Good morning. It’s lunch time and I really want to get some food in, but not processed food as I just watched couple of episodes of “Jamie’s School Dinner” with my wife.

Today marks the 30th day of 2013 and I must admit that I am not feeling it. Sports photography wise, that is. I’m now in my 8th year of shooting sports and some of the things have gotten so repetitive that more often than not, I am on auto-pilot with football matches. This was highlighted this past week when I shot Schalke v Hannover. The match was dull, it was cold, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. This is why I’m writing this post, because I realised that I need to set some goals. Better yet, these goals will be public making me feel horribly responsible if I cannot keep them. I’ve put them in tiers, Goals, Ambitions, and “A boy can dream”. Goals will be ones I can manage. Ambitions will be slightly more difficult, but still attainable. And a boy can dream even if that boy is a middle aged man.

Because here at BLFS, we have to be able to take it as often as we dish it out to you guys. It’s all good and all telling you that your pictures suck and belongs in the cat litter with your cat’s shit. But what if our pictures suck (mostly not mine, but Matt’s of course) and they belong in the bin with the turkey twizzlers? What I learned last year is that if I am going to be tough to you, I need to be even tougher to myself.

1. Goals
In case you haven’t noticed, my favourite sport is NOT football. Rather it’s basketball. The problem is that so far my basketball images I have shot have been less than stellar. Personally, I think they suck. Therefore, I am going to shoot tons of basketball this season so that if the NBA comes calling, I know I can shoot KD the way KD deserves to be shot. Luckily there is this basketball team in Berlin which allows pretty much anyone with a pulse (and a press card) to get in, so I will be shooting their home games over crappy football matches.

Same will go for hockey and handball. I have realised that I’m not good with indoors sports where there are A) more than 5 people on each team B) people moving very fast C) cheerleaders involved. Luckily again for me, there are teams in Berlin who will serve my purpose.

2. Ambitions
I have some. Enough to get me by and this year, I want to do something similar to what I did last year with my tsunami images. I am off to Dominican Republic for a week in February to shoot multiple projects. This is because I am paying out of my pocket for this trip and I need to make some money so that I come out of it debt free. Although I will be mainly shooting for Japanese magazines, I am quietly thinking about shooting stuff that I can submit to a competition this year. Therefore I will need to do some portraits and definitely not “sportraits”. That is one of the most vile words I have ever seen on screen, on par with “togs”. Goose pimples everywhere now.

I will also be going to Brazil for the Confederations Cup and this is because FIFA won’t let you goto the relatively minor tournament called the World Cup next year in Brazil if you don’t participate fully in FIFA events. I’m looking forward to going to Brazil, but my purpose besides doing what I need to do to appease FIFA (and also shoot the Japanese national team) is to make sure that I don’t spend any money. You might have already figured out, but this trip is also funded by me myself and given my cat less food to eat.

Let this be a lesson to all those aspiring sports photographers out there that if you want to freelance it like it’s 2002, you will need some dough. A lot of it. Enough so that you can travel to Brazil and have enough clients so that you don’t come back from it with more debt than your student loan. Yup, life sucks like that.

3. A boy can dream
I’d like all of you BLFSers to continue to improve so that both Matt and I will feel threatened that some of you might take our jobs away.

If Satan is listening, I’d like to have clients who pay me crazy money to shoot sports like jai alai and sepak takraw.

If it’s not too much of a bother, I’d like BLFS to have big name sponsors so that Matt and I won’t have to worry about feeding our wives.

I also want everyone to love me, but we all know that is impossible.

Happy 2013 BLFSers and let’s shoot some mother fucking sports. :)

Ryu

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