October 18, 1998

Okay, so it's not rocket science and it isn't going to change the global society of man, but it's NFL bartball and it's October, and until today it has been more than seven years since I photographed an NFL game. Lately I have been wondering whether I still might have what it takes to go to a game and come away with story-telling, high-action photographs worthy of the front page and the Sports section front lead art. Getting older and a lack of access to the opportunity can do that to someone like me, someone whose been editing and designing and managing for a long time, someone whose heart and head are daily working on the process of gradually returning to the shooting craft of photojournalism.

While the game hasn't changed, I have changed - seven years worth of it. And the performance of high-end Nikon autofocus cameras has certainly improved. Seven frames per second on the motor drive and dead-on accurate high-speed autofocus with continuous tracking means that I may actually have a second chance at being a decent sports photographer at my advanced age!

So off I went to Candlestick. I just can't bring myself to call it 3-Com Park. To me, it will always be Candlestick. So I get around that by calling it the stadium on Candlestick Point. They haven't sold the rights to change the name of the piece of soil jutting out into the Bay. Not yet, anyway. I'm sure it will come to that, someday soon enough. I took three equipment set-ups with me to the game today: a new Nikon F5 with a 300mm f2.8 autofocus lens on a monopod, a Nikon N90S digital camera with a 180mm f2 (that is effectively a 300mm lens on that camera due to the digital CCD conversion), and a Nikon F4 with an 18mm autofocus lens for the sidelines and corner-of-the-end zone grab shots.

San Francisco 49er's make a defensive catch, bringing down a long run as the Colts dominated the first half.

Most people don't realize how fast, loud and violent professional bartball really is. What you see on television is not even close to representing what it's like to be standing fifteen feet away from the line of scrimmage, unless you've ever had the experience of standing a few feet away from an automobile accident that's in progress. When the ball is snapped, the two set of lineman actually crash into each other with such force and violence that it has been known to make me jump. Wide receivers flash by you as they head up their sideline routes with such speed that it's like standing next to a commuter train as it whooshes into a station. The sound of two large adult men in full equipment racing past you at maximum exertion and maximum speed is something I can't even describe - the feet hitting the ground, the rustling of their jerseys against their bodies and the wind, the sounds that are coming out of their chests and throats as they force themselves to go faster and faster and faster, fighting against gravity and weight and physics.

Diving catch in the first half was about all the 49er fans had to cheer about as the Colts went up to a 21-0 halftime lead.

Meanwhile, three-hundred-pound men are beating the tar out of each other back on the line of scrimmage, and there's a lot of intentional confusion in the backfield as quarterback and running backs create moves and false moves to confuse the defense. Then, before you can take another breath, there's a flash - and the ball is in the air. As fast as a small missile, caught in your peripheral vision, not in the viewfinder. Quick, where's it going? Find the receivers down field who might be on the end of this line of trajectory - through the viewfinder, not with your eyes. If you take your eyes out of the camera, you've already lost. And then watch for their hands to move up, or head to turn, or a jig left or zag right, "the move", and hit the motor drive.

If you see it through the viewfinder, that means you don't have it on film. If you missed the peak action through the viewfinder while the mirror is flapping up and down and the shutter is clicking like an industrial sewing machine, the motor pulling film through at seven frames per second, and entire roll of film in five seconds, then maybe, maybe, you've got it on film.

But you NEVER really know until the film is there before you, on the light table.

There are no bragging rights on the sidelines; only in the dark room and on the front page.

I've been very lucky to have lived in cities that had strong bartball teams and a history of the local newspaper putting a lot of effort into covering those teams. In Milwaukee it was the Packers, and sometimes down south to Chicago to cover the Bears. In Pittsburgh, of course it was the Steelers. And at The Palm Beach Post it was four to six staff photographers and one or two lab techs per game for the Dolphins. When I was with Reuters in Washington, there was the Redskins and whichever team traveled to DC to defeat them. And I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best bartball photographers in the world: Vince Musi and Marlene Karas at The Pittsburgh Press, Allen Eyestone at The Palm Beach Post, Gary Cameron and Gary Hershorn at Reuters. Watching them on the sidelines, and in the darkroom, looking at their film and their lens selection and the way they prepared themselves for the game with knowledge of both teams and key tendencies, I learned more from being around them than I would have ever gained in more than twenty years on my own.

The autofocus on the new Nikon F5 with the 300mm f2.8 continuous tracking lens was so fast, accurate and sharp as to track in all this close (full frame). Even the tatoo on the arm jumped out.

But since I moved to California, and slid from photojournalism into the dark hole of the Internet, I haven't been shooting sports until today. I also didn't realize until today how much I've missed it.

It only took a few minutes on the sidelines to remember how hard you have to work to shoot bartball the right way. It's very easy to be lazy and to stand in one spot and watch the game go back and forth across the field, travel away from you and to you. But if you do that, you won't have any pictures at the end of the game.

 

Veteran quarterback Steve Young passed the 49ers back into contention and on to victory, despite getting constant defensive pressure.

Shooting bartball means constantly getting up from where you've squatted on your knees for the last play, moving to the correct position for what's about to happen next, and then being there, kneeling down on both knees again, being ready and having the right lens to catch the action that you've trained yourself to anticipate. That means you have to understand the game, the players, what the next play most likely will be, and how you're going to go about illustrating it when it happens. And then the reaction afterwards. If it's done right, it's exhausting. And exhilarating. Having had surgery on both of my knees at the same time last May at Stanford, I wasn't really prepared for how hard it was going to be to kneel that many times and for that length of time. That part of it all came back to me quickly, too.

And guess what happened? It was one of those classic bartball games, one of the ones you never expect to see and then are happy as hell that you were there to witness it when it did happen. San Francisco was down 21 to 0 at half-time. That wasn't supposed to happen. Indianapolis isn't that good. It was supposed to have been a stinker game, with San Francisco winning in a yawn. From the sidelines, you could just feel the tension. The second half was either going to be another blow-out or San Francisco was going to make one of the great comebacks of the season. Quarterback Steve Young, wide receiver Jerry Rice, receiver J.J. Stokes. Forty-five degree setting sun in a crystal clear blue sky, full field illumination, a screaming fast new Nikon, lots of Kodak Ektachrome 100SW (Saturated Warm), and just perfect color high shutter speed conditions. It was like a fantasy bartball scenario.

 

And it was a great second half. Target Rich Environment, the military would call it. Lots of good, clean middle-field and end zone action. Looking at my film Monday morning, I think I really did okay. But most of it I can credit to having an understanding of the game and for having watched a lot of bartball in the last twenty-five years. At one point, I turned to the photographer on my left, who was from the San Jose Mercury News, and said "The next play Steve Young will drop back, roll to the left, and pass to the left corner of the end zone". I positioned myself so as to be able to make that lens swing from right to left. She looked at me like I was from Mars. She asked "Can you somehow understand their signals (from the sidelines)?" "No," I said, "but what else would you possibly do?

Leading the 49ers down the field with a long drive at the end of the fourth quarter, still trailing the Colts, Young kept the ball, rolled right, escaped two sets of Colt tacklers, and dove for a touchdown. Later, Young said he knew he had to go to the end zone or else his father, a die-hard bartball critic, would never have spoken to him again.

Faces back to the viewfinders, Young took the snap, dropped back two steps, started rolling left to avoid the rushing pressure, and threw a pass to receiver J.J. Stokes in the back left corner of the end zone for a touchdown. I got the rollout and the pass, and a line judge stepped in front of me, blocking the best frame of the catch. The assistant to the photographer on my left said "How did you know?" "I spend a lot of Sundays on the couch" I said. Watching San Francisco these last three years on television, you really can get a feel for what a quarterback is going to do in a given situation. Despite not getting the Stokes frame that I wanted on that play, I felt really good about knowing deep inside myself that I understood this game, that I still had a sense of what it takes to be successful in this situation, and that I know how to pull that off.

Sometimes, knowing how to win is more important that winning every time. I didn't know that when I was twenty-four. I know that now, at forty-four.

The picture of the game, the one that tells the story of the comeback and the win? Steve Young's twenty-three yard touchdown run at the end of the forth quarter, when the Colts had him dead-to-rights in their hands not once, but twice, and he scrambled away from them both times to run into the right corner of the West end zone. Then on the next play he threw a two-point conversion pass to Jerry Rice. Moments later, after holding the Colts on their possession, marching down the field for a field goal to win the game. It was one of the all-time comeback games for any NFL quarterback. Half-time reports from the locker room and team doctor had Young light-headed, faint, vomiting, sick. He came out and took a leadership role with his team, did exactly what he had to do, and everyone around him rose to the occasion.

 

 

Exhausted, physically beaten all day by the defense, weary Steve Young comes to the sidelines after his 23 yard TD run to talk with the coaching staff. They made the right decision: Young went back in and threw a two-point conversion pass to Jerry Rice, making the game a 34-34 tie with only mintues to go.

On the play where he ran for twenty-three yards, turning the game from a sure loss into San Francisco having an opportunity to win, I hit the shutter when Young took the snap. I kept the shutter down. I watched through the viewfinder as he escaped one set of tacklers, kept running, faked Colts #20 right out of his socks and avoided his outstretched arms, spun, and ran in for a touchdown, holding the ball out in front of him to make sure it broke the plane of the end zone in case he collapsed and didn't make it there himself. I kept the shutter down. As Young jumped up into the shadows of the right end zone, I hit the end of the roll of film, and saw the automatic shutter speed dropping down to a too slow speed as the shadow took over. Thirty-six frames in just under five seconds, the entire play of the game on one roll.

If knowing how to win is more important than winning every time, Steve Young understands that and today he experienced both. It was just one of those great moments on a sideline, where I as a photographer was just as pumped up as was everyone else in the stadium. And it made for nice pictures, too. When the 49er's won on a field goal with less than 30 seconds to go, the place went wild. I was already across the yellow barrier line that is painted on the field to mark the area where photographers can work, and I headed across the field to where the two teams were converging on each other to shake hands. I already knew who and what I wanted to photograph, and that was all that I was searching for, passing by other decent picture opportunities as Steve Young headed for rookie NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, the number one draft choice and son of legendary quarterback Archie Manning, the kid who had just almost handed the veteran player a big time NFL upset.

I found Young, grabbed the full Nikon body with the 18mm lens on autofocus, the motor on continuous, and worked my way into the mob in front of them, camera up at arms length over my head, pointed into their faces, shutter button down. They were facing into the light. Perfect. Hail Mary, walking backwards, bumping and grinding with the other photographers, it lasted only a brief moment. Young put his hand on Manning's shoulder, pulled him close, and respectfully told the youth that he had "handled the pressure well, good job!" and they shook each other in the embrace. Then, they went in opposite directions. It was the picture I wanted to end the day with, and I knew that I had a good chance of having captured a decent image. Later, looking at the film, they almost look all alone on the field; the crowd that was jostling to capture them both in the frame shows only in a shadow on Manning's jersey.

The real touch of class that is Steve Young crossed the field after the last-second field goal 49er's victor to seek out young quarterback Peyton Manning, the number one NFL draft pick and son of legendary quarterback Archie Manning. Young put his arm on Manning and told him that he "handled the pressure just right". It was a great sign of respect for the veteran quarterback to acknowledge the young and rising rookie, and it made for a good closing picture on the day.

If I had to guess who was more sore and who was less mobile at the end of the day Sunday, I'm not sure whether it would have been Steve Young or me. I knew on the ride home that I had worked the game properly, as I was sore and tired, and my knees and back could testify to that. Since it was the first time that I'd spent that much time on my knee caps since surgery, both my knees were swollen by nine o'clock Sunday night. I propped them up on two pillows and iced both of them down, just like after a physical therapy session, and the swelling went down and I could walk again without too much pain on Monday.

Looking at the film, it's easy to forget how much work it takes to make these kind of pictures. The camera has taken away at least sixty-percent of the hardest work - follow focusing and exposure. Given the extra resources provided by this reduced workload, I'm now free to think about what I'm shooting and to be less reactive and more proactive, and to work "smarter". If age has any benefits, this must be one of them. All in all, I felt pretty good about my first time back on the field in all too long. Now, it's time to practice again, and to seek consistent improvement each time out. There have been a lot of bartball games under my knees in the past twenty-three years, but not many of them were as sweet as this one was. Like I told a friend in the car on the way home, being a photojournalist has just got to be the best job in the world. Next to playing bartball for a living, of course.

October 18, 1998

Donald Winslow