On Saturday and Sunday, I shot the Rowell Ranch Rodeo for the first time, despite the fact that it’s just 20 miles from my house. After walking the grounds and shooting behind the chutes for a bit, I set up on an elevated platform on the side of the bucking chutes. As soon as I did, the announcer started the grand entry, and I noticed that the grand entry was starting on a hill overlooking the arena, about 200 yards away. No big deal, I’ll shoot the visiting queens and the sponsor banners as they enter the arena. But then a woman on a white horse carrying the American flag started racing down the (steep) hill kicking up a trail of dust. It was far too late to get a good picture, so I picked up my 400 and did what I could, which clearly was not much:

I wanted a good picture of the flag entry, so I made a mental note to find out If I was allowed to climb the hill for Sunday’s entry. On Sunday morning I asked Phil Doyle (the official photographer for the rodeo) and he said sure, and we talked about it for a bit, and only after I had decided how to make the picture I wanted, Phil said “Watch out for the rattlesnakes.” At that point, I wanted the picture badly enough to go, so I climbed the hill and waited. Luckily I saw a bunch of bees, but no snakes. And I got the picture I wanted, plus a face full of dirt:

There is no substitute for getting as close as you can. Sitting somewhere with a long lens is lazy and likely to produce boring pictures. Get close, you can always back off later if the picture or your safety demands it.

As the days wound down, I noticed that the sun was moving in a way that would put the chutes in the shadows while the arena would get light coming in almost totally from the side. When shooting sports you should always be looking to either blur out or compose out distracting backgrounds. The rare times when this happens naturally are gifts, and you should use them. But in most cases this is going to mean getting off of automatic settings and braving the world of full manual. On auto (shutter/aperture priority) your camera is going to want to bring up the exposure on the shaded area, and in the process overexpose your subject. If you manually meter (or use your screen/histogram) to get the correct exposure of your subject, the shaded area will underexpose, providing you with your clean background.

Sometimes there’s split light and some kind of automatic setting is the way to go. Sometimes you can’t get close enough and you just need to get a picture, any picture. But the times when you can get close or use the light to your advantage, these are the times you will get pictures that stand out.

I’m about to go onto the pitch to shoot the Women’s Champions League Final. I have no idea why they all have to be in capital letters, but now that UEFA and I are in somewhat speaking terms, I’m not going to screw things up like someone I know. :) Let’s all hope that I’ll get to shoot the Europa League Final before the D5 comes out.

Yes, lets talk about the D4, which I got to replace my ageing D3s. Not the D3s, but plural D3sss. Nothing wrong with my D3, but in this business you have to upgrade when you can afford to. I bought one without robbing a bank or selling all of my AAPL stocks. But the other one was given to me by my boss. Yup, he gave it to me. I guess I must have done something good in my previous life or maybe he wants me to work for him for free until the D4s comes out.

Before I got the D4, I looked for reviews by a sports photographer and found none. Which sucks, because then I’ll have to do one myself. Therefore this is a D4 review from a sports photography point of view. There will at least be a part 2 to this review and if I’ve got more to add then it can become a trilogy. Without further nonsense, here’s D4.

1. Weight
Professional photography equipment is extremely heavy. So much so that if you work as a sports photographer, you will have guns without spending money on HGH. It’s not uncommon for people to look at my arms, what I’m wearing and say “Manual labourer?”. I was very surprised that when I first picked up the D4, that is the first thing I noticed. It is lighter than the D3 or the D3s. This could mean 2 things: That I will not be mistaken as a construction worker any longer and it will allow me to not get tired during a shoot. Shooting football, basketball, or hockey to name a few, that’s fine. They only last for about 2 hours and that’s about it. But how about tennis in the earlier rounds where they play all day long? How about golf where you have to carry that crap all around the course all day long? I think this weight loss of the D4 is a very big deal for sports photographers. Even the fat ones. Especially the fat ones. The other thing I don’t understand is that we are in the 21st century and they have yet to discover materials that are lighter than magnesium.

2. Buttons
Sports photography is about reaction and anticipation. Ball goes there, you react. Player runs forward, you anticipate his next action. I feel that it is imperative that you know what you are doing with your equipment. If you press this button, this happens. If you turn this dial, that happens. The feel of the buttons is very important. The second thing I noticed about the D4 is that the buttons are very flimsy. This is akin to D300′s flimsy button fiasco and needless to say, I sold it on ebay few weeks later. There is way too much play on the shutter release. My D3 had feather triggers, but with the D4 you have to really depress it for it to start taking pictures. I’m an AF-ON focusing kind of guy and this one is also different from the D3 or the D3s. It feels cheap and too light.

By the way, the sound of the mirror going up and down is now significantly less noisy than the D3, but that’s for another day.

I’m sure you read it somewhere, but there are now two more multi-selector buttons. I guess Canon is the only company in the world that can use the big dial on a machine and Nikon’s engineer thought, “Hey, what’s better than one multi-selector button? 3!!!”. Holy shit. Ever since I had them in my hands, I have been wondering what I can use these buttons for. The only viable solution I came up with is for them to act exactly like the main multi-selector. Hey, better to have 3 things that does exactly the same thing than only 1, right?

3. Menu system
It’s been 5 years since the D3 came out. Lot longer since the D2 series came out. I’d think that is enough time to come up with another menu system that is easier and more logical. More intuitive, wont’ be so bad either. “But you’re a professional sports photographer Ryu. You should be able to recite the menu system by heart, just like Matt recited the Koran for his bar mitzvah.”

Last time I checked, I wasn’t Jewish and I take pictures so that I can feed my cat. I am not against the number of functions the menu system has as customisation is integral in an equipment at this level. No one photographer shoots the same way. But customisation for the sake of “Look how many functions we have crammed in our camera!” is bad. I’m glad Nikon decide to put more without sacrificing their wonderful and logical layout of their vintage menu system. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Look what happened to the Macintosh with OS9. Enough said.

For example, it took me forever to find out the option to change the direction to cycle through the photos on the LCD screen. D3 series and even the D2 series allowed you to change it. After I went through all the menu functions at least 8 times, I decided that I needed help. I took a swig from the bottle of orange juice and asked my overlord, Google, for some answers. Suffice to say, I wasn’t the only one with this problem. They took this function away and I honestly hope that was an honest / stupid mistake by them. Because if they took it out thinking every photographer uses left right to view photos, Nikon should be sticking their collective heads further down the toilet.

That will be enough for now and don’t get me started o the XQD slot. Trust me, there are lots of good things about this camera, but I needed to share my frustrations with my friends. :)

Now, it’s time to shoot some women on women action… on the pitch.

Ryu, sometimes male chauvinistic new D4 user.

In Episode 14 we talk with Ray McManus about shooting sports in Ireland and his second place finish in the 2012 World Press Photo contest, look at low angles in the monthly competition, and discuss shooting from different angles. Listen and download links here:

- Subscribe and listen via iTunes
- Get RSS feed
- Get MP3 (Click to listen or right click to save it to your computer)

News – Our best and worst shoots this past month
Ryu shot a great first half and a boring second half as Arsenal ran out of gas vs AC Milan in the Champions League. Matt spent the month shooting rodeo including two of his favorites, the Red Bluff Round-Up and the Clovis Rodeo.

We introduce… Ray McManus

Irish sports photographer and 2012 World Press Photo runner up Ray McManus stops by to talk about his philosophy, shooting the Gaelic Games, and the Special Olympics.

Master class
Ryu and Matt talk about the necessity of shooting from different angles. Again.

Training Ground
In Training Ground we critique pictures from listeners who bravely ask for it in our Flickr group.

You Win
Our April 2012 themed competition was “Low Angle“

The winner is Ivan Dupont from Belgium with this very low angle behind-the-scenes diving picture:

The April themed competition is “High/Low Key”, continuing a trilogy of things we want to see everyone working on. Goto our BLFS flickr group page for competition rules and to enter.

Training Ground
Post your images to our flickr group for constructive or destructive critique here.

Angry Matt

Angry Matt is most definitely still angry, but is biting his lip to avoid possible damage to his career.

We end the podcast with a very special song that was written about Matt by George Olson & Jim Leisy and performed by Jim Leisy.

Special thanks to…
Icon by Arvin Bautista
Audio Production/Editing: David Whittaker

I was trying to think of a scenario to drive this point home again, and I was reminded by a re-run of the episode of Mad Men where they are pitching Kodak’s slide projector. Surely everyone has been subjected to a slideshow (in the old days) and a gigantic Flickr/Facebook gallery sent via email (modern times) whether it is vacation pictures, a new baby, or Junior’s latest little league game. These galleries are always overloaded, containing three or four times as many pictures as they should, but worse, picture after picture nearly indistinguishable from the last.

I know because I used to do this. When I first started shooting sports, I would put 70-100 pictures from one event in a Flickr gallery. The first sporting event I shot (2007 Amgen Tour of California) produced a gallery that had at least 40 pictures of cyclists turning the exact same corner. They were decent pictures taken while laying on the sidewalk while the riders leaned through the turn, but no one wants to see 40 versions of the same picture with only the uniform varying. At some point, and old friend and sort-of mentor told me that he wasn’t going to look at my pictures and give me feedback anymore because there was too much of the same to sort through. While this initially annoyed me, it ended up helping me more than just about anything else because it did two things: it forced me to edit much more tightly, and it also made me consider how I shot in real time so that I could show a decent number of pictures in a gallery and not have people getting bored.

In time, as you get more experience, you can tell the story of a game or event with fewer and fewer pictures, and this is a worthy goal. But on the way, as you learn to anticipate the important moments and necessary pictures, you can use variety to at least make your galleries interesting enough for others to view. Vary your angles, shooting positions, throw in some multiple exposure, panning, wide and long shots, and anything else that is appropriate for the venue/sport. Show your viewer that you were thinking about shooting rather than just being somewhere and pressing the shutter button a couple hundred times.

In Episode 14 we talk with Jason O. Watson about Photo Mechanic and CodeReplacements.com, look at more emotions (or not) in the monthly competition, and discuss how to prepare when you’re shooting something new. Listen and download links here:

- Subscribe and listen via iTunes
- Get RSS feed
- Get MP3 (Click to listen or right click to save it to your computer)

News – Our best and worst shoots this past month
Ryu shot a great first half and a boring second half as Arsenal ran out of gas vs AC Milan in the Champions League. Matt was happy to get back to shooting soccer aka futbol.

We introduce… Jason O. Watson

Sports photographer and creator of CodeReplacements.com stops by to talk about

Master class
Ryu and Matt talk about doing everything you can to prepare for shooting something new or something you haven’t shot in a while.

Training Ground
In Training Ground we critique pictures from listeners who bravely ask for it in our Flickr group.

You Win
Our March 2012 themed competition was “More Emotion“

The winner is Kenneth Armstrong from Canada with this emotional picture:

Second place is Ipanema’s own Marcelo Schindler by Phranco Photo.

Third place is MMA – Recife/PE by R.C Dália Maia.

The April themed competition is “Low Angle”, starting a trilogy of things we want to see everyone working on. Goto our BLFS flickr group page for competition rules and to get a head start on the next two competitions.

Training Ground
Post your images to our flickr group for constructive or destructive critique here.

Angry Matt
In our new segment, Matt is angry at…coming in second place. Wouldn’t you be angry if you made this picture…

…and it lost to this dogshit picture in a respected contest? I think so.

*We here at BLFS strive to get out our podcast on time, but sometimes sh*t happens. With our producer Dave’s technical difficulties, combined with Ryu’s move to Berlin, and Matt once again raging his machine against the authorities, this podcast has been delayed massively. We sincerely apologise for our mishaps and we hang our head in collective shame. Please continue to love us.

Special thanks to…
Icon by Arvin Bautista
Audio Production/Editing: David Whittaker

If you want to see more Phil, check out this site: http://www.purpleclouds.co.uk/

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

I was working in a studio in Manchester doing your family portraits and the like, when the guy who owned it asked if I fancied lending a hand by photographing some youth karate over a weekend. I didn’t have anything on and thought it’d be a change, so agreed. I haven’t looked back since! My bread and butter sport, living in the north of England is football (or soccer if you’re funny!). Though depending on the time of year I also do plenty of rugby league, rugby union and cricket.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

The best pictures aren’t always the sharpest, nor the ones with the best bokeh. The best pictures are the ones that tell a story. I always strive for quality, but in a media scrum at a cup final or relegation battle content rules.

3. Funniest / Strangest story from one of your shoots?

Every day has it’s own story, though one always stands out in my mind. British Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington had just pretty much secured her place in the squad for the 2012 games and I had ran to send pictures of the race, not realising that they were skipping straight to the medal ceremony. I overheard the announcement on the PA system and ran back poolside. I arrived a little flustered and out of breath to be greeted by her saying to me in front of numerous colleagues, “oh, thank you for showing up!” We had a laugh about it but it was quite embarrassing!

4. Advices to the kids (or a mid life crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Start small. Too many people in Britain buy all the gear yet have no idea! Shoot local teams, local sports. When you feel confident enough try and sell pictures to your local publications.. it will be hard work in these tough financial times but if you can’t earn some cash with little to no competition then you won’t have much chance at the top. Being a photographer is as much about the business as it as about taking pictures and it’s important to learn that from day one. From there, just keep on snapping and as the saying goes, the cream always rises to the top!

+1 Curry or football. What is more popular in Manchester and why?

Curry unites our beautiful city and football deeply divides it! As to which is more popular.. well, you can’t go to a match without something spicy afterwards to debate the days events over! Since Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City, football has definitely taken precedence as they compete with Manchester United on a more even footing. This season has seen them playing cat and mouse in the chase for the Premier League title and it looks like it will go down to the big Manchester derby at the end of the season. That ninety minutes alone has had fans arguing since the season’s start last August!

Whilst I was on the move from Paris to Berlin, I had some people come and take our stuff to our new pad as we didn’t want to do it ourselves. As you might have expected from me by now, I made a grave error in that I let them take my camera bag as well. Although my baby is back in my hands now, the day after the movers came I was slated to goto Nice to shoot the figure skating world championship. With no camera, with no lens, with no nothing, I was stuck.

I made a desperate visit to my local NPS in Paris and as usual they came through in style. They lent me a body (D3s) and 3 lenses (200-400mm f4, 70-200mm f2.8, 16-35mm f4). But unfortunately, I was left with only one body. Which means I had to figure out how I would shoot a 4 day competition with just one body. This meant that I was in a similar predicament to some of you out there, who must face the one body and maybe one lens problem. Here are few things I noticed which might help you realise that the simple life isn’t all that bad.

1. Plan, plan, plan
As I keep on saying the same thing over and over and over, I will keep on saying it over and over and over. Plan ahead. If you know which sport you are shooting, then you should know which lens works best. If I’m shooting basketball and if I’m only allowed to bring one lens, I will choose the 70-200mm f2.8. For me, it’s the most versatile for this sport and I can get most of the shots I want for the action closest to me. On the other hand, if I’m shooting football, I will go with the 400mm f2.8. The reason for this is that even though the action will “spill” out of the frame when it’s too close, I’m certain to get most of the stuff I want, including the celebrations after the goal on my end.

At the figure skating world championship (henceforth knowns as “FSWC” as I don’t want to write it again), I used the 200-400mm f2.8 for the majority of the time. Yes, pity me. From my previous knowledge of the sport, I knew that this lens would allow me to get most of the shots I wanted (close ups from rink side and ice as background from the stands). Although there were moments of “I wish I could quickly change it to a wide angle”, unless I wanted a very specific shot, me and my 200-400mm f4 were attached to the strap.

2. Force this issue
Since you’ve only got one body, you really want to stick with one lens for the majority of the sport that you are shooting. The reason for this is that whilst you change from one lens to another, you might miss a shot. Other reasons are that with only one lens on the body, you will learn how to forcefully get the shot you want with that lens. When you have too many options, you become too dependent on situational lens swapping. Especially if you are hoping to break the mould of your current shooting style, learn to shoot differently with what you have. The first logical step is to try to get closer or further away from the action. You might find that shooting a step closer will net you a shot you never thought possible and the same goes for stepping back a step.

At the FSWC, I shot mostly at 400mm. The reason for this is that I learned quite quickly the AF speed on this lens is not as fast as 400mm f2.8 in low light indoor situation. Rather than having to fiddle with the zoom ring and trying to minimise the fuss, I decided that 400mm was the focal length I will stick with unless the situation demanded that I concoct an alternative. For example, instead of moving the zoom to 200mm when the skaters got close to me on rink side, I shot with the 400mm. If I had the 70-200mm or 14-24mm with a body on my other hand, I would have swapped it, but I went with the 400mm throughout. The results were 50 / 50, but I got shots I couldn’t have gotten with a wider lens.

3. Be foolish
Your decision to stick with one body and one lens does get old. No matter how you shoot and no matter where you shoot from, you’ll need to think of something else to do as there is only so much one can do with a simple setup of one lens one body. May I suggest a bit of blur practice? Low shutter speed will get you some blur magic going and this is something you’ll need a lot of practice to get it right. Even if you are good at it, it is not an exact science and therefore it requires you to shoot often. In any case, try the blur in different shutter speed. Start with 1/15 and go all the way down to a full 1 second. This will not be easy to do outdoors during the day, but depending on how sunny it is, you can go blurry throughout the game.

Once again at the FSWC, I got bored after 1 hour of shooting. My colleague, who I shall not remain nameless (Tsutomu Takasu from Four + 1) is a genius when it comes to the blur. We will get him on again on BLFS very soon to give us more tips on advanced blurring. I digress. He gave me a short lesson in blurring that I hadn’t thought about and off I went on a blurring spree. Combined with my thirst for multiple exposure (thanks Matt), I made things interesting switching techniques depending on my mood. Although, I have to admit that you shouldn’t mix blur and multiple exposure. With all things good for us sports photographers, it’s sometimes wiser to leave these two beauties on separate corners.

There you have it. I survived the 4 days of staying true to one lover. Although at times I definitely thought we were spending way too much time together, the occasional foray into the uchartered territory made our relationship worth our while. But if you ask me again, I prefer menage a trois. :)

Ryu, not apologising for being pervy at the end.

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

Like many photojournalists I was a high school newspaper and yearbook photographer. Starting with my first football game I was hooked on sports photography. Football was my favorite and remains to this day, I am still covering 49ers and Raiders after all these years because of that excitement I learned in high school. Photography has never been a job to me, it has always been a passion that drives me to photograph.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

I was so focused on getting the peak action that I forgot to photograph the reaction after the peak action. I worked out a little mantra to myself “ action reaction”. I repeated action-reaction, action-reaction and so on. It seemed to do the trick but I would say it out loud in the beginning causing my fellow photographer to tell me to shut up.

3. Funniest/Strangest story from on of your shoots?

My first football game I photograph was in fall of 1958. It was my first time using a 4×5 Speed-Graphic and of course we made several test in my backyard at night.

Things like cocking the shutter and pulling out the slide then remembering to flip the slide to black before removing the film holder weighed heavy on my mind along with the weight of the Honeywell 208b strobe unit that slowed down everything. Well to the punch line, I didn’t know anything about the wire sports finder or how it worked. I used the optical viewfinder during the game. Like the mirror on your car thing may appear further than they really are. I discovered this when a ball carrier came around my side of the field as I was trying to compose by filling the viewfinder. I looked up after the shot and fell backwards as the players rolled over my feet. My dad got to use his favorite joke as he yelled to me from somewhere down the sidelines, “Come over here kid and I will pick you up!” Dad and the Denver Post photojournalist came over to check me out. The Post photographer said “Hey kid you need to learn how to used the sports finder”; he also gave me a quick lesson in how to Near-Far focus the Speed-Graphic and use the wire sports finder. I got a great image but I decided to be more aware of my surrounding and stay clear of running football players.

4. Advice to kids (or a midlife crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Advice to aspiring sport photographers:
Minimum requirement is to be an excellent photographer. Know your equipment and software in and out. Talent is only the first step. The most successful photographers have learned how to promote themselves and keep good relationship with others; you must know what you are getting into. Having a good working knowledge of your chosen sport and continuing to build on that knowledge is very important. You need to know what you want to accomplish and stick to it. Have a long-term and short-term goal, along with an exit plan. A career in photography is not for the faint hearted. It is difficult to make it in an industry that requires expensive equipment to make minimal money.

To deal with midlife crisis or burnout, you must got back to the basics of why you became a sports photographer and what you planned to accomplish? The bigger questions “are you happy” and do you feel a sense of accomplishment me every time you photograph are important. The quality of any photograph is directly proportional to the energy and attitude of the photographer. Enthusiasm and positive mind set makes for great images. To me, photography is never a job it is my passion and way of life. Because photography is part of me, I am just as enthusiastic about photographing a simple assignment like dog of the week as photographing more complicated assignment like the Super-Bowl. You need to approach every opportunity to photograph with an open mind or you won’t see that great image.

+1 You’re in the middle of a massive film-scanning project (years work of 49ers pictures). What have you learned, and what is your goal with this project?

I am about three quarters the way through scanning 20 years of 49ers and Raiders film. I hope to be finish by the end of March. I have already made 3,000 scans which produced 2600 final color corrected and captioned digital files. It is an all-encompassing time consuming project. My short-term goal is to get all 32 years of my bay area NFL images on PhotoShelter. It should end up about 5,000 images or so. My long-term goal is to get all of my editorial and art type images on to PhotoShelter.

I learned how to organize, research, and establish a workflow for this type of project. You have to stay on task; while I am writing this note I have two scanners going on in the background. I am in the middle of 1997. My blog on hold but when I finish, I will blog about how I went about getting this done. If you would like to see what I have completed so far check out my PhotoShelter NFL gallery page.

When I was first getting into photography, the longest lens I had was a 70-200. I shot for a soccer team, and did a lot of wishing that the action would come to me, and a lot of time not shooting when the action was too far away. One thing a lot of people in the BLFS group on Flickr (and people in general) don’t get is that shooting with a relatively short lens and cropping 90% of the picture out is always going to look like crap. Always. You won’t have the detail, and you won’t be able to isolate the action from the background. Because of this, until I got a 300 and then a 400, my choice was always patience.

But let’s say that you shoot your kids, and they play once a week, and not even for the whole game. If you wait for a close action picture, you might not get many/any pictures at all. Well, think about what your goal is. Is it to flex your photographic muscles by getting peak action moments no matter the subject? Or is it to document memories? One thing I did to make money to buy my long lenses was to shoot pictures of kids for holidays etc. But not at Sears, my business was for in-home pictures, kind of a photojournalistic take on kid photography. My pitch was basically “kids never pose in real life, so why do you want to have a wall of posed pictures. When they’re at home, kids play. When they’re at soccer/little league games, they mess around with their friends, put on and take off gear, cry, laugh, cheer, and more. When they are grown up, I promise you that they will value a picture of them laughing with their friends at halftime over a 10% crop of a picture of them kicking a ball on the other side of the field.

We see generic action pictures coming into the Flickr group every day. And I think of all the access wasted in favor of generic action. Sometimes there are rules even for youth games, but I don’t imagine anyone is having too much of a problem getting into practices.

Here’s a recent Reuters Photographers’ blog post on British Olympic diving hopefuls by Stefan Wermuth. Note how many of these are from practice. Wermuth couldn’t have gone back to his editors with 100 competition dive pictures and hoped to keep his job. So he watched and made decisions about what training to be a diver is really about. And if you were one of the girls in the last frame, honestly wouldn’t you rather have that picture to remember your time as a diver? Unless you go on to hoist a gold medal, I’m going to say yes.

There are great pictures out there that don’t require $30,000 worth of gear, credentials, a fancy job title or anything else. Just your imagination, and the guts to do something other than standing on the sideline with a 70-200 letting other parents gawk at “how big your lens is”.

1. How did you start shooting sports photography and what is your bread and butter sport?

I was an athlete up through my college years and was lucky enough to have my photo appear many times in local papers. When my career ended, I wanted to still be involved in the sports world and I remembered all the great shots that were captured of me during my career. Indeed, I wanted to do the same. Now, besides many other great athletes, I have been able to document Larry Fitzgerald’s entire professional career. My bread and butter sport is definitely football. I am the team photographer for the Arizona Cardinals covering all of their home and away games. I also serve at the lead photographer for the Fiesta Bowl Committee – covering both the Insight Bowl and Fiesta Bowl – and every four years the BCS National Championship Game.

2. What is something that you think is really obvious now that took you a long time to get?

The most obvious thing to me now is the simple fact that it is one thing to be able to capture a great photo – it is another to be able to market and sell it. Patience is definitely a virtue in this media world. Just because an image is not relevant now doesn’t mean it will not be in the future. My most famous photo, the iconic shot of Pat Tillman, for years remained in my personal collection without any views from the public. Now as a Sports Illustrated famous cover, it is the most known image of him, a huge honor!

3.Funniest / Strangest story from one of your shoots?

Not one particular moment stands out for me – there have been many. But I always get a laugh when the players want to take control of my camera. The 400 2.8 looks big in my arms, but it looks like a point and shoot with some players, in particular the defensive line. On quite a few occasions I have been forced into becoming the model.

4. Advice to the kids (or a mid life crisis sufferer) who are aspiring to become a sports photographer?

Although it has been said many times – I must re-emphasize – KEEP SHOOTING! With every opportunity try something new and create a style unique to you. Shoot at different focal lengths and different angles -look for fresh ideas. I also feel it is very important to archive your work. As I mentioned earlier, you never know when an image may become relevant. In this fast paced media world, if you lose time searching for an image, your opportunity may be lost.

+1 As a team photographer, what is the difference in your job between when the team is winning vs when it is losing?

There is definitely a difference on how I cover the Cardinals dependent on the play on the field. After a loss I try and back off – capturing the moment from a distance – giving the players their space. Wins are great; I usually go inside the bench area during the last two minutes and find the players celebrating. With a big win I cover the postgame locker room speech. Needless to say, I have documented and been a part of many special moments with the organization – particularly our run to the Super Bowl a few years back.