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.

Reason number 1,673 why this job is so cool. Nine months before the start of the Vancouver Olympics, I found myself on top of a 12,000 foot mountain in Silverton, Colorado hanging out with Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Shawn White. His sponsor Red Bull had built a super secret halfpipe for Shaun and only Shaun to develop his new tricks for the halfpipe prior to the Olympics. We were allowed out but promised and officially signed a bunch of waivers making sure we wouldn’t give up the location or show any photos of the halfpipe until just before the Vancouver Olympics.

On television, Shaun White seems like a pretty down to earth kid. To be completely honest, in person, the guy who has turned snowboarding into one of the most popular extreme sports in the world and has become a household name is really just that, a normal guy.

He is the Michael Jordan of his sport and by today’s standards of superstar athletes, you would think he would be completely out of touch like some (not all) acclaimed athletes.

Sorry to disappoint but definitely not. Just a normal kid who can do some pretty amazing things on a snowboard.

Maybe he stays grounded holding tight to his humble beginnings in the sport and the closeness to his fans both in the halfpipe and skateboarding. I don’t know but it is just surprising and refreshing to be around that caliber of athlete and feel like you are around a person who knows just how lucky he is to be living a dream.

I did learn one valuable lesson while in Silverton during the thick of winter in a pretty major snowstorm. Out at night having dinner with Shaun and the Red Bull folks, I made a serious menu selection error. When in a town that closes up shop for the season and restaurants decide among themselves who will open to serve a pretty small group of clients, NEVER order the seafood. I can count on one hand the times I have ordered fish at night usually when I am on the coast somewhere. I have no idea why but something made me order the mahi mahi hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean.

I paid the price a few hours later.

It was definitely a great night listening to all of Shaun’s stories along with his buddies and the great people from Red Bull. One of those moments I will always look back on and remember how lucky I am at times.

My stomach, however, wishes I would have just gone out for a hamburger instead.

From now on, I am sticking to the meatloaf.

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.

The big snow hit DC last week. Two to three feet covered most of the region. Wandering around the mall with snow covered monuments is a remarkable sight. At one point, the Vietnam War Memorial was completely devoid of any pedestrian traffic.

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.

The complete presentation with commentary from the entire staff can be found here.

This photo I shot in 2004 in Afghanistan is part of a collection at Sportsshooter.com of photos and photographers talking about their most memorable photo taken in the past ten years.

A pretty remarkable collection of stories along with the incredible photography.

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.