ConcocoPhillips USA Swimming Nationals

Headed over to the Avery Aquatic Complex at Stanford for the ConcocoPhillips USA Swimming Nationals.

Despite the Fina World Championship taking place just days before in Shanghai, a number of swimmers participated in both meets!

One cool, but challenging element of events at Avery Aquatic Complex is they have two long course pools side by side. This is great because it means the meet goes by faster and they can accomodate more heats in one day. But it's also a challenge hoping back and forth between pools and trying to keep track of who's in what lane, which heat, which event, and not missing or mis-IDing anyone!

It's great to see Cal Swimmers like Dana Vollmer dominate in the pool. Not only for Cal Bear pride, but also cause it's easy for me to ID them =)

Stanford Men's Swimming and Diving defeat Cal 124.5-118.5

Headed over to Spieker Aquatics Complex for Cal Men's Swimming vs Stanford.

With only three home meets, one night meet against USC, one day time meet vs Bakersfield, and today's, was really hoping I could get some great photos. But alas with the cold rainy weather, there was just steam everywhere. Even the divers were steaming!

The pool itself was surrounded by steam, making all images appear blurry.

But thanks to the magic of photoshop, such images can be saved to some extent.

Was senior day, and though most athletes had their parents there, some like Damir Dugonjic from Slovenia, that was a little impractical, but he did have his fiance with him <3

A lot of the swimmers were sporting some sweet facial hair, a la Mark Spitz.

I assume they'll all be clean shaven before NCAAs, but who knows!

It came down to the 4x100m freestyle relay. And despite Nathan Adrian's thrilling 41.51s 100m freestyle on the final leg, Cal couldn't quite catch Stanford. To give you an idea how fast Nathan went, the American record for the 100m short course is 41.08s. And was set by... Nathan Adrian!

Full set: http://www.goldenbearsports.com/2010-2011/mensswimming/vsstanford

Cal Men's Swimming Head Shots

The National Champions photoshoot was immediately followed by team photo of Cal Men's Swimming and Diving

Then just swimming

Then swimming and diving head shots

Then a men's diving team photo

Then a men and women's diving team photo

Then I packed up as quickly as possibly and ran off to my mom who was so kindly waiting with the truck and the kayak to pick up KC and head to McCovery Cove for our Giants in Game 1 of the World Series!!

Full set up at: http://www.goldenbearsports.com/2010-2011/swimmingdiving/mensheadshots

Cal Sports Quarterly - Men's Swimming National Champions

I had an opportunity to shoot something I'd really like to shoot more of, creative posed portraits! Only problem was, this was for 6 guys. It's hard to coordinate a portrait with one guy, let alone 6. And more difficult when 6 guys have to fit into a vertical image for a magazine.

But when the guys are all National Champions, super nice, and I have any opportunity to do posed portraits, I'm not complaining! It's not many people that can say they've photographed national champions, olympians, gold medalists!

They also wanted some in the water shots which would be sweet with one guy, just below chest deep, water reflecting, complete water as background, but with 6 guys that turns out to look either water polo and a little awkward.

After they got in the water, we tried to do some "just out of the pool" shots. It was chilly for them but they were troopers.

Before all the guys were out, the SID asked for some solo shots of Nathan Adrian.

Nathan is a great ambassador for Cal because he's a smiley, pre-med gold medalist. But he's one of my favorite Cal athletes because he was on mythbusters! He was on a episode about swimming in syrup. How cool!!!!!



Full set up at: http://www.goldenbearsports.com/2010-2011/swimmingdiving/nationalchamps