is just too much fun watching her explore all the pockets and zippers.

The only real change from the August trip in preparing differently is the weather. It is going to be much colder this time of year. I had to pack more weight and take up more space with warm clothing. Surprisingly, my bags from August all weighed the same as they do now for this trip.

Stopping briefly in my day long packing only to chase Maddie down the hall after she ran off with this cord or that boot, I finally had all my bags weighed in around forty-five pounds each as well as my backpack for the camera gear. It weighed in at about thirty-five pounds. Finished packing around 5pm in plenty of time for my 10:10pm flight from Dulles to Dubai. Hopefully in two days, I should make it to Afghanistan following a layover in Dubai.

I am heading to Bagram first. There is a very large military base known as BAF there. After doing the initial check in, we probably will be heading for a base  which sits right around 8,000 feet in elevation and it is definitely not going to be summer temps.