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This morning I'll be spending the day in OKC shooting photos for Thunder Media Day.

Thunder Media Day is always a hectic affair where you literally have a time limit with each player. (Try taking photos while a guy with a stopwatch hangs out in the back. Kind of weird.)

Players have 10-15 areas they have to report to for interviews, video shoots, photos, etc. and just a couple of hours to do it in, thus the stopwatch, so you have to work fast.

Despite the furious nature of the whole thing it's fun to see what you can get under pressure. Last year I did 3 setups and managed to shoot some of my favorite pics so far.

I generally have a pretty generic lighting setup for the "main" marketing pictures. These need to be well-lit and pretty bright and open for the most part. Examples of those are the picture of Durant at the beginning of this post and the trio of Westbrook just below.

I also wanted to do a dark setup last year. Although none of the pictures from this series made it into any marketing materials last year, I felt like it was important to get a different perspective on the guys while we had the chance. The Thunder don't make their players available for much throughout the season, so if you want to get a different look for a magazine story or poster to use later in the year then you have to plan well in advance.

This picture of Serge Ibaka below captured a pensive moment with the usually animated Thunder forward.

You may recall the three pictues below from a post I did earlier this year talking about caricature and the importance of taking risks with your photography. These pictures never ran last year either, but I'm still glad I shot them. You can find that old post here.

This year I have a few new things planned again. It's very important to make sure you get what the client wants and needs first, but then I'll be looking to experiment and push the envelope just a bit more. I want to give them something they didn't even know they wanted until they saw it and then they wonder how they ever did without it.

Here's to a great day of shooting.