Rowing Book Background

I began photographing the US National Team guys at the Princeton Training Center in June 2006, with the idea of documenting their training leading into the August World Championships in Eton, England. I realized pretty fast that much of the preparation for Worlds had already been done way before I had showed up and I would have to spend more time with the team if I truly wanted to do it right.

So what started as a fun summer idea has now turned into a three year project, and what was supposed to be a simple photo essay is now shaping into a 400 page book, developed out of 97,000 pictures and 40 interviews, each about 3 hours in length.

The photo-documentary is now in its final stages. I have to choose and get approval for the individual quotes taken from the interviews, and finish laying out the book. Oh, and also come up with a title. Yes, it’s still a lot of work, but I can finally see the finish line now, and that’s a relief.

For some background, the book follows 16 people, 8 lightweights and 8 heavyweights (one of whom is Mike Teti) from 2006 through the beginning of 2009. The book consists of lots of behind-the-scenes photographs and lots of quotes. It’s not meant to be a glory book by any means. Instead it’s a book about the realities of training for the Olympics. This means looking at on the water training, VO2 max testing, erg testing, injuries, seatracing, making the boat, not making the boat, winning races, losing races, getting married, having children, earning money, etc. The full experience, through the eyes of 16 different people.

I know many people have been waiting patiently for a very long time for the book to come out. So I have decided that every other Monday, starting next week, I will be offering a sneak peak at the book. Basically a one or two page preview of the final book, which should be coming out in January 2010, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

In the meantime, I’m still taking title suggestions . . .

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 9:26 pm. It is filed under All Blogs, ROWING BOOK, SHIVSPIX News and tagged with ROWING BOOK, shivs, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.