It's tournament time! Time to elevate your game!

There's a flurry of high school section and state tournaments going on right now. Almost too many. Track, softball, golf and tennis all have their state tournaments this week, and section tournaments are well under way in baseball. Somehow, though, through all the rushing around to cover all these events, there are opportunities to elevate my game, so to speak.

Often times things can get formulaic in the news business, especially where sports photos are concerned. When you're seeking a specific athlete in a specific event, or you only have 20 minutes to get a good photo from a softball game, it's easy to say a photo works fine and go on to the next assignments. Tournament time is different. The games are more important. The emotion is higher, and there's a little more time built into the schedule to let yourself out of your comfort zone.

While shooting a section track meet Saturday I got the opportunity to shoot track photos for one of our Sunday photo packages in our Valley section. I get more leeway to create a more abstract picture for the photo package than I do when I'm shooting

track to go along with a sports story. Don't get me wrong: I seek creativity in every photo I shoot. But let's face it, I'd get either yelled at or laughed at if I came back with this photo instead of the top one. Both photos tell a story, but the bottom one tells a much different one than the top one. 

I like them both, but they are very different photos for very different situations. Now excuse me, there are a couple of state tournaments I need to shoot.