Futebol in America

This is futebol in America... Brazil style! I was hired to shoot two Brazil matches this summer for Nike Brazil. The first match was in Seattle, Washington as Brazil would be playing an international friendly against our neighbors to the north, Canada! (loud screams) The second match of the America Tour, Brazil was set to play Venezuela in Boston, Massachusetts at Gillette Stadium the following week. Check out this gallery of my photographs from those two games (with a couple of images from a USA/Brazil game) as well as my behind the scenes accounts of shooting the Brazil America Tour for Nike Brazil below.

I've traveled to Seattle once before so I kind of new what I was getting myself into weather wise. It was late June, but wouldn't you know it, slight chance of rain on the forecast. I rented a 400mm for these two jobs (cause I'm not rich and both games are at night) and was kinda sketched out about it raining on this rented $7,000 lens.
I had protection but it's something I had jimmy rigged in Portland from a 99 cent store out of a water proof laundry bag with a draw string and a hole cut in the bottom, so you can understand how I was still nervous about it raining.
Turns out it just sprinkled pre-game and we stayed dry during the game, thank god! The game wasn't too thrilling, Brazil beat Canada 3-2 (I think!) but I got many good images of Nike athletes Robinho, Pato, and Adriano, which helped out my sleep pattern that night.

But before we hit the pillow for the night, we hit the downtown Seattle bars! I met up with a friend who lives in Seattle named Rob Nana. Rob and I used to skate back in middle school and high school together, and he was the one I started shooting skate photos of first, which lead to my previous trip to Seattle to shoot an advertisement for a skate company. After we played some pool and had a few too many drinks,

the Heist Crew and I called it a night and stumbled our way to the hotel. A quick trip via this guy below

to the airport at 7am and a flight home and I was already geared up for my trip to Boston.

Less than a week later, I'm back at the Oakland Airport to catch a red-eye to Boston at 11pm. I land in Boston at 7 am their time and catch a shuttle to my hotel which was next door to the airport. The hotel had a great view of the Boston Skyline from across the river, or bay, or lake, what-ever it is.

Unfortunately they didn't have my room ready so I sat and ate a $30 breakfast in the hotel restaurant. And for $30, it wasn't that good but I was hungry. After breakfast my room was ready so I took a quick shower and napped for a couple of hours to re-gain my head after that long over night flight. After a few missed calls from Jordan I finally got ahold of him and was informed that he wasn't able to give me a ride to the game. Turns out he had to pick up some rain gear and wouldn't have time to pick me up due to my location. Hoping on a shuttle that took me over to the rental car offices my first stop was Hertz and man that was an extremely bad move! There was a huge line and 20 minutes later I find out that there are no cars to rent from them. I quickly storm out of there, swearing under my breath, I look left, I look right, and decide to head over to Alamo. As I am walking up to the office I'm greeted by a italian guy with an awesome New York accent standing on the porch of the office who says "I got whatchu need!" and I'm like "Sweet bro!" I didn't have my return flight info for him, which apparently he needed to rent me a car. He could see I was about to break down inside from all the stress, so he tells me "If you take care of me, I'll take care of you," in a strong New York accent to make it even more enthralling. I'm like, "sure dude, get me a car asap! I need to be at Gillete Stadium in three hours!" "Three hours!" he exclaims. "You're gonna hit tons of traffic man!" As he walks me to the car he asks me if I'm going to "take care of him?" I'm like sure boss, I dive in the wallet to see only a $1 and a $20... why couldn't I have a $10? I gave him the $20 and got on the road. Turns out that he wasn't going to be the only nice person I was fortunate to meet on this trip. I hit a toll both as I'm driving out of the airport. I'm feet from the entrance to the freeway that I need to go south on. It's $3 and I only have a buck! I cruise up to the booth and ask the guy if he excepts visa and that I only have a buck otherwise. The guy looks at me, takes the one dollar from my hand, and says have a nice day. Wow! Hook up number 2 in Bean town!!

I finally hit the freeway and I'm trying to get a GPS signal to my phone for navigation, but all the freeways near the airport are in tunnels. Not a good sign when you're driving around an area you have never been. Once I'm out of the tunnels I hit traffic, all bad! Turns out the rest of the drive to the stadium would be me sitting in traffic... for two and a half hours! Finally make it to the stadium with 30 minutes to spare, get down to the field and was able to watch a little bit of a New England Revolution soccer match before the Brazil match started. The Revolution was playing FC Dallas and I bet you didn't know this but all the old ladies love to take pictures of Dallas's Kenny Cooper! "He's so dreamy!"


The Brazil v Venezuela match was much like the match against Canada... BORING! I got some good photos of the Nike players but it could have been a little more exciting on the offensive side of Brazil's game as they lost nil-1. My highlight of the trip came after the match when I was blessed enough to sit in another two hours of traffic trying to leave the stadium. I didn't get back to the hotel until 3 am and i had to be at the airport at 6 am for my flight home. It wasn't the funnest thing but it just meant that I would be tired enough to actually sleep on the plane ride home.

Thanks for reading my behind the scenes of shooting the Brazil America Tour 2008 for Nike Brazil.