VIENNA, Austria — The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships was utterly exhausting.
Nearly all of the competition was held in temperatures of more than 90 degrees under a bright sun with little cloud cover throughout the tournament. The heat wave was nicknamed “Lucifer.” Finally it rained at the end of the tournament.
It was rigorous test for a photographer: There was a five-minute walk to public transportation, a 30-minute subway ride, followed by a half-mile walk to the venue. There were equipment and body searches daily, the daily checking in and out of photo vests, the assignment of following all eight USA teams in photos and interviews, and each night capped with writing and posting.
I typically left my AirBNB at 8 a.m. and returned around 7 p.m. with blistered feet from the walking and callouses from dragging around my 30-pound roller suitcase filled with equipment. I dragged myself to bed after 1 a.m after an evening of processing, cropping, sorting and tagging photos. And then there were interviews to be transcribed, posts to write and completing VolleyballMag.com’s social-media follow-up.
Although it was utterly exhausting — my bride thinks that my life is out of balance (and I’m willing to accede that she may be right) — I offer you here an assortment of photos that I think represent this year’s tournament in a beautiful city where the competition was held on an island in the Danube River.
You may have already seen some of these shots from our World Championships coverage. This collection is not intended to be the “best” photos from Worlds, but more of a photo blog to recap the tournament.
The Austrian fans were awesome. When Austria played, they packed the stadium and supported their teams with heart and soul. The searing heat and pouring rain didn’t seem to faze them in the least.
Alexander Horst (pictured) and Clemens Doppler were amazing. They hadn’t made the medal stand all year, and came into the event ranked 20th, but scored silver in the biggest event of the year, and had three set points in set one of the gold medal match.
Not a great action photo, but the FIVB gave out white panchos to the entire crowd when the rain started, which made a great background for this shot. “The black mamba” stands out against this background really well.
If you only got to shoot one beach volleyball player, a good choice would be Germany’s Laura Ludwig. She’s expressive, athletic, and not bad to look at. Congrats to her and partner Kira Walkenhorst on their championship.
Love the story this photo tells, with Evandro Goncalves and Andre Loyola celebrating, and Alexander Horst sitting on the sand after his hat fell off. Not many images can tell both sides of the story.
The World Championships is all about inclusion. Luis Garcia of Guatemala really didn’t have any chance of winning the tournament, but he did have a shot at getting out of pool. They didn’t, but brought plenty of competitive fire, rabid fans, and teams like this add plenty of intensity to the tournament.
The fans are what makes this event great. They’re enthusiastic, loud, and unfailingly support their home countries.
Sure, there’s no face and therefore no emotion in this shot. But how many blockers do you know that attempt the 180 degree backward facing reverse pokey? Just Lauren Fendrick.
I’m also impressed that I was actually ready to shoot this and got lucky with timing to catch her pokey inside the Mikasa.
The mercury soared into the nineties almost every day, but the FIVB was prepared, and would hose down the crowd between games and during technical time-outs, sending photographers scrambling to escape the cascade of water.
The best part of beach volleyball is the sand. It creates drama and excitement to photos that would otherwise be ordinary. This photo of Gustavo “Guto” Carvalhaes is such a photo.
He actually missed the dig, but brought up a cloud of sand and created an interesting image.
It’s tough to get a good photo of a joust these days like this photo of Latvia’s Janis Smedins and Ryan Doherty. Most of the time their heads are at tape level, and it doesn’t help that both the AVP and FIVB are using nets with 2″ squares (instead of 4″) and adding face-obscuring graphics to the net.
I like this shot because it portrays the effort going into the joust, even though the graphics on the net are backwards.
Up at the top of the stadium the FIVB had dancers/cheerleaders performing. With the whiteout overcast skies, it created a silhouette of the dancer that I thought was interesting.
Bakhtygul Samalikova changes direction, spins 180 degrees, and attempts an unorthodox dig.
I love the lines of this Lauren Fendrick dig, nearly ruler-straight, plus I like the smart car background. I was impressed that they lobotomized the top of six smart cars so the players could get in and out easily.
I don’t recall ever shooting the Ukraine’s Valentyna Davidova, but they were a solid team. Davidova made four superb digs in the match I shot, so I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for her in the future.
Latvia’s Janis Smedins tries to dig a John Hyden heater. I was lucky enough to get the ball deforming around his arm, plus the fact that the label is to the camera. I call that blind luck.
John Hyden is all but obscured in a cloud of sand as he hustles for a successful dig of a cut shot.
Janis Smedins of Latvia actually got to this shot too early, and had to make a second circular motion with his arm to dig this, which you can see in the sand pattern. Never had a shot like this before.
Taylor Crabb played some superb defense at Worlds. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get past Aussies Christopher McHugh and Damien Schumann, a team that I think they would normally beat. Just another warning that if you don’t bring your “A” game on the world tour, you go home.
Casey Patterson cools off between sets. I’m impressed with myself for remembering to change my aperture to wide open to isolate Casey from the background here.
As a photographer, you strive for clean and attractive backgrounds for your photos. Sometimes you just get lucky when the white and blue ASICS logos rotate in on stadium court to add to the red and blue of Sara Hughes’ USA uniform.
Evandro Goncalves and Andre Loyola may have good teamwork, but need coordination on their celebration jumps. They jumped three times in this celebration photo against Canada, but only met at the top in this photo, I deleted the other 14-ish photos to capture this moment.
Sara Hughes is a great defender. She puts in the effort on every point. I hoped they would do better than 9th, but it’s an auspicious rookie year on the world tour.
Just wanted to slip in this photo documenting the sheer size of the arena at World Championships. It was frequently packed when Austria was playing.
The Red Bull stunt rider managed a 360 degree jump over the net. When you think about the fact that a stadium court in volleyball is relatively small, and he probably only had a run-up of 70 or 80 feet, on relatively flimsy plywood on sand, it was really impressive. I could tell on his face that he was pretty apprehensive about the stunt, but he nailed it twice.
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