I’m getting a bit weary of NBA greats Magic, Michael and Sir Charles whining about the Miami Heat’s Three Kings: D-Wade, King James and C-Bosh teaming up to play together. Magic keeps pointing out that he’d never have called up Larry Bird and asked him to come join the Lakers, somehow forgetting the fact that Showtime already had NBA All-Time Top-50 James Worthy at that position. And Magic, do you possibly remember that big fella named Kareem?

So Let’s break it down:

Magic won his rings with Kareem and Worthy.
Jordan won zero rings without Pippen.
Pippen won zero rings without Jordan.
And Charles, well, just zero rings period.

Excuse the collective memories of the NBAARP, all of them needed help to win it all. Now they just need help, well, remembering….

Besides that, what’s your message? “There ain’t no ‘T-E-A-M’ in ‘I’”

Christmas came early to Miami Heat fans as the three Kings of Basketball D-Wade, LeBron and Chris Bosh settled into our little paradise of sand and sun! I still can’t believe this! Miami’s new Dream Team has a combined 17 All-Star appearances in the last six years. I’ve seen a lot of great basketball up close over the years. I was courtside in New Orleans when Jordan won his NCAA title and again when the Lakers’ Magic, Kareem and Worthy won two of their four titles, watching it from the best seat in the house and afterwards was caught in champaign crossfire between Magic and Riley. But I’ve never seen anything like this. Ever. Nobody has. Three superstars in their prime. Three superstars giving up money and putting ego aside to play for a championship. Welcome to Miami, LeBron and Chris. D-Wade, thanks for 7 great years…the best is yet to come!

Follow-up: Gotta love the IRONY of Yankees fans cries to break up the Miami Heat in the interest of parity for the sport…

Last week I was in New York riding the subway uptown with a train filled with Yankees fans which reminded me of a shoot I did last year of Hideki Matsui at spring training.

Covering Hideki is really quite a scene. Hideki is Japanese Elvis. There are more photographers following Hideki than covering the rest of the Yankees combined. Fortunately, they are all very, very well behaved.

For this shoot of Japanese baseball players in the U.S., I used a Sony a700. Sony was in developing their full-frame Sony a900 they were looking for feedback from professional photographers. I was sent a Sony a700 and told to take it out and give it a beating to see how it held up under the conditions pros really use their gear. So I decided to give it a trial under fire by using it on a few jobs.

I was set-up for environmental portrait of Hideki in the Yankees Spring Training stadium, Legends’ Field in Tampa when the Yankees PR came up to say Hideki was doing the interview now and we might not get him later.

Rather than tearing down the lights from our big set-up and dragging everything across the stadium, I simply grabbed the Sony Alpha 700 and the Zeiss 85/1.4 and Zeiss 135/1.8 lenses. This series was shot in open shade under the stadium with the 135mm wide open at 1.8 at 1/60 handheld at ASA 100 using the camera’s built-in image stabilization to keep every shot razor sharp.

I like these Zeiss lenses a LOT. The Zeiss glass reminds me of the medium format lenses that I’ve used for years. Sony definitely has the right idea. It’s ALL about the glass. The Zeiss 16-35mm/2.8, Zeiss 24-70mm/2.8, Zeiss 85/1.4 and Zeiss 135/1.8 are all razor sharp, but what’s hard to quantify is that not only are they sharp, but they have a great “look” that I’ve only seen from medium format glass.

The good news is that we eventually got the environmental portrait of Hideki that we were after, so the tight portraits were a nice bonus and when it comes to magazine photography, there’s no such thing as having too many options.

At this year’s PMA in Las Vegas I found out that Phil Lubell of Sony is a huge Yankees fan, so Mark Weir and I hooked Phil up with a 36″x54″ print of this photo for his office. If you can make a razor sharp 36″x54″print from a 12.2 mp Sony a700, you can imagine how great the prints look from the 24.6 mp Sony a900.

Here the trick to making really big prints:

First – Always shoot RAW if possible – the more information there is in your file the better.

Second – The best time to uprez is in RAW processing, so try to do it at that stage if possible.

Third - Choose an appropriate print resolution for the print size. Epson printers can interpolate from any print resolution, but they have sweet spots at 180, 240, 360 and 480 dpi. So for a relatively small print I’ll print at 480 dpi, but for a large print like this, I’ll use 180 dpi to minimize the need to uprez.

Now go out and do something Big!

Seven-time All Star Dominic DiMaggio, who always lived in the shadows of Hall of Fame brother Joe and teammate Ted Williams, died early today at age 92.

DiMaggio still holds the record for the longest consecutive game hitting streak in Red Sox history, yet his 34-game hitting streak games in 1949 was only the second longest hit streak in the DiMaggio family, forever over-shadowed by his brother Joe’s major league record 56-game hitting streak with the Yankees in 1941. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was Joe who caught a sinking liner off Dom’s bat to end his younger brother’s hit streak.

Dom DiMaggio, 2002

Dwyane Wade, aka D-Wade, aka god, ended his playoff run far to early for a basketball god who single-handedly turned around his franchise’s fortunes on his thanks to one of the greatest seasons in NBA history. All that’s left is to praise the greatness he showed averaging 30.2 ppg for a team that offered little supporting cast. So please enjoy my favorite D-Wade photo.

I shot this image of D-Wade right before the start of the 2006 NBA finals where he single-handedly ripped the Dallas Mavericks to shreds. (Sorry about that M-Cube, but you know it’s true…)

I love this photo, but the story behind it’s even better. D-Wade and I had just wrapped a shoot right before game one of the NBA finals and even though he was sweating out a 104º fever, I pleaded for one more shot – just for us. So we did a series against a black background in the bathroom of Dwyane’s Pinecrest mansion. Dwyane’s little sister was with us on the shoot and forget whatever you think about NBA stars – little sisters are little sisters – no matter how famous you may be. As I shot his photo, she laughed in the face of my NBA god with a little-sister taunt of “You know he does that thing with his eyebrow and calls it Sexy D-Wade.”

If I didn’t already idolize everything about the dude before, getting called out by his little sister pretty much wrapped it up.

Thanks for a great season D-Wade!

Over the years, I’ve photographed portraits of athletes on their way up from Alex Rodriguez, Andy Roddick to Maria Sharopova. Some make it…and some don’t. None have been as rewarding to watch on their march to greatness as the Williams Sisters. While photographing Serena Williams for this week’s issue of Time Magazine, I was reminded of the very first time I photographed the sisters back in 1994 when Serena was a mere 12-year-old phenom.

Serena Williams, 2008

Venus & Serena Williams, 1994