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May 19, 1998
click to see Mark's interactive
sports gallery
Sports photography...To me, it's always been the essence of photojournalism.
Nothing set up, nothing pre-planned. Just go out there and shoot it. Sports
photography is either one of those things that you love or hate and you're
either good at it or your not. There's no gray line.
| While working at newspapers, I tried to keep my distance from the
youth sports scene. I remember that in Winter Haven, the youth baseball
folks in the town of Eagle Lake had decided that I needed to sit on
top of the dugout (read-fat me on a paper thin tin roof) with a hard
hat on when shooting the game- this they said was because of
"Liability concerns". I laughed and told them that I wouldn't
do it- sorry. To make matters worse, they also wanted us to pay the
$5 admission fee to cover the game that they invited us to...
They again insisted about the roof and hard hat and I told the reporter
that he would have no photo of the game, at which point the director
of the league stopped me and started yelling at me about how "X"
league got better coverage then they did- not the right thing to do
for those of you out there that are little league parents. I told
him that I thought it was a shame that the kids wouldn't have any
photos from their game and that it was easier for me to shoot
a Boston Red Sox game in comparison to their little league game. With
that I left and the director of the league turned to the reporter
and told him "Your friend don't know what the hell he's talking
about- this ain't Little League, it's Dixie (Dixie Youth
Baseball- a league comparable to Dizzy Dean or Little League here
in the South.). Such is the mentality of the kids sports program management.
I have promised myself that when my boy gets to baseball age, I will
never do this. If any of you reading this see me acting this way,
you have my permission to shoot me. |
Perhaps of all the sports shots that I have, this one to me is
by far the best illustration of anticipating your subject. How do
you anticipate a long jump? Easy- you don't. You simply have to
be ready for the moment and hope for a little bit of good luck.
I shot this image with a 600mm lens and the young lady in the image
was on the far left side of the frame when I shot the image, which
cropped her arm. That's the only part of this image that I don't
like, but will take it as a trade-off for simply having
the image on film.
click to see Mark's
interactive sports gallery
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A week after NASCAR driver Davey Allison was killed in a helicopter
crash at Talladega Superspeedway, drivers Neil Bonnett and Ted Musgrave
tangle in the tri-oval during the "Die Hard 500". This
race was memorable because of the death of Allison, whose funeral
I was assigned to cover ( Allison's home- Hueytown, Alabama
is about 35 minutes from Tuscaloosa) and another horrific accident
on turn one that took the driver over the retaining wall fence and
outside of the track itself. This accident with Bonnett and Musgrave
"Red Flagged" the race for three hours so that repairs
to the grand stand fencing could be made because Bonnett had taken
a 100 yard swath of fence with him when he wrecked. Laps at the
2.66 mile track are made in under 45 seconds- over 200 miles an
hour. The turns at Talladega are so steep (32 degrees) that a group
of mountain climbing paramedics is specially trained to repel and
extract drivers who are injured on the turns. The turns must also
be taken at a minimum of 90 miles an hour- otherwise, the car falls
over sideways toward the bottom of the track.
click to see Mark's
interactive sports gallery
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I'll never forget the first "Big" sports event that I
went to- a spring training game in Winter Haven, Florida. That day,
it was the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was mesmerized
by Tommy Lasorta, who as it turned out, was quite the entertainer
that day- getting out of the dugout and talking to the crowd between
innings. To me, it was what baseball should be. full contact with
the crowd, casual and fun.
At that time, the Red Sox had an older guy who was pretty crusty
around the edges shooting for them. He'd simply grunt when you asked
him something and one day he and I were the lone shooters on the
first base side of the field. Wade Boggs was at the plate and I
had been instructed to get some nice shots of Boggs batting. First
pitch...click. Second pitch...click. Third pitch...click. The old
guy turned at me and said "Who the hell are you?". It
caught me off guard to have someone ask me this in that kind of
tone. I told him and readied myself to get kicked out of the park
for doing something that I was sure I'd done wrong. "Well,
you have GREAT timing...that ball was right where it should have
been every time you shot. Good for you..." and with that, he
turned around and didn't say another word to me for the rest of
that game and all of spring training that year.
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But, I did come to realize that my timing is pretty good and got better
with practice. Shooting sports well means that you can regularly anticipate
what's going to happen. I practiced by shooting children playing. It's
good feature photography for the paper and it also helps to improve your
timing.
Another way that I practiced was to shoot lightening during storms. Now,
let me explain that you can shoot lightening by simply putting the camera
on a tripod and opening the shutter for a long exposure. That's not what
I'm talking about. I mean shooting at 1/30 to 1/500 of a second and hand
holding the camera. I got to the point a few years back that during one
storm here in Tuscaloosa, I shot ten frames of film and seven had bolts
of lightening in the frame. Try it some time and see how you do. It's
really not as easy as it might sound. Lightening is fleeting and rarely
lasts for more than half a second. How does this pay off? Easy. You get
the shots that others miss. It trains you to shoot proactively rather
than reactively.
While looking through some old negatives, I've pulled together some of
the sports images that I've shot over the years that I like. Some are
as simple as a little league game in Munford, Alabama while others are
as intense as a group of cars driving 200 mph through the tri-oval at
Talladega Superspeedway.
Without a doubt, all good photojournalists have the basketball and bartball
shots in their portfolio. Well, I do too- but, I shoot enough "odd
ball" sports that I try to use them as examples of my work- give
the editor looking at the pictures something unexpected. When you work
for the home town newspaper of the Crimson Tide, it's a given that you
can shoot bartball and basketball and I have some examples of that work
but I also have some swimming, baseball, gymnastics, track and auto racing,
which is by far one of my favorite things to shoot.
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Each photographer had their own special way of doing things. This
is the vision that makes each of their images unique and a treasure
to those who look at it. Doesn't matter if you're working for the
paper in Yeeha Junction, Florida or Sports Illustrated- that picture
that someone shot is important to someone looking at it. Be it the
player themselves or a family member or a fan. And I guess this
is why I love shooting sports. It is always appreciated by someone.
Take care.
Mark.
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Competitive diving can also be a challenge to shoot. I like this
shot because it over-exaggerates the obvious. Yes, on any dive the
person goes through the air, but here, he genuinely soars like an
Eagle. I shot this with a 20mm lens to give some perspective to
the diving board.
click to see Mark's
interactive sports gallery
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