Last Thanksgiving I shot the Great Alaska Shootout for Icon SMI.  They had asked me to shoot it, and I did, and kind of forgot about it.  Not the games, but working with a wire service, after you shoot, edit, caption and FTP, you are on to the next thing.  Over 4 days, 6 teams, with each team getting 3 games, I uploaded between 40-100 photos per game.  But then for me, I got busy with high school basketball and kinda forgot about the Shootout.

The 2009 shootout featured the Washington State Cougars, and during one game, Klay Thompson broke out for a shootout record with 3’s, surpassing Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson whose record had stood for like 15 some odd years.

So weeks turn into months and today, June 1st, I received a check from Icon SMI.  It turns out that for the December 7th issue of Sports Illustrated, Thompson was named “the best player in the Pac-10”, and SI had used THIS PHOTO from Icon SMI in the article pictured above.  It is on page 46.  This is the Derek Jeter Sportsman of the Year issue.  I am pretty excited.  I have had SI stuff online briefly, stuff in ESPN the Mag and at ESPN.com, but it is really nice opening up an issue of the top sports magazine to find an image that you took.  Even nicer when you get a check for it.  I have a close up of the photo as it appeared in the magazine with my by-line next to it bellow.