Track Stars Need Their Feet
About a week ago, the News & Messenger published the final in a series of All-Area athletes of the year. It only took about a month to get 12 pages out. Blame the economy, blame advertising. We just didn't have enough pages to make space for the page on many days. The athlete pages ended up appearing as a disjointed, discontinuous stream of pages sometimes shown consecutively for three days, only to appear again 10 days later.
But that's the state of newspapers, and I'll get back to that. What I did want to highlight were my pictures. Hopefully that's why you look at these pages, and not to hear about how bad the paper is doing. Or maybe both.
Scheduling these times to shoot the athletes inevitably is the biggest pain in the ass to do. This becomes especially hectic at the end of the school year, when we also have to cover every single graduation ceremony in the county.
The first I had the opportunity to shoot was the Female Scholar Athlete of the Year, Meredith Nelson, from my alma mater, Woodbridge. And of course the tricky thing with these shoots is to somehow convey that said athlete is also a scholar. My idea, was to shoot it in a library, and I went with the school library and tried to come up with something interesting and the school colors (something I've been trying to incorporate into my student/athlete portraits lately).
I like what happened with this, and I think overall, I came up with something that worked, and it popped off the page a little bit. I'll concede that the idea is a little cliché, with the books and the uniform and all. But I thought the lighting made and the little smirk made the image a little more interesting. Doesn't she resemble Ellen Paige (from the movies, Juno and Hard Candy)?
Later that day, I drove out to Brentsville District High School, in Nokesville, to shoot Justin Weaver, baseball player of the year. For those of you who don't know, Brentsville is in a rural part of the county, with lots of farmland around, and I started envisioning this “Field of Dreams” type of portrait with him stepping out of a cornfield, or tall grass with the stadium behind. All very dramatic, you see. But during the first week of June, corn hasn't grown higher than about a foot off the ground, and, for whatever reason, much of the grassy fields were plowed, throw in some rain and I had very wet shoes, and not a lot of options.
But I did happen to notice the orange tarp surrounding the tennis courts and decided to try to make something of that. So with a couple lights I went out to figure out how to make it work.
When Justin showed up, I had to make sure he had all his gear, because I thought the picture would work best if he were a pitcher in the photo. Naturally he didn't have his glove. Which I'm always wondering what kids are thinking when I say, “bring your uniform and all your gear”. This is not the first time an athlete simply didn't bring everything. But luckily, the reporter was there as well, and he just happened to have a glove in his car. I think the glove makes all the difference in this image and without it, we'd have to come up with something completely different.
He was player of the year for both his pitching and batting. But I've always thought the image of a pitcher staring down the batter is a far more intense and interesting image than something with someone standing with a bat in their hands. He was particularly proud of his batting numbers, so I shot both, knowing I wouldn't use the “batter” images. It's certainly something I've had to adjust to (taking control of a shoot) and much of that lies with the realization that I'm the one working, and ultimately it's my job to come away with what I had envisioned, not what the subject hoped for. And this is what we came up with (Brentsville's colors are Orange-Black-White) and I'm very happy with it.
Let me just say that despite the amazing convenience of dropping photos into a computer and instantly seeing results, there is the opposite horror at seeing a click of the mouse erase everything you just did.
The latter happened after shooting a track portrait. And without some rescue software I was able to rescue two images from Yvonne Amegashie, the female track athlete of the year.
So as it was, the track photo I think is interesting, but in retrospect, it didn't work as well in print, because they run the photo so large on the back of the paper, it really looked imposing and intimidating. Almost a little scary. When you flip to the back page of sports, and there's a huge menacing head on the page, it's not exactly the impression I was going for. I think if I try to go for something like that again, I might step back a couple paces. But the background was not the best, because the track was locked up and we were forced to do the shoot at a picnic table under some trees nearby. So under the circumstances, yes, I was happy, but it might have been a little too close up for a huge photo.
I saved my favorite for last. I met Damien Thigpen at Stonewall Jackson in the afternoon. Unfortunately for these portraits many of the students schedules preclude any hopes of getting nice light to shoot in. Usually you're left with shooting at 230pm (right after school). Indoors is usually a crap shoot, b/c you're left with either shooting in the basketball gym, or finding the wrestling room or something. But for this track star, I wanted to come up with something interesting.
As I walked to the track I passed underneath the stands, and I saw it. Perfectly straight and extending for 100 yards into the distance, the sun poked through the cracks in the bleachers and formed what looked like running lanes in the grass beneath. I was sold. We were out of direct sunlight, so I could control my lighting, and there was the perfect graphic element.
Ahh, but this is where I get upset. This is the original shot, above.
And this is what published. Nice. Next time I shoot the track athlete of the year, I'll have to reiterate that it's important not to crop off the feet.
But this is what happens when the copy editors and sports editors are your page designers. They crop images ridiculously, because it doesn't fit into the hole they cut weeks ago. Perhaps if we had more staff (or could pay for them), we'd have real page designers who could imaginatively layout a page to utilize the photo we shot. I have to admit, I was completely and fully aware of the space they had. But I wasn't aware that my photo was “too thin” to fit. Hopefully that is the reason, which isn't so insidious. Because if it's the original reason which briefly flitted through my mind--that they wanted his face bigger on the page--then I am seriously pissed.
But this is just a small symptom of what is happening at the small dailies. Pictures like these (at a parade on July 4th):
Turn into pictures like these:
It appears at times that Newspapers are their own worst enemy. If it isn't boring page design, cropping the meaning out of photos, or giving away content on the web (like most papers in this country), it's shutting down the printing press and moving your deadline to 8pm, like the News & Messenger (essentially removing sports and many breaking news stories from your next day's paper).
But this all points to a revenue problem. We've heard the story. No one reads the paper and the advertising money hasn't followed to the web.
I wish I knew the answer. At this rate, it won't be long before there isn't anyone left to write the news or take the pictures anymore.
But at the moment I'm just pissed my portrait of the track athlete of the year has his feet cropped off.
But that's the state of newspapers, and I'll get back to that. What I did want to highlight were my pictures. Hopefully that's why you look at these pages, and not to hear about how bad the paper is doing. Or maybe both.
Scheduling these times to shoot the athletes inevitably is the biggest pain in the ass to do. This becomes especially hectic at the end of the school year, when we also have to cover every single graduation ceremony in the county.
The first I had the opportunity to shoot was the Female Scholar Athlete of the Year, Meredith Nelson, from my alma mater, Woodbridge. And of course the tricky thing with these shoots is to somehow convey that said athlete is also a scholar. My idea, was to shoot it in a library, and I went with the school library and tried to come up with something interesting and the school colors (something I've been trying to incorporate into my student/athlete portraits lately).
I like what happened with this, and I think overall, I came up with something that worked, and it popped off the page a little bit. I'll concede that the idea is a little cliché, with the books and the uniform and all. But I thought the lighting made and the little smirk made the image a little more interesting. Doesn't she resemble Ellen Paige (from the movies, Juno and Hard Candy)?
Later that day, I drove out to Brentsville District High School, in Nokesville, to shoot Justin Weaver, baseball player of the year. For those of you who don't know, Brentsville is in a rural part of the county, with lots of farmland around, and I started envisioning this “Field of Dreams” type of portrait with him stepping out of a cornfield, or tall grass with the stadium behind. All very dramatic, you see. But during the first week of June, corn hasn't grown higher than about a foot off the ground, and, for whatever reason, much of the grassy fields were plowed, throw in some rain and I had very wet shoes, and not a lot of options.
But I did happen to notice the orange tarp surrounding the tennis courts and decided to try to make something of that. So with a couple lights I went out to figure out how to make it work.
When Justin showed up, I had to make sure he had all his gear, because I thought the picture would work best if he were a pitcher in the photo. Naturally he didn't have his glove. Which I'm always wondering what kids are thinking when I say, “bring your uniform and all your gear”. This is not the first time an athlete simply didn't bring everything. But luckily, the reporter was there as well, and he just happened to have a glove in his car. I think the glove makes all the difference in this image and without it, we'd have to come up with something completely different.
He was player of the year for both his pitching and batting. But I've always thought the image of a pitcher staring down the batter is a far more intense and interesting image than something with someone standing with a bat in their hands. He was particularly proud of his batting numbers, so I shot both, knowing I wouldn't use the “batter” images. It's certainly something I've had to adjust to (taking control of a shoot) and much of that lies with the realization that I'm the one working, and ultimately it's my job to come away with what I had envisioned, not what the subject hoped for. And this is what we came up with (Brentsville's colors are Orange-Black-White) and I'm very happy with it.
Let me just say that despite the amazing convenience of dropping photos into a computer and instantly seeing results, there is the opposite horror at seeing a click of the mouse erase everything you just did.
The latter happened after shooting a track portrait. And without some rescue software I was able to rescue two images from Yvonne Amegashie, the female track athlete of the year.
So as it was, the track photo I think is interesting, but in retrospect, it didn't work as well in print, because they run the photo so large on the back of the paper, it really looked imposing and intimidating. Almost a little scary. When you flip to the back page of sports, and there's a huge menacing head on the page, it's not exactly the impression I was going for. I think if I try to go for something like that again, I might step back a couple paces. But the background was not the best, because the track was locked up and we were forced to do the shoot at a picnic table under some trees nearby. So under the circumstances, yes, I was happy, but it might have been a little too close up for a huge photo.
I saved my favorite for last. I met Damien Thigpen at Stonewall Jackson in the afternoon. Unfortunately for these portraits many of the students schedules preclude any hopes of getting nice light to shoot in. Usually you're left with shooting at 230pm (right after school). Indoors is usually a crap shoot, b/c you're left with either shooting in the basketball gym, or finding the wrestling room or something. But for this track star, I wanted to come up with something interesting.
As I walked to the track I passed underneath the stands, and I saw it. Perfectly straight and extending for 100 yards into the distance, the sun poked through the cracks in the bleachers and formed what looked like running lanes in the grass beneath. I was sold. We were out of direct sunlight, so I could control my lighting, and there was the perfect graphic element.
Ahh, but this is where I get upset. This is the original shot, above.
And this is what published. Nice. Next time I shoot the track athlete of the year, I'll have to reiterate that it's important not to crop off the feet.
But this is what happens when the copy editors and sports editors are your page designers. They crop images ridiculously, because it doesn't fit into the hole they cut weeks ago. Perhaps if we had more staff (or could pay for them), we'd have real page designers who could imaginatively layout a page to utilize the photo we shot. I have to admit, I was completely and fully aware of the space they had. But I wasn't aware that my photo was “too thin” to fit. Hopefully that is the reason, which isn't so insidious. Because if it's the original reason which briefly flitted through my mind--that they wanted his face bigger on the page--then I am seriously pissed.
But this is just a small symptom of what is happening at the small dailies. Pictures like these (at a parade on July 4th):
Turn into pictures like these:
It appears at times that Newspapers are their own worst enemy. If it isn't boring page design, cropping the meaning out of photos, or giving away content on the web (like most papers in this country), it's shutting down the printing press and moving your deadline to 8pm, like the News & Messenger (essentially removing sports and many breaking news stories from your next day's paper).
But this all points to a revenue problem. We've heard the story. No one reads the paper and the advertising money hasn't followed to the web.
I wish I knew the answer. At this rate, it won't be long before there isn't anyone left to write the news or take the pictures anymore.
But at the moment I'm just pissed my portrait of the track athlete of the year has his feet cropped off.
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