Shooting into the sun

Mom said to never look directly into the sun, right?

Wrong.

Sometimes the best photos are made shooting directly into the sun. In this case, Florida Lacrosse was up more than 10 points before the first half was over, and because of the time change, the sun was setting at 7:40 p.m. just around halftime.

Most would think that shooting directly into the sun would drastically underexpose your subject. This is also a myth. If properly exposed, you can get that deep orange glow of a late sun and your subject still exposed.

Here are a few examples from the game:

Nikon D3s (120mm, f/4, 1/800 sec, ISO500)

Nikon D800 (14mm, f/4.5, 1/160 sec, ISO50)

Once the light was lost after halftime it was a waiting game for twilight - arguably my favorite time to shoot.

While the action may not be the best, the sky proved to be worth shooting at 14mm.

Nikon D800 (14mm, f/2.8, 1/160, ISO800)

So the next time you find yourself shooting around sunset make sure to always look up - despite what mom says.

Ides of March

March Madness certainly earns its name even before Selection Sunday. College basketball proves itself time and time again each spring when the Cinderella team goes up against a champion and wins, or when an obscure group of five athletes comes out of nowhere and lands on the front page of SI.com.

We all remember the Gators’ two national championships vividly. We remember the “Year of the Gator” issue of Sports Illustrated. We remember the chest-beating screams of Joakim Noah. We remember the pictures of dunks, steals, fouls and net cutting.

The journey is madness.

And in recent years, the Gators have come close to that madness again.

Clearly, this year’s team is special. Despite a few unexpected losses, the Gators are primed and ready to go into the ides of March.

This means, we must prepare to go with them. Not just packing our bags and showing up, but stepping up our coverage.

For photographers, this means documenting a team that could make a significant dent in Gator history. Remote camera, warm ups, team practices, traveling and, of course, March Madness coverage.

It is a crapshoot trying to plan how far a team can go in March, and it always conflicts with every plan, or every shred of a social life, you thought you had in spring. But the reward, much like for the players and fans, is always worth it.

Photographing basketball in March is like taking a bowl game and multiplying it by eight. The crowds are better, the stakes are higher and the players show more on the court than they ever have at the sold-out home game.

And once you’re in, you’re in for the long haul. The NCAA requires that you cover every game in the tournament if you plan to be at the Final Four – meaning you can’t just wait it out and see if the Gators make it to Atlanta and then suddenly plan a trip.

So what do you bring to March Madness? Well, pretty much everything you’d bring to a regular-season game and then some.

We cover basketball with multiple cameras, from behind and under the basket to inches above the wooden court to those behemoth lenses you see at football games – all of these make a difference in how you see the game online and in print.

I’m a Nikon guy, as many of you know, and Nikon has some amazing glass (lenses) that allows us to cover the games in very special ways.

One piece of glass that makes your feel like you’re in the middle of a packed home crowd or in the midst of madness is the 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. The 14mm is an ultra-wide lens that is pretty much like a fisheye lens, but without the bowing (fisheye) look to the edges of the frame.

This lens makes you feel like you’re sitting on the court, under the basket or in the rafters of the O’Connell Center.

It has a unique purpose in not bringing the action close to you, like a longer 200mm or 400mm lens, but bringing you into the scene that we are covering. This lens makes for fantastic full-page spreads in the magazine and galleries online.

The heart of covering basketball is a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. With its wide aperture (f/2.8), which allows more light to get into the camera and gives you that nice blurry background causing your subject to really stand out, it gives you the versatility to cover almost anything on your side of the court. Long enough at 200mm to zoom to mid-court and short enough at 70mm to cover a layup or dunk, this lens is used for majority of what you see online and in the magazine.

Now when you want to get crazy (as I often do), you bring longer glass to cover the defensive game – especially when you have a guy like Patrick Young who likes to make dramatic blocks. You can’t be on both sides of the court at once. So why not bring the glass that allows you to be in two places at once?

A 400mm f/2.8 is what you often see on the sidelines at a Gator football game. It is the bread-and-butter lens of all field sports photography. 

But it also allows you to get some tack-sharp photos of details in basketball that most photographers don’t bother with because of the shear size and weight of this lens (roughly 10 pounds).

All of this complete with remote triggers to hang cameras under the basket and a slew of memory cards and your trusty MacBook Pro, and you are ready to dive into March.

Now, you just have to find the best way to pack all of this and get it safely to each venue. We’ll save that for another time.

So as you enjoy March Madness both online and in print, at the big game or at home on your couch – make sure you check out the galleries and take a look at all of what we do to bring you closer to the action and tell a complete story through photos.

I’ll be in the bottom corner of your television set.

Spring Into a Varied Approach

McKethan Stadium at the University of Florida

Now that we have hung up our shoulder pads, licked our wounds from the Cardinals and obsess over recruiting, we have a new season of competition to focus on – spring. While spring to many is about the smell of clay on a baseball diamond and the squeaking of shoes on a wooden court, it is also about an entirely different regimen for covering Gator sports.

Most think that fall is the busiest time of the year. If you count miles traveled, yes, it is. This past season I traveled over 5,900 miles (5,000 by car) to cover road games for the Gator football team. That is more than 85 hours on the road criss-crossing six states in the South.

Gator Football

Football is an interesting beast to tackle. You have 12 games to tell the story of a season. You have 48 quarters and roughly 36 hours of shooting players on the field. The limited access we get as the media off the field makes this task of visually telling a story daunting. I shoot between 30,000 and 35,000 photos every football season. Why so many? Well, in the age of digital photography you can hold that shutter down for a few extra clicks to make sure you have the perfect shot – or a few shots to work with in a sequence of a play.

All of this has to come together as my MacBook Pro is whirling through thousands of photos and crunching data to color correct, crop, render, export and upload hundreds of photos and gigabytes of video online each week.

So how can spring be any more difficult, especially when we don’t cover road games?

Well, just like any other workout, you can get into a pretty comfortable routine. You pack the same gear, you shoot from similar places on the field (but still try to get something a little different each time) and you know what you’re looking for in the game. This season, I chose to shoot with a 400mm and 600mm lens in the endzone and move around less. It paid off. Shooting with the longer glass allowed me to get clearer photos that were straight on as opposed to moving down the sidelines and shooting the plays at an angle.

So now that our spring sports have arrived, it is like taking your regular workout routine and switching to cross training. Throw your favorite lineman on a baseball mound and see how well his curveball reacts.

Gator Baseball

This will be my fifth spring shooting Gator sports, and, luckily, experience helps with this transition. But each year there is still a little re-training to remember just which way to react when there are two men on base and the ball is hit on the ground to left field. What do you shoot first?

Basketball is no different. Reading the plays in sports is vital to your success in telling a story, and sometimes, it takes a few missed shots and curse words mumbled behind your camera to get back in the game.

At a school like Florida, there are really two sports in the history of the campus – football and everything else. The interesting part about everything else is just how much fun it is to cover.

Year after year, I am approached by eager young photographers, much like myself when I was getting started, that ask me to take them along to a shoot. Almost always they ask to shoot football, and almost always I politely decline. The funny part about this awkward denial is that spring is the better season to learn how to shoot.

Gator Track and Field

While you can get pummeled on the sidelines in The Swamp from a play getting too close, more often than not the ball is being snapped and handed off 30 to 40 yards away.

In basketball you are less than 20 feet from the free throw line and a few inches away from the paint. You are constantly trying to keep your head on your shoulders in a baseball or softball photo shoot as a foul ball comes racing by. You might as well call lacrosse a contact sport with the not-so-soft rubber ball. And I could almost swear I have been close to getting a foot to my face while covering gymnastics.

Spring sports are some of the most exciting to shoot because you can get close to the action and have the freedom to try something different.

Football has become so routine that the most exciting part of your day could be going up to the top of the stands to take a few crowd shots and maybe shoot a few plays at a different angle – only if the team is winning by a huge margin.

Gator Gymnastics

As a visual journalist you have to bring people to places that might be exotic in location or subjects that may have never been seen in a certain way. These sports allow photographers to bring readers below ground level in a baseball dugout or on the end court of a Kentucky-Florida basketball game or eye level with the balance beam.

So next time someone is complaining about the lack of excitement because we still have months left until the 2013 football kickoff, ask them how exciting a shot clock can be with a tied game or what a bunt in the bottom of the ninth can do to a stadium filled with fans.

I would argue that the excitement of college sports for the fan and the photographer certainly lives on after The Swamp is silenced.

Sideline Report - A Winning Season

A winning season in Gainesville is a win for more than just the Florida Gators. It is a win for the hotdog vendor in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. It is a win for the newspapers who sell more copies of their Sunday edition. It is a win for a website like 247Sports who gain more subscribers.

It is a win for you.

And, of course, it is a win for the athletic association – whose job it is to keep the team afloat when a home loss to South Carolina might feel like a regular occurrence.

But is a winning season a win for photographers?

Put simply, yes.

In the ever-restrictive world of college athletics, the sidelines have quickly gone from an open field to a tightly controlled photo op that you might see while covering a politician – designed to represent events in the most favorable light for the Gators.

At the UF College of Journalism and Communications, I am often asked if you can lie through photographs; not the ones you see manipulated on Photoshop. Just plain photographs - right off the camera.

My answer is always yes.

Because at a Gator game, I take thousands of photographs for Gator Bait but only show you, the reader, a handful in galleries and in this magazine.

The photographs are carefully chosen to represent the entire game - both the winning touchdown and the missed catch or bad snap.

So why is a winning season good for the subscribers and fans of the Florida Gators?

Because when there is a winning season, we get more access - more practices become open, more athletes are up for national awards and are profiled because of the success.

You get to find out what video games the Pouncey twins play in their dorm room on campus and what type of scooter they ride to practice. You become more connected to a team that plays for more than a ring at the end of the season - they play for the fans that feel like they know the quarterback just as well as the linemen protecting him.

Media opportunities are rare these days; besides the usual weekly meetings in a conference room that is as about as visually exciting as watching paint dry.

We can reminisce about the days of Tim Tebow until he finally becomes a starting quarterback in the NFL because you got to know him off the field - thanks to ESPN following his every move since high school.

Is this a bad thing for college athletics?

Yes and no.

Yes, because as a photographer the pressure is on to get the perfect shot to tell the best story possible of an athlete’s career. This might not be during a snap of a football but helping a fellow player out a practice or working with a local charity.

No, because these opportunities are often limited for fear that an image might get out that is not flattering toward this week’s hot player, or because the risk of NCAA violations becomes greater, or because it could simply impact the work of the athletes due to the distraction from 20 photographers fighting over the best shot (think of a Black Friday sale at Walmart - just with heavy tripods).

It is a delicate balance covering a football team like the Gators in recent years. For the fans, I’m sure it has been a rollercoaster ride of arguments at your local sports bar - especially last season and even as we get into this year’s bowl season.

When a team goes 0-4 in October, press conferences become more tense and putting a camera in a player’s face after a loss to a rival can be a risky move.

But when a team is 11-1 and in national championship talks - this all becomes a little easier.

As we enter bowl season (‘tis the sea- son to reap the rewards of a long, hardfought

fall), we get the best opportunity to show you the progress of the team you follow. Season wrap-ups are written, players become ineligible, (and often more available to talk) yearbooks and best-of galleries are compiled.

The Sugar Bowl will always be an exciting trip for the Gators and Gator fans.

Not only because it is in the Big Easy, but because it represents a purpose for post-season play.

I’ve covered many bowl games - from the less exciting matchups in the Champs Sports Bowl to the top BCS games fans love to see the Gators play in. 

And in those years of eventful and joyless seasons you can see a direct correlation between the record of the team and the excitement covering them.

I can imagine how it must feel to be on the Vanderbilt beat - but I can assure you, when the Commodores toppled Good Ole’ Rocky Top this season it must have been pretty exciting to be at Dudley Field.

So what can we expect next season?

Well, it’s too early to write that story. 

But what we can say is to appreciate the good times in The Swamp - even when the student section sits half empty. Because all programs have an unpredictable cycle and right now we (the fans and the media) are about to enjoy a pretty good ride east on I-10 to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve.

The Sideline Report is the newest feature in GatorBait Magazine - a publication dedicated to covering Florida Gator Athletics.

Sideline Report - The Swamp is Back

It has been a long time since I could really get excited to walk on to the field in The Swamp. Not because I dislike the Gators, but because I have been jaded by so many SEC stadiums with (as each school claims) the best fans in college football.

"Vol Walk," in Knoxville, Tenn. in September before the Florida game.

I’ve been spoiled by sold out crowds packing the streets of Knoxville to watch the Vol Walk - a very impressive sight to see. It reminded me of the days of Tim Tebow at Florida - except this was a regular occurrence.

I’ve been in awe of the power of the Crimson Tide in Bryant-Denny Stadium (though it is less of a stadium and more of a memorial to all things college football).
And I’ve lost my hearing in Death Valley as a recovering Tebow and the Gator defense held off LSU for a 13-3 classic SEC win - a similar sight to their 2012 matchup in The Swamp.
But I am thrilled to have all of those sights and sounds back home in The Swamp. Being a photojournalist, I get to see a lot of exciting moments in time from a very exciting perspective - this includes some of the most thrilling moments in sports.
Unfortunately, (and most Gator fans will agree) there have not been a lot of these moments in Gator Football history lately.

Florida's quarterback, Tim Tebow, leaves Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Fla. for the last time in his NCAA career in 2009.

Even in the days of Tebow, there were blowout performances by the Gators, but as far as nail-biting, teeth-gritting, white-knuckle football - we didn’t see much of that. We didn’t hear much of it in The Swamp and we certainly didn’t feel much of it in The Swamp.
The pessimist inside of me always said, I’d rather be at LSU or Tennessee or Alabama each weekend, because the games were louder, the fans stayed until the very end and the crowd made a difference in the game.
Will Muschamp said it best after the truly dramatic win over LSU, “It was alive in there tonight," he said. "There's no question our fans made a difference in our football game, and they energized our football team."

The Beginnings of a Shakespearian Play

Last month, I wrote about the Shakespearian characters we used to know covering Gator Football. I think it is safe to say that Muschamp is beginning to develop these characters as they climb his mountain that he calls a season in the Southeastern Conference.
Jeff Driskel is no Tebow, though the comparisons will ultimately be made, but he is his own character. While his wins are a little less dynamic than the defensive-line-smashing victories that we knew so well with Tebow, Driskel is giving fans (and photographers) a show that is worth staying until the very end.
We’ve barely reached intermission of this season of Gator Football, but as the Gators take on worthy opponents in Georgia, South Carolina and, the ultimate villain, FSU, shooting from the sidelines is going to provide a much better story to capture.

A Busy (and Packed) Day at the Office

It was a sold-out crown and a packed sidelines for the LSU game in The Swamp.

So what does all of this excitement around Gator Football again mean for you? Well, it means a packed sideline, which means less room to make pictures.
We bring a slew of gear to football games to make sure Gator Bait never misses a shot. For example – from the South Endzone, we can shoot play-by-play action from the 20-yard line on the North side of the field with a Nikon 600mm f/4 lens. This is about 50 percent longer than most lenses sports photographers bring to Gator games. The majority of the big lenses you see on the sidelines are 400mm f/2.8 lenses – don’t worry we have one of those, too.
On average, we are walking on to the field with five to six cameras and eight lenses ranging from 14mm to 600mm. This gives us the variety of focal lengths to create a picture in any situation – even when there are 20 other photographers crowded around Muschamp and LSU counterpart Les Miles all trying to get the same photo of a post-game handshake.
This most recent game against LSU proved to be one of the busiest games since Tebow departed The Swamp after his final match against FSU in 2009.
While it is always good to see my friends from every newspaper and media outlet in the state, it becomes increasingly difficult to maneuver a game.
A few weeks ago, during the dramatic victory over Tennessee, I don’t remember staying in one spot for more than three or four plays.
This week against LSU, I sat comfortably in the endzone for the majority of the game. This is why you’ll see more “dead on” angled photos this week as opposed to variety of angles you saw in the Tennessee gallery.
No one technique is better than the other. Many photographers say to “let the action come to you,” which is always good advice. I chose this method because going into this game, we knew it was going to be a defensive battle. I wanted to focus on the line of scrimmage. Often, I’d be lying down on the field to get an even lower angle than just kneeling to get under the helmets of the linemen.
If the game started to turn into an offensive battle with big plays (like we saw in the second half when the Gators scored 27 of their 37 points against Tennessee) then I’ll get off my butt and start hustling for different angles because there is a larger variety of plays.

Florida runningback Mike Gillislee runs for a touchdown against LSU in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

Research Equals Great Pictures

All of this planning goes into making the pictures you see on the pages of Gator Bait Magazine every month and GatorBait.net every day. Each game is carefully calculated, and I rely on the expertise of Editor Marty Cohen and Staff Writer Thomas Goldkamp to break down each opponent to help me decide how I am going to cover a game. I’ll study game film just like a team prepares for an opponent so I know what story I am going to tell and what is the best way to tell it.
But in the end, like every football coach will preach, it is the adjustments you make during the game, which will get you the “W,” or (in my case) the best pictures.