Shooting Star's client streak to end after 10-plus years

A special streak will sadly come to a close for Shooting Star Sports Photography on Friday night. For the first time since the launch of our one-of-a-kind, groundbreaking service more than 10 years ago, we will not have a high school football client to photograph. The streak, which began with us photographing Gary Friedman of the Garces High Rams in September 1999, ends after more than 100 consecutive weeks.


Garces High's Gary Freidman was our first high school football
client in 1999, and launched a streak of more than 100
consecutive Friday nights with at least one client. We were
shooting film back then.


Utilizing nearly 60 combined years of daily photojournalism experience, unparalleled ability to make photographs in the most difficult lighting conditions and customer service resulting in a nearly 100 percent repeat customer rate, Shooting Star photographers have produced more than 1,000 custom portfolios for more than 400 clients during the past decade. Our portfolios are deeply personal stories documenting a special time in an athlete's life, far more evolved than just a collection of routine action photographs. Until this season, we've averaged 15 to 20 football clients, and had to turn away at least that many more because we could not keep up with the demand. This season we are photographing just five football players and do not anticipate adding any others.

While it would be easy to point a finger at the economy as the reason for the dramatic decline, we don't think that is the case. We are losing customers to amateur photographers. Virtually every local high school field is now saturated with amateur photographers each Friday night. These folks, often with cameras not equipped to handle the difficult shooting conditions presented by the poorly-lit fields the games are played on, are giving away pictures for free because they think it's cool. The pictures are awful, but "free" is a powerful phenomenon for even savvy and discerning parents to overcome. Others are purchasing pro-level equipment and with no experience are setting up photo businesses. They look the part, they have the gear, they have the vests (amateur photographers just love the photo vest!) but they can't shoot. One such photographer is offering his services at a "too-good-to-be-true" rate, and has lured several dozen clients to his service. The packages he is offering would be impossible for us to produce even with our years of experience; he has no experience and there are going to be some very disappointed parents pretty soon.

So it looks like our decade of word of mouth business, with little need to advertise or market, will have to make some adjustments. We'll be out there agressively marketing, and will soon regain our position as not a choice for sports photography in Bakersfield, but as the "only choice" for quality sports photography in Bakersfield. And despite the loss of football clients, we are still very close to our fall season projections; we have just moved on to other areas, including auto racing, tennis and water polo, where we have new clients making up for the lost football clients.

Our streak ended on one of the the fields that powered us the past 10 years, at Centennial High, where our clients were Garrett Hayslett (our third portfolio on Garrett and fourth overall for the Haysletts) and Cole Hallum (our second portfolio for Cole and fourth overall for the Hallum family.) We'll be back at Centennial on October 2 for the Hawks vs. Stockdale and hopefully the start of another 10-year streak.


Garrett Hayslett (above) and Cole Hallum were our athletes
last week. The lure of free or extremely low-cost photographs,
despite their poor quality, has affected us after 10 consecutive
sold out football seasons.


Please click on photos to view larger versions

Shooting Star's Hallum comes up huge against Liberty

Cole Hallum lines up his 46-yard field goal attempt, which
would be a career best for the junior kicker-receiver.

There were three big offensive plays in the Centennial Golden Hawks 10-6 victory over Liberty High Friday night, and Shooting Star client Cole Hallum made two of them. Hallum, who is having his second portfolio shot by us, delivered a career-best 46-yard field goal in the first quarter to put the Hawks up 3-0 in a tight defensive game.


Cole follows through on the kick, which split the
uprights and gave Centennial an early lead.

But Hallum saved his biggest play for the end of the game. With Centennial holding on to a 10-6 lead and just over a minute to play, the Patriots had the Hawks pinned deep in their own territory and looked like they would get the ball back with decent field position to mount a last drive. That's when quarterback Cody Kessler found Hallum with a sideline toss in front of the Liberty bench, and Hallum romped down the sideline for a 38-yard gain that sealed the game. Hallum's field goal and game-saving reception were sandwiched around a touchdown run by Kessler, and that was all the offense the Hawks needed as the defense stifled Liberty before the Patriots mounted a drive well into the fourth quarter.


The Liberty players and coaches could only watch as
Hallum sealed the game with this 38-yard catch and run.


Cody Kessler scores the only touchdown of the game
for the Hawks in the third quarter. We generally only
photograph our clients, but since Cody ran right at us,
we went ahead and tripped the shutter.

We still have room and time to add Golden Hawk and Patriots clients. Sadly for unsuspecting parents, the market has been flooded with amateur photographers working the sidelines of high school events, and some of these photographers, with virtually no experience shooting in the most challenging conditions, are charging almost as much for their services as we do. Only Shooting Star can consistently deliver photographs of this caliber; we were the pioneers of the custom portfolio and multimedia format, and continue to be the best, not only in Kern County but in the United States. Nobody else even comes close. Don't be fooled by all the posers, because you'll be heartbroken when you see what you end up with compared to what we do for our clients.

Please click on photos to view larger versions.

Up close and personal with the guys you love to hate

Official Matt Collier worked the games with a pink whistle
to show is support for the fight against breast cancer.

They're the guys you love to hate. If your team wins on a Friday night in autumn, you forget they were even there. If you lose, then of course it was their fault! They're the officials tasked with the job of calling the biggest game in town - high school football. These guys are regular members of the community, dads and husbands, business professionals and laborers. On Friday night, they enter the belly of the beast, Kern County's hallowed fields where high school football is as big as life itself. And over the course of more than six hours, they work the night's junior varsity and varsity games with a singular mission: call a good game and make sure it is the players, and not them, who are remembered when the night is done.


Nick Ellis and his crew worked the Canyon at Bakersfield games
Friday night, which featured two of California's best programs.
The guys from left are Ken Lopez, Bob Hartshorn, Bob Williams,
John Hallum, Nick Ellis and Matt Collier before the JV game.

We were commissioned by veteran referee Nick Ellis to photograph his crew Friday night as they worked the biggest game in town, the Week 1 matchup between perennial Division 1 powers Canyon and Bakersfield High. What struck me most about the crew was the seriousness they apply to their responsibilities. These are not a bunch of guys who show up a few minutes before game time, get dressed and take to the field. They arrived at the fabled Griffith Field early, more than an hour before the junior varsity kickoff, and immediately went to work discussing assignments, talking about what went right and what went wrong during their practices and Week Zero game the prior Friday. They are tough on themselves and tough on each other. This is serious business to them, and it should be. Each of them was well aware that a call made in early September, especially involving these two titan programs, could have implications well into December. Canyon was the Division 1 state champion in 2006; Bakersfield is the winningest program in state history and makes no bones that it not only wants a section championship, it wants to play for the state title. Like Peyton Manning wanting the ball in his hands with the game on the line, these were the games the crew wanted on this night.

For us, a shoot like this reaffirms the power and validity of our business model; producing top notch photojournalism and delivering it directly to the consumer. We assigned two photographers to document the crew at work - we believe it is the first time the work of a local high school crew has been documented - with Felix Adamo shooting the varsity game and me shooting the junior varsity game. Officiating crews have been after us to shoot for them for a few years now, but with individual athletes filling our entire fall schedule, it was hard to fit them in. But we are down significantly in clients for the first time, so this would be a great opportunity for any of the other crews to have themselves documented. Our fee is beyond reasonable: $600 for the night and the production. That's $100 per crew member. So if you like the show, give your crew a go!

This show is posted in high definition and we recommend you click the You Tube tab in the lower right corner to view it on our You Tube page in high def. It's a large show and will take a few minutes to load, but it's worth it to see the quality of our work. Enjoy.

We're off and shooting with BC's Tyrone Crawford

We're off to an exciting start this season - the beginning of our 11th year - with a shoot on Bakersfield College defensive lineman Tyrone Crawford. Tyrone was easily one of the best players on the field Saturday as the Renegades scored a 33-14 season-opening victory against Fresno City. As good as Tyrone is on the field, we think it's his effusive personality that is going to make this one of our best portfolios ever, and can't wait to train our cameras on him a few more times before his portfolio is completed. Tyrone, a big-time high school star from Catholic Central High in Windsor, Ontario, has verbally committed to play for the Boise State University Broncos next season.

Note that this is a large show and if viewing the images in full-screen mode, which I recommend, it may take a few minutes to load. If you leave full-screen mode and wish to return, click the icon in the lower right corner.

Welcome back! A new client's guide to our product

Well, here we are again. It's fall sports season! And it's the start of our 11th year offering our specialty product, the Shooting Star custom sports portfolio, to our clients. Hopefully you are about to join the more than 400 Kern County families who have used our service. Here's what you need to know, along with a sampling of the photos we did for our clients the past couple of seasons.

Charlie Devers played safety and even shed a little blood

for his East High Blades last season.

Entering our client pool: We handle our fall sports load by establishing our client pool, then setting our shooting schedule so that we get as many opportunities as possible to photograph your athlete. Our service is limited to 20 athletes, for all sports combined, during the fall, winter and spring seasons. Once we reach 20 clients, the pool is closed and we do not accept any other athletes. The schedule is set based on the clients who are in our pool at the start of the season. Once the season starts, we only add clients from schools in which we already have clients. Thus it is critical that you are in our client pool at the start of the season, or shortly after the season starts.

Randall Chafin had an outstanding season as a two-way

starter for the Garces Rams.

Our fee and what we deliver: Our fee for the 2009-10 school year is $500. This is a flat-rate fee, there are no packages. We do not shot on speculation and do not sell pictures on the web. We guarantee two complete games of coverage, and deliver a multimedia slide show on DVD and a set of images for you to use as you choose. The fee is per athlete. All portfolios are completed and delivered before Christmas. Sorry, but we do not shoot multiple athletes and allow the fee to be split. We only shoot the athletes we are commissioned to photograph. When we are at the game, we are working for you, our attention is 100 percent on your athlete, and we do not do "piecemeal" shooting for other parents who want a few pictures but have not commissioned our services. In other words, we only do portfolios of individual athletes and nothing else.

Our product is more about telling a story and capturing a special time in your athlete's life, which is what we did for Bakersfield Christian volleyball stars Janie Atkinson and Tori Hoffmann.

Payment and billing: We require a 50 percent deposit or payment in full before we begin photographing your athlete. We are no longer willing to begin the shooting and production process without first receiving the deposit. We offer online credit card payments using any credit card. We simply e-mail you a link and this takes you to PayPal, where you can easily make your payment. This has proven to be very popular with our clients. You also have the option of paying by check.

Centennial's Brock Bivens will be able to look back on his

outstanding senior season thanks to the portfolio we shot for him.

Click photos for larger versions.

An inspirational tale of two high school wrestlers

As we draw closer to the start of another year of high school sports, I thought the Shooting Star community would enjoy this incredibly powerful story by ESPN's Outside the Lines that tells the story of the bond between two disabled high school wrestlers from Cleveland, Ohio. It's 12 minutes that you won't soon forget.

Jarret Martin signs contract with Orioles

Congrats to our client Jarret Martin, who has signed with the Baltimore Orioles. Jarret was selected by the Orioles in this spring's draft. Signed as a pitcher, the lefty is a prolific hitter who set the all-time central section home run record for the Centennial High Golden Hawks last year and tied the Bakersfield College Renegades home run record this year. Jarret is our fifth Centennial High client to play professional baseball. Brandon Roberts is currently playing AA ball in the Minnesota Twins organization; Brent Morel is playing high A ball in the Chicago White Sox organization; Zach Aakhus is playing in Crestwood, Illinois in the independent Frontier League and Jamie Arneson was with the Cincinnati Reds organization but is not currently active.

Read the very nice Bakersfield Californian article about Jarret's signing by my friend Zach Ewing.

We're also going to take the liberty of assuming that Jarret's proud parents and grandparents are very happy that he worked continuing college education into his contract. Great move, Jarret!

Honors galore for spring Shooting Star kids!

In what is easily the most successful season for Shooting Star clients, we are happy to report that nine of our spring high school athletes earned either first or second team all-league honors. All league selections are made by the coaches in the athletes' respective leagues. Here are the athletes, along with their very proud parents. We always make mom and dad a part of each athlete's portfolio! Congratulations to all on your outstanding season.
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Riley Showers of Bakersfield Christian with his parents
Jeff and Kym. Riley was named South Sequoia League
Player of the Year.


Pitcher Bryan Maxwell of Centennial High with his parents
Jeanne and Marty. Bryan was named first team all South-
west Yosemite League.


Nathan Ketelhut of North High with his parents Tammy
and Brian. Nathan is the first team SWYL catcher.


Centennial's Alana Alexander with her parents Treena
and Pat. Alana was named first team all SWYL in track.


Bakersfield Christian's Tori Hoffmann was named first
team SSL in softball. Her parents are Beth and Tom.


Garces sophomore Grant Campbell made the first team
all Southeast Yosemite League outfield. His mom and
dad are Jack and Bonnie.


Garces' Kelly Hosey and her mom, Sandy. Kelly made
the SWYL second team in track.


Josh Dickey of Centennial with his parents Darrin and
Mandi. Josh is the SWYL second team catcher.


Bakersfield Christian shortstop Dwight Mashburn was
named to the South Sequoia League second team. His
parents are Denise and Mike.

Orioles take Martin again

It seems the Baltimore Orioles like Jarret Martin. For the second straight year, Jarret was chosen by Baltimore in the Major League Baseball draft. Martin, who set a central section home run record at Centennial High last year and tied the Bakersfield College home run record this year, was chosen in the 18th round, a one-round improvement over last year, when he was chosen in the 19th round. Despite his prolific batting numbers, major league teams are interested in him as a pitcher.

As he did last year, Jarret will now consider his options before deciding to sign professionally or return to the Renegades for his sophomore year. K.C. Hobson, the dominant high school player who led the Stockdale High Mustangs to back-to-back section championships, was selected by the Toronto Blue Jays in the sixth round.

Whew!! Spring portfolios are done!!!

I hope all our Shooting Star fans didn't think we abandoned them. The site hasn't been updated because the past two weeks were devoted exclusively to preparation of the spring portfolios, and I'm happy to announce that they are completed and ready for delivery! Preparation of a Shooting Star Sports Photography portfolio is no simple task - each one is a meticulous and painstaking endeavour, and a minimum of 12 hours goes into every portfolio. While I frequently use the word "we" in these posts because I do have some excellent contract photographers and even a great high school student to help with some tasks, I flew solo this spring and handled the whole workload myself. The total: 14 portfolio athletes, plus substantial contract work for Cal State Bakersfield athletics, Bakersfield College baseball, and my former employer, The Bakersfield Californian. In all, just over 10,000 images shot and 2,783 photos delivered to our clients in their portfolios! Above is our new client Dwight Mashburn of Bakersfield Christian High School.

Fittingly, one of our best moments of the spring happened on our final shoot, when client Bryan Maxwell of Centennial High launched this homer in the exciting playoff game last Friday against arch-rival Stockdale High. I love the reactions of all the people in the photographs. I'm sad Bryan's homer didn't hold up for the Hawks, but I'm also happy my pal Dan Lemon and his Stockdale Mustangs made good on the victory by winning a second straight section championship. Check out the sequence below, and please click the photos to view larger versions.

Cooper Thompson wins state JC javelin title!

Cooper Thompson of the Bakersfield College Renegades, whom we profiled earlier this week, (see post from May 10 below) has won the state junior college javelin title at San Mateo College with a throw of 222 feet! You can read The Bakersfield Californian article about Cooper's big win here. Congratulations, Coop!

Going in style: Tori's Senior Day slam

It was Senior Day on the Bakersfield Christian softball diamond Thursday, and Tori Hoffmann was likely playing her last home game for the Eagles (pending playoff seedings this weekend.) Tori's had an outstanding senior year. A hitter on the volleyball team, she helped lead the Eagles to an undefeated league season and the section championship. As a catcher and infielder for the softball squad, she was batting .403 with three home runs. But when Tori came to bat in the third inning against Taft with the bases loaded, she was looking at something she had not done in high school. A grand slam. Three homers is a nice number in prep softball, but in 80 plate appearances, it was not a given that Tori could launch one here. But it was Senior Day. Mom and dad in the stands. Maybe her final game at Bakersfield Christian. Could she do it? Uh, yes. This was a no-doubter, a rocket shot over the left field fence. The big hit in a big three-for-four, 5 RBI game that powered the Eagles to a 15-5 victory. But most importantly, a memory of a lifetime.

These are our images of Tori launching her grand slam and a thrilled Tori after the big hit.

Think about being able to tell that story. And being able to pull out the set of pictures that captured the moment. We were happy to be there, delighted to capture this moment for Tori and her mom and dad. Tori is headed to Abilene Christian University in Texas this fall and hopes to make the softball team as a walk on. She is the daughter of Tom and Beth Hoffmann.

Oh noooo! Here comes Black Friday

Kelly Hosey of Garces High will not encounter any Black Fridays during her varsity career. Her mom has booked her portfolios for the next two years!

Shooting Star has three bad days every year. We call them Black Fridays. It's the day when parents, sometimes more than a dozen at a time, call us frantically trying to hire us to photograph their athlete on the last day of the season. Almost always, their athlete is a senior playing his or her last game. And we have to turn them all away, because we just are not an "on demand" business. When we meet prospective clients, we beg them - no make that we plead with them - that if they want our services they have to book us before the season begins or at worst, very early in the season. We painstakingly explain the incredible juggling act we must do with the schedules of as many as two dozen athletes competing in different leagues. We explain how the earlier they get us, the more opportunities we will have to photograph their athlete. We explain that we set our schedule months in advance, and once we schedule our clients, it's pretty much locked in granite. We stress it over and over. Yet on three Fridays every year, the last days of the fall, winter and spring seasons, the calls pour in. It's really sad.


Blake Campbell is also "Black Friday-proof" as his entire high school sports career has been booked four years in advance.

Tomorrow is Black Friday. The first call will come in around 7 am and continue throughout the day. We'll be at Garces High photographing our clients Blake and Grant Campbell and Nick Sakowski. The Campbells book us four years in advance, no Black Fridays for them! And the Sakowskis booked very early in the season. The moral of this little story is we don't sit around waiting for clients. You are in a competition for our services just as your athlete is in competition against his or her opponent. You have to book us early or we just can't help you. So please, please, please - see, we're pleading again - books us early or we're just not going to be able to shoot for you.
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Anything more special than Senior Day?

Is there anything more special to a family than senior day, when the athletes take to the field for their last regular season home game with their parents and give their moms a rose? We were able to photograph the Bakersfield Christian High School baseball seniors Tuesday since we were there photographing our portfolio clients Dwight Mashburn and Riley Showers. Non-client parents may purchase our photos. Dwight and Riley's photos will be included in their portfolios. To see how good these special images are, we want to direct you to our full-size image galleries. You may purchase prints and or original digital files. Just send an e-mail to johnharte@johnharte.com for prices and details.
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New sport, new championship for Cooper

During the past 10 years, we've photographed more than 400 of Kern County's best athletes. But even among the very best, some are a notch, or several notches, above the others. Garces grad and emerging Bakersfield College track star Cooper Thompson is easily among the very best athletes we've photographed. A standout at Garces High, Cooper played key roles in leading the Rams to the CIF section championship in football during his junior year and the section championship in basketball his senior year. He also competed in the long jump and triple jump in track. But this year, Thompson has accomplished the remarkable - he took up the javelin and almost immediately was throwing among the best in the state. Then this weekend, just four months after deciding to give the javelin a try, he won the Southern California junior college championship and will compete for the state title later this week.





Check out The Bakersfield Californian article about Cooper's incredible journey by college reporter Jeff Evans. Below, take a look at some of the photos we shot for Cooper during his outstanding varsity years at Garces High. And of course, we wish Cooper the best of luck this Friday and Saturday at the state championships in San Mateo.
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Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Greg Sanders: Just in the nick of time!

It was last Tuesday and Greg Sanders was pitching his final game for the Bakersfield College Renegades. It was a beauty; Sanders had a shutout going against Citrus and was working the final innings of his two-years for Tim Painton's 'Gades when I was introduced to his dad, Jerry. Like so many parents, Jerry didn't know about Shooting Star, but asked if I could get him some pictures. Normally that's not possible, as I am totally focused on my clients, sometimes as many as eight or nine at a time. But on this day I was finishing up on Jarett Martin, who was the designated hitter, and was able to catch Greg, who attended Liberty High, pitching the final two innings of his career at BC. And of course we got a great set of photos for Greg, including him being embraced by his teammates as he came off the field, and are happy to welcome him to the Shooting Star family of athletes!
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