Bowling

It's been a long time since I have been in a bowling alley but today I had a photo shoot at the Super Bowl in Plano. There's a lot of color in a bowling alley these days. The house balls are all bright colors which is not what I remember from my youth. When I was a kid my parents bowled together every Wednesday night so I spent a lot of time in bowling alleys. What I remember the most is the distinctive sound of the pins hitting the wood. My shoot today wasn't about the color or the sounds but I took a few photos of that anyway just for myself.

My photos were of kids bowling and if you've even

been in an alley you know how dark they are. Not the easiest place to take good photos, but we were allowed to block off some lanes and set up lights so that made it much better. First we photographed the younger kids taking lessons. They went one at a time and this girl was great. She was totally into the photo shoot and had the fun personality to make the pictures work. Most of the kids were shy and afraid to act for the camera but not her, she was a fabulous model for us.

After the younger kids we had several high school bowling teams come in so we could photograph high school bowlers in action. We still had our lanes blocked off and the kids were great about bowling into the lights. I was kneeling out on the ball return between the lanes and I only got hit twice. Apparently there were a lot of close calls judging from the girl bowlers expressions, but none were hard enough to hurt :)

This team really caught my eye. They were pretty good and they also had the fun personalities to work with the photos we were trying to take. They were intense when throwing the ball but they had good reactions after a strike.

This is my favorite from the day. We shot most of the bowling photos with the long lens from down the lane but near the end of the shoot I put on a wide angle and stood about a foot in front of the foul line. This guy gets pretty low when he throws so the wide angle worked perfect for him.

Here they are celebrating.

All in all it was a fun day with lots of good pictures made and memories remembered.