Photographing the Super Bowl
It’s Super Sunday! Since my beloved Steelers won’t be in the Super Bowl this year, I am a little less interested in the game. However, this year, apart from the advertisements, I have a new appreciation for the photographers who, not only must catch the action with their massive lenses from the sidelines, but must also battle the post-game celebrations to get shots of the winners. To document this herculean effort, PopPhoto has a great article on the photographers, the process, behind some of the images you’ll likely see on newspapers and magazines tomorrow. From the article:
“So how do the news services cope with ever-greater numbers of ever-larger files? First, they deploy their photographers as efficiently as possible. Peter Reed Miller, an SI shooter who has covered more than 30 Super Bowls, offers an example of this efficiency: ‘All Sports Illustrated shooters use the same system for dealing with memory cards,’ he says. ‘We have clear plastic cases that each hold four cards. If the cards are loaded face-down, they’re used; face-up, they’re clean. Runners don’t have to actually speak with the photographers, but they immediately see which cards go back to the trailer for downloading and transmitting.’…
“At the opening kick-off, [Sports Illustrated Director of Photography Steve] Fine and his staff typically sit back and join the rest of the country, watching the game on network television. When the first important play goes down, his runners spring into action, collecting the (usually) 2-gigabyte CompactFlash cards from any photographer who had a clear view of the play. Within minutes the cards are dumped, duped, ‘washed,’ and redeployed (that is, downloaded, backed-up, reformatted, and returned to the photographers).
“As a card’s contents are uploaded to the system, the images are automatically tagged with the date, stadium, photographer’s name, names of the teams, and the photographer’s ‘X-number’ indicating his or her field position.
“‘We edit almost in real time, while the play is still fresh in our minds,’ says Fine.” (link)
The whole article is definitely worth a read.
Anyone else have any worthwhile articles, video, interviews with and/or about Super Bowl photography? Leave it in the comments below… And enjoy the commercials game!
