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.