You're not going to believe this...

And I thought I had seen nearly everything...
apparently not.

I was assigned to shoot the local university's home volleyball game against an instate rival. The match was played at a local high school as the fieldhouse at the school is being renovated. I used two Nikon SB-800s to cross-light the net. I proceeded to shoot the first two games of the match. Then I packed up my gear and went back to the office to submit a photo for the next days paper.

I selected a photo that I thought told the story (see below). I started to work it in photoshop when something in the photo caught my attention. I realized that there was no way this image was going to get into the paper. The reason is that the woman volleyball player had decided to pen a message on the tape that she had put on the joints of her fingers. (On her right hand it says F-U-C-K and on her left I-T.)

I don't think that anyone else in the entire gym saw what I saw after closer inspection of the image. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you should be able to read the message that this young woman was sharing with me. While I think the idea of putting messages on the tape on your hands is novel, I think that a NCCA athlete may want to reconsider just what she puts there.


I brought the photo to the attention of the editor here at the paper and he notified the school and the reply that filtered down to me was that this would be taken care of, and it wouldn't happen again.

To be totally honest, I don't really care what these kids do and I even think that it is pretty funny, but when it means that I can't shoot certain athletes because of the messages that they write on themselves, then I will speak up.

I have no doubt that I will continue to be surprised by the things people will do. I think that they call that job security.