alittlenews

This Soundslides show is designed to give you a glimpse behind the pictures and let you know what I was thinking, when there was thinking (grin), on my BCS National Championship coverage.  I hope you guys enjoy this and I hope you can pick up some tips.  You can usually apply lessons you learn in one area of photojournalism across the board and use them on other assignments.  So kick back and enjoy.  Leave a comment and let me know if this is helpful.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. As always, the photos are of student athletes. No unauthorized reproduction or reuse of these photos is permitted to protect the eligibility of the student athletes. The photos are for editorial/educational use by readers of this site. Do not download these photos in any form. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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You guys might have heard there was a little football game out in Pasadena yesterday evening.  I was there.  No big deal.  Just a National Championship on the line.  Fun times.  Actually, it was a great honor to be here shooting the game and surrounding festivities.  This has been a career goal and now I can cross that one off the list.  Of course, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at shooting another one someday.

The good thing is that the game is just a football game.  Big crowd, lots of excitement, fireworks, F18 flyover, parachute drops into the stadium but still just a football game.  That is what the coaches try to get the players to see.  You still just go out there and play football.  I just focused my mind on that.  It is a big stage.  There is a lot of hype.  The whole country is watching.  But it is still a football game and you have ride the horse that brought you.  In other words, shoot the game the same way you would shoot any game.  Work your angles.  Move as much as necessary.  Play the percentages.  It is just football and the teams are going to do basically what got them here.  Same for me.

Of course, I had an ace in the hole that I don’t know if anyone else shooting the game had.  I had two churches back home praying for me.  It is pretty hard to fail when you have that much support.  So I take off my crowns and lay them at the feet of the one who gets the glory.  We sing a song sometimes that says “not unto us, oh Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name be glory.”  I like that.  When I do well it is nothing more than God’s gift working.  I had a nice game and probably did about as good as I could considering I was shooting alone.  The bigger newspapers and agencies sent multiple photographers.  But I guess when I have a little divine help that kind of evens out the field.  And really, a lot of big plays happened right in front of me.  You can’t ask for more than that.

I know some of you are probably thinking God doesn’t care about football or pictures and I agree with that.  What God cares about is people so I have no problem thanking Him publicly for helping me perform well.

With the proper accolades in place let me tell you, this was a great experience.  The Rose Bowl in an awesome place to work.  It would have been more awesome in daylight.  The light out here is wonderful and shooting that game in daylight would have been a treat.  The stadium is a bit lower than most of the ones I typically shoot in which means the light stands were lower and that creates a few problems with light quality.  Other than that small complaint I was great working here.  The Rose Bowl is the most beautiful place I have ever shot a football game.  Truly a special stadium.

Shooting this game was no different from doing any college game.  The sidelines were crowded but I had no trouble moving around or working with the other shooters.  To their credit, the BCS did a wonderful job of managing this entire week and the folks who run the Rose Bowl did an excellent job managing the media and meeting our needs.  I shot the game with a D3 and a D2H, same as always.  I used the 300 f2.8 and sometimes had a 1.4 extender on it.  I also used the 80-200 and the 17-35.  In other words, I used the same stuff I always use.  It is probably not a good idea to bring unfamiliar equipment into the biggest game of the year.

I am going to post some photos here with this post and when I get back home I am going to do a narrated slide show for this site to kind of take you behind the pictures and give you an idea of what I did, what I was thinking and why.  Just some stuff you don’t usually think about.  In the mean time, enjoy a few shots from the game.

[caption id="attachment_3327" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Trent Richardson scores a touchdown on a long run in front of Texas defenders Aaron Williams and Earl Thomas during the first half in the Rose Bowl. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 01/07/10"][/caption][caption id="attachment_3323" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Mark Ingram dives down near the Texas goal line with Blake Gideon making the tackle during the first half in the Rose Bowl. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 01/07/10"][/caption]

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I have found that after you work through all the glitz and glamor out here that what you find is pretty much an endless schedule of press conferences.  Okay, subtract the glitz and glamor part.  We haven’t had much of that but we have had a bunch of press conferences.  And there are more to come.  Three for today I believe.  You know, as a photographer, there are just so many things you can do with a press conference and then it gets a bit repetitive.  I can only imagine what it would be like to be on the other side of the camera or microphone.

None the less, I am in Southern California which appears to be the only place in America where it isn’t ice box cold.  Michael Casagrande and I actually took about a half hour and ran down to a public beach today for a much needed break from, you guessed it, press conferences.  There were actual people in swim suits playing on the beach and in the water and the calendar says January out here too.  Remarkable!

So the glamorous life of a photojournalist continues.  Really, I am tongue in cheek here because I am very happy and thrilled to be here even if we have covered a bunch of press conferences.  There is a little football game coming up Thursday night and I think it will be fun to cover it.  Oh, speaking of press conferences, I met Jay Janner today who is a very excellent photojournalist from The Austin American Statesman newspaper.  You can see a link to Jay’s blog in the blogroll.  Check it out sometime.  I also ran into Sportsshooter founder Robert Hanashiro who shoots for USA Today.  I introduced myself and got the polite smile which I would have given to someone if the roles were reversed.  Actually, I have run into a bunch or really excellent and noteworthy photojournalists and expect to see a bunch more come game time.

I have not met any movie stars yet which is actually for the best.  Lord only knows what would happen if I came across Sandra Bullock!  (Don’t worry Honey, it was a joke.  Really!)  I don’t think I would recognize most of them anyway.  I have a very short list of actors that I like and an even shorter list of ones I would recognize outside of their movie characters.

By the way, speaking of press conferences, you really do have to work the angles to get something different.  No matter where you are or what job you are shooting you always have to work the assignment hard.  Treat it like it is the first time you have done it.  Shoot wide, shoot medium, shoot long, shoot low, shoot high and when you can’t think of any other way to shoot look around and see what everyone else is doing and do something different from that.  I did that with the picture of Terrence Cody.  I just backed up and used a 300mm lens from across the room and got the big smile amid a swirl of reporters.  To work any assignment effectively you need to do the basics that got you there to begin with.  When you are given the opportunity to shoot a big job make the most of it by doing the things you do well.  You can try some different things but that should be part of your routine anyway.

If you still shoot the same way you did two or three years ago it is past time to shake things up a bit.  Use your standard techniques and then shake yourself.  Make yourself see it differently.  I actually brought my 300 f2.8 to the media day because after observing the other photographers working I saw that no one brought their 300.  I did it because I knew it would give me something that no one else had.  Try it.  You might like it.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I talked with my wife last night and found that my son David is praying against me.  Patty told me Dave wanted me to get fired so I could come home.  I love that little guy.  He is 8 and missing his dad.  That both breaks my heart and makes me feel great.  Parenting is weird that way.  While this is a dream assignment for me it is also a little bit of a paradox because I hate being away from hearth and home for any amount of time.  The family is just too precious.  I suppose I am blessed that I get to travel and blessed that I don’t have to do it much.

On the ground in Newport Beach we had a full day of press conferences and practices.  This means we spent two hours making pictures of players talking to us from a podium.  Not bad really but it is a tad predictable.  We had Texas offensive players in for a round and Alabama defensive players for another round.  That was before lunch.  We grabbed a quick lunch in the media hospitality suite.  That is an understatement that does no justice to an excellent meal.  The food was so good it was better than many, many restaurants I have eaten in.  These guys really know how to take care of you.  Then it was off to Texas practice.

UT has their practice facility at UC Irvine.  The deal is they only grant us 15 minutes shooting time and your mobility is pretty limited.  Texas skipped one of the periods we were supposed to be allowed to photograph meaning we only had six minutes to shoot practice.  Nice.  I got about three players and one shot of Coach Mack Brown who stayed as far from the cameras as possible and still be on the practice field.  Not great but at least I got a few frames of a couple of key offensive players for UT.

We moved on to the Alabama practice facility at Costa Mesa High School.  We actually got the full 15 minutes with Bama which was somewhat surprising.  Coach Saban is pretty tight about all that.  The down side is we had a much smaller shooting area to work in than at the Texas practice.  I got an incredible amount done in 15 minutes.  All things considered I did about as much as you could possibly do in that amount of time.  I got pictures of most of the key players doing something relatively interesting.

After hopping the media shuttle back to the hotel I began working up photos.  I ended up moving 51 photos back from the press conferences and practices.  There is no way you will see 51 photos run in the paper but we should have an awesome gallery from it.  And we will have plenty of stuff to run in the special sections leading up.  That is what you have to keep in mind.  You are not just shooting for today’s paper but for all the stories leading up to the game.  In addition, I am supplying photos to three newspapers and each of them have writers here working on different stories.  There are different needs for each story and newspaper.  The writers are also sharing stories so our stories will be running in the partner papers and vice versa.

After a long day we finally made it to dinner.   Micheal Casagrande, Mark Edwards and I found a great little Italian restaurant in Newport Beach.  There was not a Texas or Alabama color in the place meaning it was completely patronized by locals.  That was a good sign.  The wonderful aroma as soon as we opened the door was another good sign.  The small restaurant was completely full which was the last good sign.  All those good omens led up to a fantastic meal.  Compliments to the chef.  Really nice.  Okay, travel does have a few perks.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions  expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

What a cool way to begin a new year and a new decade.  I am in southern California to cover the BCS National Championship and related festivities. My first assignment was the coaches press conference at Downtown Disney’s ESPN Zone.  Nick Saban greeting Mickey Mouse is just not something you see every day.  During the press conference a few minutes after Alabama arrived and met the famous Mouse, Coach Saban was asked by a member of the media if he were having fun.  The stoic Saban answered very diplomatically saying practice was more fun for him than meeting the media.  Imagine that!  Maybe Coach will smile if Bama wins Thursday.  Or not.

Then there was Robyn Armstrong McDaniel cradling perhaps the most valuable football in America, the crystal football that sits atop the National Championship Trophy.  She works for Dr. Pepper and her job is to help manage that football.  It sat on the stage between the coaches and ESPN host Jesse Palmer.  She and several colleagues are in charge of managing the trophy.  Maybe my favorite moment was her cradling that ball.  Just don’t fumble!

The press conferences are, well, press conferences.  You get to shoot pictures of the coaches on a set.  Expressions and gestures receive an explosion of shutter clicks all firing at 8fps.  Don’t want to miss a single inflection.  The coaches press conference was an ESPN TV event so it was a bit fancier than most where you only have a back drop and people in front of it.  Faces, expressions and gestures please and as many and as varied as possible.

Otherwise, our first day in California was just like a day anywhere else.  You still have to move around to the assignments.  You still have to shoot, edit and move photos and do it all as quickly as possible with iffy internet connections.  Fortunately, they are taking good care of us.  I could get used to being pampered like this.  There is a media shuttle that takes you pretty much anywhere you need to go.  That is just fabulous because it removes one layer of stress.  Anytime you can remove a layer of stress it is a good thing.  They are also giving us some very nice lunches and wonderful service on just about anything we need.  Like I said, I could get used to this.  I hope my wife isn’t reading this one!

Lest you feel we are having it too easy, our first day began with a 3:55 Central Time wake up call to get to the airport for a 6:15 flight.  We hit the ground here, checked into the hotel, got a bite to eat and were working immediately.  My day finally came to a close at 9:45 Pacific Time when I was finally able to fall into the bed.  With the time change being two hours back to our time zone, every event in the evening pushes deadline hard.  So there you go, all this glitz and glamor, ahem, is certainly off set by the stress, delays and problems of just getting here and doing what would otherwise be pretty normal.  I know, I know, don’t cry for me!

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.