Soxtober
Yeah yeah yeah, I know it's November, and yeah yeah, I know this is pretty much a ripoff of my last post (as well as pretty much every headline in America), but I have been extremely busy recently. But in case you have been out of touch with civilization, the Red Sox won the World Series by sweeping the Colorado Rockies...
And I was there:
Baseball is baseball, but shooting the World Series is a bit of a different animal. Obviously, the biggest change from regular season games, and even the divisional and league championship playoff games, is that there is A LOT more media. I have covered the past two World Series as well, but I feel like there were even more this year than previous years. I guess this is what happens when you have the Red Sox in it, one of the sport's most popular franchises.
The challenge of having so many members of the media there is that space becomes extremely limited. They literally cram us into the photo boxes like sardines, if we're lucky enough to be even assigned a spot in the photo boxes. I happened to shoot from an assigned position in all four games, but there were numerous shooters who didn't get an assigned position and was thus forced to just roam the stadium and hope to find a reasonable spot to shoot from where they wouldn't block the fans' view of the field, and also not get blocked by the fans themselves.
Now, like the past two Fall Classics, I shot the Series for US Presswire. This year was especially challenging because we did not have a dedicated editor on site like many of the other wire services. Generally during these large events, photographers will pass their cards to "runners" who literally run memory cards from the field to editors in the press box or other working areas where the images are then toned, captioned, and uploaded to the respective wires. This year, Mark Rebilas and myself acted as the on-site editors for US Presswire, as well as serving as the primary two photographers.
In a way, it was advantageous for us to be able to upload our own photos. Instead of the time delay of having a runner send our memory cards to an editor, and then have an editor try to figure out what is going on in each photo, we were able to shave off a lot of time by cutting out that middle man and filing them in between innings. In this industry, speed is key. A lot of times, publications - especially web publications - will simply use whatever photos are available first. So as far as in-game action goes, Rebilas and I did pretty well.
However, there were two main disadvantage of us being our own editors. First, our focus was not 100% on shooting the game, whereas just about everybody else who was there was. The second problem was that after the game, we always got our butt's kicked by other agencies because we would always get stuck shooting the celebrations while other companies were already moving photos of the winning team's jubilation.
Oh well, all the challenges aside, shooting the World Series was a great experience as always. I got to meet a lot of top shooters in this industry, as well as cross off another city in America that I have not yet visited. And of course, was able to come out with some nice images :-)
Instead, fellow US Presswire shooter Mark Rebilas and myself acted as the on-site editors as well as photographers. After each game, we managed the work of the other photographers with us, as well as our own work. During the game, much like most photographers during a regular season game, we would edit our images in between innings and then upload them directly to the company's website. Although in a way, it was advantageous in that we were able to get the pictures up directly, it was also inconvenient because while other photographers could focus only on shooting the action, we were constantly scrambling between our editing job and our shooting job.
Feature photos are generally not really all that important during the regular season, but in the postseason, the swarms of fans and media, as well as the World Series signage around the ballpark is a storyline and can be worthwhile to photograph:
And I was there:
Baseball is baseball, but shooting the World Series is a bit of a different animal. Obviously, the biggest change from regular season games, and even the divisional and league championship playoff games, is that there is A LOT more media. I have covered the past two World Series as well, but I feel like there were even more this year than previous years. I guess this is what happens when you have the Red Sox in it, one of the sport's most popular franchises.
The challenge of having so many members of the media there is that space becomes extremely limited. They literally cram us into the photo boxes like sardines, if we're lucky enough to be even assigned a spot in the photo boxes. I happened to shoot from an assigned position in all four games, but there were numerous shooters who didn't get an assigned position and was thus forced to just roam the stadium and hope to find a reasonable spot to shoot from where they wouldn't block the fans' view of the field, and also not get blocked by the fans themselves.
Now, like the past two Fall Classics, I shot the Series for US Presswire. This year was especially challenging because we did not have a dedicated editor on site like many of the other wire services. Generally during these large events, photographers will pass their cards to "runners" who literally run memory cards from the field to editors in the press box or other working areas where the images are then toned, captioned, and uploaded to the respective wires. This year, Mark Rebilas and myself acted as the on-site editors for US Presswire, as well as serving as the primary two photographers.
In a way, it was advantageous for us to be able to upload our own photos. Instead of the time delay of having a runner send our memory cards to an editor, and then have an editor try to figure out what is going on in each photo, we were able to shave off a lot of time by cutting out that middle man and filing them in between innings. In this industry, speed is key. A lot of times, publications - especially web publications - will simply use whatever photos are available first. So as far as in-game action goes, Rebilas and I did pretty well.
However, there were two main disadvantage of us being our own editors. First, our focus was not 100% on shooting the game, whereas just about everybody else who was there was. The second problem was that after the game, we always got our butt's kicked by other agencies because we would always get stuck shooting the celebrations while other companies were already moving photos of the winning team's jubilation.
Oh well, all the challenges aside, shooting the World Series was a great experience as always. I got to meet a lot of top shooters in this industry, as well as cross off another city in America that I have not yet visited. And of course, was able to come out with some nice images :-)
Instead, fellow US Presswire shooter Mark Rebilas and myself acted as the on-site editors as well as photographers. After each game, we managed the work of the other photographers with us, as well as our own work. During the game, much like most photographers during a regular season game, we would edit our images in between innings and then upload them directly to the company's website. Although in a way, it was advantageous in that we were able to get the pictures up directly, it was also inconvenient because while other photographers could focus only on shooting the action, we were constantly scrambling between our editing job and our shooting job.
Feature photos are generally not really all that important during the regular season, but in the postseason, the swarms of fans and media, as well as the World Series signage around the ballpark is a storyline and can be worthwhile to photograph:
posted by Jerry at 9:50 PM
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