A big congratulations to the Men’s US Soccer Team for coming so close to winning the Confederation’s Cup on Sunday. They battled huge odds to beat the number one team in the world, Spain, to make the finals. This is the first FIFA final game that the US has ever played and they had to face a huge nemesis, Brazil, who they have defeated only once in 15 games. They came out on fire and went up 2-0 at half. Brazil showed its strength and finesse in the second half, scoring 3 goals against the US to win the final, 3-2. What an exciting game to watch! The US team should be proud of their accomplishments. They beat the number one team in the world and played Brazil (5th in the world) to the bitter end. I know that they must feel heartbroken, letting this one get away. But, they should have a new confidence in themselves and new respect from the world that they can build on for World Cup 2010, which is less than 1 year away!

In the summer of 2006, we were embedded with the Men’s US team at there practice facility in Raleigh, NC for 5 days. The goal was to make portraits of the players that would be shown throughout the broadcast of World Cup 2006. It was such an amazing experience, especially for me since I love world soccer and still play on 2 teams in the bay area. Getting to know many of the US players was such a pleasure. We were humbled by how real they were as people and how accepting of us they were even though we were with them 24/7. Some of the players from that team are still the anchors of this current US squad. Landon Donovan, Oguchi Onyewu, Clint Dempsey, Carlos Bocanegra and Tim Howard and are just a few of the players that you will hear a lot about with the buildup of World Cup 2010. We wish them the best going forward and we hope that we can be there with them again in 2010!

Here are just a few photographs from our journey with them in 2006:

To see more images click HERE.

We had the privilege of photographing stills of the Lakers and the Magic for ABC/ESPN’s coverage of the NBA Finals. We met both teams in Los Angeles and photographed the top 7 players from each team with the Larry O’Brien trophy. We had a great time capturing their emotions as they saw the trophy for the first time before the series began. It was also a pleasure working with Valerie from ESPN and being a part of such a creative team. Thank you to Rick Chapman, once again, for leading the crew and to everyone involved with this creative project. We had a blast.

Congratulations to the Lakers!

Here are some of the stills and video from our journey:

Here are a few outtakes from our time with the trophy:

Here is an example of what we did last year…

After watching his amazing performances the past weeks or so, we thought that we would pay tribute to his accomplishments.

The black and white photograph below is the final image that was chosen for the ESPY Collection. This collection features 25 signed, limited edition, silver gelatin prints of each of the athletes. If you are interested in purchasing images from the collection, contact Rachel Mack at ESPN. All proceeds are donated to the V Foundation for cancer research.

See all of the photographs from the ESPY Collection.

ESPN approached Rick Chapman again this year, but this time they wanted him to shoot the ad and press photo’s of Justin. We had a limited time to make the photographs, but once again Rick shined and pulled it off.

Here is an advertisement that ran in the July issue of Sports Illustrated, a screenshot from ESPN.com and a few outtakes to check out:

Click on the images below to watch the vignettes: