valentino unlimited - VU Photography

134th Running of The Kentucky Derby - 05/03/08

Details to come...

Derby Festival Pro Beach Volleyball Exhibition - 04/29/08

Details to come...

Ford ATP Tennis Tournament at Louisville Tennis Club - 11/04/07

My first Professional Athletic event coverage assignment. the Ford sponsored Association of Tennis Professionals Championship Tour made a stop in Louisville in November 2007, and I had the honor of photographing the final round. Never having attended a tennis event anywhere near that level, I was uber aware of ever movement, and sound I made being rather ignorant of the rules and expectations of photographers in this environment. I stayed a little too far back from where the action was in the fairly dark venue and managed to capture some decent shot with an unfortunate amount of visual noise in those shots. Live and learn.

Side story: As a rule, my phone is ALWAYS on vibrate. At the end of the doubles championship, I promptly placed myself in the middle of the court in front of a captive audience in order to capture some images of the hosts awarding the prizes to the winners. As the announcer is broadcasting the stats a cell phone starts ringing loudly...guess who...

Northeast Louisville YMCA Soccer - Game 1

Well, our team had it's first game of the season. We lost a tough one to the Southwest YMCA Dragons on their home turf, 2-1, while playing a man down the entire game.

Check out the album...

NBL Grand Nationals and UCI Worlds in Louisville, KY

Is it still Wednesday?

Whew! This process has taken longer than I thought even though I did get it done quicker than the math would indicate I should. Anyway...I have selected 169 of the more interesting shots from the BMX races at Tom Sawyer Park this past weekend. I have well over a thousand more. If you want to see if I have any of you, just let me know.

I am new to covering this incredible sport, so my rider identification skills are extremely limited at this point. If you can help me to identify anyone in the posted shots, I would greatly appreciate your feedback either through the blog or email me directly at: tim@valentinounlimited.com.

Also, since these are lower resolution and smaller sized photos than the originals, if you want a copy of any of these shots for printing purposes, just shoot me a message.

This is an amazing sport to watch, and I am so excited, as I am sure all of those associated with BMX Racing are, that it is our latest Olympic sport debuting in Beijing in 2008.

From a visual artist's standpoint the colors are stunning, and I love color and contrast. As if you couldn't see that in the photos...lol. I sincerely hope to be able to continue to cover these events for a long time into the future...

NBL Grand Nationals!

Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I have lived in Louisville for 9-1/2 years within 5 miles of where the BMX National Bicycle League has held it's season-ending Grand Nationals every Labor Day Weekend, and I was completely unaware until a chance meeting outside a grocery store on Friday morning.

This post is to let those people that I spoke with at the event this weekend know that I am still processing the photos that I took. I had originally told people that pics would likely be posted by this evening, but as it turns out, between the Grand Nationals, the UCI Worlds, and the Louisville WorldFest, I shot somewhere around 3,000 photographs this weekend.

Anyone with average third grade math skills can figure out that to spend a minute on each shot for basic editing, cropping and naming (not to mention downloading and moving to proper folders) means about 50 hours of laptop time prior to even uploading them...so...please be patient...I'll start posting tomorrow afternoon, and should have all of the best ones up by Wednesday evening.

In the meanwhile, I'll throw a couple of early contenders up on the photo blog with no comments at this point, just so you know I really had cards in the camera...lol.