Goal achieved: Sports Illustrated

I had the great opportunity of covering two high school football players making their decisions for college on Wednesday — Seantrel Henderson, an enormous lineman from the St. Paul area of Minnesota, and J.R. Ferguson, who will leave a Virginia military academy for LSU next fall.

Here’s a story about the day with some of my photos.

JR ferguson — JR Ferguson smiles at the CBS College Sports TV studios on Feb. 3, 2010 after commiting to LSU's football program. (Danny Wild/MaxPreps.com)

Shooting for MaxPreps can have its perks — the site is part of CBSSports.com, which became a partner with Sports Illustrated this past year. I was lucky enough to have one of my images of Henderson picked up by SI.com earlier today:

Henderson on SI — My image of Seantrel Henderson in Sports Illustrated on Wednesday evening.

Getting a photo run by Sports Illustrated has to be one of the biggest goals for any sports photographer, and it’s something I always dreamed of, to sound cliched. Sports Illustrated is known to even non-sports fans for two things — the best sports photography out there, and the swimsuit issue (I have a feeling I know which one is more popular, but…)

It may not be the most thrilling of images, but I was the only photographer who got that shot, and so all things considered, I’m pumped.

Here’s a couple more shots from the afternoon:

Seantrel Henderson holds up his new USC jersey for the cameras. (Danny Wild/MaxPreps.com)

Seantrel seemed incredibly relaxed all afternoon. This was somewhat of a can’t-lose decision of course — picking amongst the best college football programs in the nation, on live TV — but he seemed perfectly calm the whole time.

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