A Little News

Alabama defensive lineman Terrence Cody walks off the field following Alabama's 31-20 loss to Florida in the SEC Championship Game.

And I am not talking about the game either.  I had a loaned 400mm f2.8 from Nikon Professional Services stolen while I was covering the post-game dejection/jubilation right from in front of Georgia Dome Security.  The thief could only have been another photographer.  The lens shade and monopod were found in one of the photo workrooms after the game.  All I can say is that really stinks and the person who did this violated every tenant of ethics and trust that we subscribe to in this business.

The game itself was very good for about three quarters then Florida put on a fourth quarter surge to claim a 31-20 victory.  My feeling going into the game was that Florida would probably win but that Alabama had a really good football team and the game would be very competitive.  It lived up to the billing.  As our sports editor Mark Edwards put it, the difference in the game was that Florida has the best football player in the country on their team and Alabama does not.  That player is, of course, Tim Tebow.  This is the first time I have shot a game involving Tebow and he is more impressive in person than he is on TV and he is plenty impressive on TV.  He may not win the Heisman again this year but it won’t be because he doesn’t deserve it.

I shot the game with the same gear as at the Iron Bowl, the 400mm f2.8 with a D700 and a Nikon D2Hs with an 80-200.  At times I switched bodies around depending on how close I was to the action.  We ran a huge, for us anyway, section just on the SEC Championship.  We had an 8 page section wrapped around our normal sports section and we ran a lead story on A1 with photo.  That meant a bunch of photos.  I had plenty of shots to cover the sections and slide show for the internet. You can view the slide show here.

The primary trouble in covering this game was just mobility.  The sidelines were full of shooters, still and video, and moving up and down the field is really tough.  I favored an end zone position for most of the game but that meant long jogs from one end of the field to the other carrying a lot of gear.  Fun times and judging by the outcome, I would really still be loving it to carry that lens around (nasty thief!).  Okay, I know, I have vented enough.

Covering the game was a blast.  It was my first SEC Championship game and I was thrilled to be there shooting.  We have had teams in the Championship before but someone on staff always seemed to be from Georgia and got to go shoot the game.  I was feeling a little bit of pressure because our paper was running the extra section and the big lead photo on page one.  Still, pressure is a good thing as long as you control it and don’t allow it to control you.  That is kind of an important point.  When you are covering any big assignment it is easy to get caught up in the pressure and get swamped.  I learned how to handle pressure when I was a volunteer firefighter.  There is no pressure in photojounalism like in the fire service where your actions can literally determine the life and death of people.  What I found to be true in fire service was that in those high tension times you perform well because your training kicks and you do things automatically.  In other words, you don’t think too much about what you are doing you simply do what your training dictates in the moment.  The only times I ever really felt fear as a firefighter were in those rare situations where I had not been trained to handle something.  As a photojournalist you have been trained to handle yourself in terms of equipment and through your education and then through your own experiences.  Don’t allow nerves to distract you, allow them to motivate and drive you.  Then you will perform your best.  Whenever I “try” to do really good is when I generally under perform.  When I simply go with the flow of the moment I usually get outstanding results.

For what it is worth, this SEC Championship was a mixed bag for me.  I got plenty of good action but I didn’t feel like I got “the moment.”  I didn’t see it and miss it, I just never saw it.  Some games have a really defining play in visual terms and I never found that play in this game.  Maybe others did.  I don’t know but I didn’t.  So in the final evaluation of my own performance I would have to say that my performance was good but not great.  It is a good thing to evaluate yourself but don’t be too hard on yourself.  If you underperform there will be another day.  If you knock it out of the park there is still going to be another day so don’t get to bummed on the bad days and don’t get too high on the good days because you will have plenty of both in your career.  Just go out today and do your best.  Oh, and have some fun doing it!

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  These photos are intended for the viewing/instruction of readers of Alittlenews.  Any other use is strictly prohibited.  Downloading or republication of NCAA football photos is prohibited.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

We have been banned from this workroom ever since this

You guys seem to really have eaten up this Iron Bowl stuff.  So shamelessly playing to your interest, I thought I would share some Iron Bowl memories with you.  This was my fifteenth football season in Decatur and during that time I think I have covered eleven Iron Bowls.  I have worked with a variety of other photojournalists in that time beginning with my current boss John Godbey.  That list includes Scott Trigg, David Higginbotham, Dan Henry, Emily Saunders, Jonathan Palmer and most recently Deangelo McDaniel.  I must be pretty tough on co-workers ehh?  And I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone.

How about a list of my Iron Bowl goofs.  Oh yeah, this could be a long list.  My very first Iron Bowl was in 1994 and was at Legion Field.  I was still in my first year at the paper and was shooting with John Godbey.  John’s sister lived in Birmingham and he was going to shoot the whole game and process at her home.  I was to shoot the first half, take all the film for both of us and head back to Decatur to process that take.  I shot and scooted without remembering to get John’s film.

That was a minor SNAFU compared with the 1996 Iron Bowl also played in Birmingham.  Scott Trigg was my partner for that game and it was a night game in Legion Field.  Scott was shooting the first half and leaving with our film to go to his girl friend’s home just outside Birmingham.  I would shoot the whole game and then run over as soon as possible after the game with my film.  It is somewhat traditional to get a photo of the coaches at mid-field after the game but I decided not to so I could beat as much traffic out as possible.  As soon as the buzzer sounded ending the game I dashed to my car and busted out of the parking lot as fast as I could go.  I got to Scott’s girl friend’s home and his first question was, “Did you get Stallings at the end of the game?”  It was only then that I found out that Coach Stallings had announced his retirement during the post-game press conference.

During the 2000 Iron Bowl no one scored a touchdown.  I believe the final score was Auburn 9 Alabama 0.  Neither I nor David Higginbotham bothered to send a photo of the field goal kicker who was the only person to score.  That Iron Bowl was also the coldest I have ever been.  The game began with sleet and progressed to an extremely cold rain.  My thermal gear was all soaked by half-time and I had no other coat to wear in the second half except a thin, vinyl rain coat.  I nearly froze.  (Don’t laugh out loud there Corey.)  I spent more time shivering during the second half than I did shooting.  This was also the infamous Bear hugging incident where Dave found a larger than life sized Bear Bryant statue carved from a tree and spent a little time hugging it.  Needless to say, there is now a restraining order against Dave filed by the spirit of Bear Bryant.

I have also had a hard time keeping up with monopods at the Iron Bowl.  I lost my second one at this year’s event.  I have no idea what happened to it.  I left my personal monopod beneath the hedge at Auburn a few years ago and have never seen it since.  Weird, I know.  At least it is not long glass I am losing.  Oh, and lest I forget, there was the photo of Jerraud Powers, the guy from Decatur, making a key interception in the 07 Iron Bowl.  It was only the play that kind of turned the game.  No big deal right!  But, I had the photo, toned it and then saved it in the wrong folder and never transmitted it.  Yeah, fun times.

A rare photo of me working. Double meaning intended! Photo by Deangelo McDaniel

I do have good memories too.  It is always a great pleasure to get together with a lot of other shooters in the state.  There is some really good talent in that photo work room.  We also get together after the game for the annual Shrimp Boil.  I didn’t hang around this year but the Shrimp Boil is usually hosted by the group from the Mobile Press-Register and it is a great social time.  There is a lot of good natured verbal jousting and some excellent fellowship.  Oh yeah, it is great to cover the biggest game of the year in Alabama.  This is the year round game.  It never really ends, it just kind of morphs into mythology and begins again the next November.  To be part of that legendary game is just really cool. Every now and then I even make a picture worth publishing so over all, the Iron Bowl is really great experience.

By the way, did I mention that when the Auburn Tigers win at home they run down to Toomer’s Corner and roll a huge tree there with toilet paper.  I guess everyone to his own thing but that just seems a little weird to me.  I guess it beat setting police cars on fire and vandalizing property like some of our brethren in larger cities do when their team wins.  Well, let me leave you with a big Roll Tide since Bama won this season and , yes, I do have loyalties in this game but only when I am sitting home in my living room watching on TV.  There is nothing more annoying or out of place than photographers being fans on the sideline.

There you go then, some memories good and bad of Iron Bowls past and still looking forward to Iron Bowls future.  My fondest wish for future Iron Bowls is that both Alabama and Auburn go into the game unbeaten.  It’s always nice to have a little something on the line.

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

The annual Iron Bowl is in the books and it could be called the retribution bowl as Alabama vented six years of frustration on Auburn with a 36-0 pounding.  The game was played in a continual mist of rain, not bad rain but enough to be annoying and enough to make you keep rain covers on your gear.  That’s no big deal except it makes you have to focus on routine maneuvers with your cameras.  It could have been much worse.  It could have been cold for one thing and it could have been really raining.  The only real side effect was the weather made a day game look a lot like a night game.

This Iron Bowl marked the completion of two very different season.  For Alabama the game marked the completion of a 12-0 regular season and sealed the number one ranking going into the SEC Championship where they will play Florida which is probably the hottest team in the nation right now.  For Auburn it marked the merciful end to what can only be the worst year in the Tommy Tuberville era.  Auburn’s offense was the worst major college offense I have ever seen.  They could not move the ball much less score points.

So the big game was not so big this year with Auburn being so low coming in but it was still the big game in Alabama as it is every year.  I covet this game.  I want to be there because I know all the best shooters in the state are going to be there and, of course, in a big year like this one for Alabama Sports Illustrated is going to be there.  So yeah, I want to be in that mix to test myself against the best in the state.  And this year, I think I had my best Iron Bowl, especially in terms of peak action photos.  A lady at church this morning said, “God really put you in the right place all day didn’t He.”  I couldn’t agree more.  I also got a nice photo of Rolando McClain celebrating which was one of my goals.  Rolando is a graduate of Decatur High so he is a homegrown product and the starting middle linebacker for the Tide.  Another Decatur High grad, Jerraud Powers, plays corner back for Auburn and he is one of their best defenders.  Clearly, getting good photos of those two was something I wanted to do.

Deangelo McDaniel, one of the Daily’s reporters who is also a photographer on the side, went to the game with me after my photojournalist co-worker Jernomio Nisa became ill at the last minute so Deangelo and I shot the game together.  It is always great to have two shooters at a game like this because if one of you miss something the chances are the other one will get it.

I used a Nikon D700 and 400mm f2.8s that Nikon Professional Services graciously loaned to me.  That camera is the little brother to the D3 and it rocks just about as much as the D3 does.  I shot most of the second half at ISO 4000 and it was sweet, noiseless and wonderfully sharp.  The only thing I lacked was the battery grip that gives the camera 8fps.  I can’t say enough about the performance of this little full frame wonder.  It was a fantastic camera.  Many thanks to NPS for the loaner.  They have helped me shoot many big games over the years.  Without their assistance my photos would have been nowhere near as good as they were.  The other gear I used was a Nikon D2Hs and 80-200 which I barely touched.  The 400 was just perfect on the full-frame D700.  For the post game stuff, I shot a 17-35 f2.8 on the D700.  I have never used a flash for the post game stuff.  I like the stadium light and there is enough light I don’t really need to supplement.

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.

Volleyball is the toughest sport for me to shoot.  I am close to the action, the ball moves fast and I am frequently tied to flash.  That means I have many, many more misses than hits when shooting volleyball.  You may be the same boat as me and if you are I have some tips that may help you.

First, and this is the easiest, most fool proof method of shooting volleyball, get high and focus on the net.  A great deal of predictable action happens right around the net.  If you get on a balcony or the top of the bleachers behind one of the teams you will have a clear view of the action around the net.  This will give you a safe action photo that you can take back from any game you may cover.  The second benefit to the high behind position is it allows you to cover action on the floor on the half of the court nearest you.  For those of you who like to be predictable you can stop reading now.

If you want to be a little more adventurous, drop down to the floor and shoot from behind one of the judges.  You can sit on the floor and cover both halves of the court and you will have a low point of view which may, or may not, work for you but you will never know until you try.  This position allows you to shoot some of the dives and digs that happen near floor level.  This makes for some cool shots.  The problem is two fold.  The action is unpredictable and it moves very fast and you can have an awful lot of legs between you and the action.  Obviously it is not as dependable a shooting position but it can give you more cool action and facial expressions.

You can also try shooting on the baseline behind one of the teams.  You have the same trouble with bodies between you and much of the action but when you get a shot it will typically be pretty nice.  You can shoot net shots but what I like to do from this position is look for action on or near the floor on the opposite side of the net.  Alternatively, this is a good place to use a normal to wide lens for players chasing balls toward you.  This happens once in a while but not often enough to depend on it for you money shot.

Vary your lens choice and look for chances to shoot with your wide lens.  It will only give you a single frame or maybe two frames at most but it can be a nice break from shooting with long glass and it will yield an image your sports editors are not always seeing.  You can go really long and shoot as tight as you can on places where the action is predictable such as serves and blocks and spikes around the net.  Obviously, a 70-200 is your best friend.

Maybe you will be lucky some of the time and can shoot available light.  This has happened to me; once.  The photos with this post were done available light at ISO 1600 using my EOS 5D.  I would not have tried this with the D2H.  There would have been too much noise.  Most of the time you will be tied to some kind of strobe set up unless you are covering college or pro games.  I like to bounce my strobes off the ceiling when possible when I am shooting volleyball because of the quality of light.  Unfortunately, this is not possible in all high school gyms.  You just have to be flexible when positioning your lights and try and cover the highest percentage of the court possible with even lighting.  Having f stop fall off is not something that is easy to deal with in post production so pay attention to your lighting and work it until you have it pretty well nailed down.

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.

One I drove and one I shot.  Guess which!  I have been on a road trip to New York to deliver my oldest son to begin a new job working in a limo business owned by my wife’s uncle.  Sound complicated?  At least he is working with cars which is what he dreams about while both awake and asleep.  I have never seen a young man so consumed with cars.  So this is a good fit.  The cross country part is where I actually took camera in hand and photographed a sport that I find even less interest in than I do in cars.

But this meet is a little different from your typical high school cross country meet.  This is the Jesse Owens Classic, a massive event drawing high school cross country teams from across the region.  I believe there were about 3,000 runners particpating in a series of 5K events set at the Oakville Indian Mounds Park a few miles outside Moulton, AL.  The kids ran the event just a stones throw from where the famed Olympian and truly great American Jesse Owens was born in a little share croppers shack.  Back in 1996, the county finally got around to building a museum and park in his name.  The Olympic torch run passed through the park which probably provided the incentive for the project.  Nevertheless, there is a nice park and museum there now honoring his memory.

Technically, the event is pretty easy to shoot.  As with most 5K events, you only have time to shoot the start and then hustle over to the finish and catch the runners coming in.  The races only last from 15-20 minutes so there isn’t much time for anything else.  I have done dozens of these races so I wanted something a little different than your typical starting line photo.  I looked down the first stretch of the race and realized there was a bottleneck at the first turn.  This meant that the runners would be bunched there and that might give me a nice shot.  When I walked down, there was a nice little rise just behind the bottleneck that allowed me to have a couple of feet of elevation.  Now I knew  I had my shot.

I wanted to try some other spots along the course but with the short races and the need to get top finishers I was really limited to what I could do.  The Indian mound would have made a nice vantage point for the last two turns of the race but it was closed off.  This may seem a bit trivial but it is holy ground to the indian tribes.  I have been up there a few times but it was usually to photograph some assembly of one of the tribes.  Not a place, at any rate, to just bounce around on for a few photos.

I also found an excellent photo of a young man praying out in the parking area as I walked between the turn and the finish line.  As it turns out he was of the Jewish faith and I shot some frames with a long lens.  Then it was just a matter of waiting for him to finish to get his name.  The photo is one of my favorite from the event because it shows a side of the cross country you don’t see just hanging around doing “race” photos.

This little story will give you a couple of good tips for shooting any kind of track event.  First, scout as much as possible before the race and pick you some spots.  If it is a 5K you will have to be really careful to pick spots that are close enough together to allow you to move between there and the finish in time to get your top finishers. Secondly, always keep your eyes open for the nice flavor photo.  Everyone expects to see running.  Give them something they don’t expect.

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

I shot the Auburn vs LSU football game this weekend, my first game this season without the D3 and 400 mm lens NPS loaned me.  I was back to my D2H and D2Hs body and the thought of a night game with our gear just didn’t appeal to me.  I stood looking over my lens options with no enthusiasm.  We have a 300 f2.8 that the AF performance is so poor on that it is not really worth shooting night football with.  We have the 400 f3.5 manual lens which I use fairly often but hate using at night.  It is old and worn out and my eyes are older than they used to be.  Not really good choices.

Naturally, I chose the third option.  I decided to take my EOS 5D and use the 70-200 f2.8 with the 1.4 extender.  This would give me a focal length equivalent of about 280mm.  Not a 400 for sure but probably enough for using as a backup to the D2Hs and the 400mm f3.5.  I would have to shoot both bodies at ISO 3200 to get enough light to perform at f3.5 and f4 so it was a risky deal but I felt fairly comfortable doing it.  I figured to rely mainly on the Nikon as my main body and the Canon for the shorter shots.

After shooting for just a few minutes, I realized my basic plan needed to be reversed.  I looked at the image quality on the Canon at 3200 and the Nikon at 3200 and to say there was no comparison would be significantly understating it.  The Canon images were way cleaner so I decided to go with the Canon for the main shots and only use the Nikon when the images were well beyond range.  This plan worked pretty well.  I was also blessed to be in the right spot for a good play coming right to me on a couple of occasions so my Canon stuff was really nice.  I am not going to tell you which was which.  I think you will probably be able to figure it out on your own.  At least it will be a nice exercise in focal length recognition for you.

The secondary consideration in going with the Canon as my main body was the ability to use the AF.  No matter how well I do manually, the AF will always beat me so that factor made the decision easier.  The game itself was interesting but not excellent.  Good defensive teams have a tendency to do that to offensive teams and Auburn does not have a good offense.  In fact, it has one of the most irritating offenses I have ever seen.  It is supposed to be a spread offense that moves through its plays quickly and efficiently.  Lets just say they have some work to do on that front.  The irritating part is the offense comes to the line, sets up like they are ready to run a play, then the whole offense stands up and looks to the sideline where they do a funky little dance to signal in the play.  In fact, watching the three coaches who are doing all the dancing is the most entertaining part of the offense.  Never the less, the game came down to the final minutes with Auburn leading 21-20.  They have an excellent defense.  Then LSU struck for a late score to put Auburn away 26-21.

Enjoy the pictures and feel free to leave any question or comment you have in the comments section or just drop me an email.

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

NCAA Disclaimer.  These photos are for the educational/viewing use of the readers of A Little News and are not for commercial application in any form.  The images may not be downloaded or reused without the written permission of Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily or, where applicable, the NCAA or its member institutions.

I almost laugh whenever I hear someone say this and I hear it a whole lot.  Most recently, one of you guys put that in the comments on a recent post.  I know what people mean when they say it.  I get to shoot pictures for a living for crying out loud.  It looks glamorous and once in a very great while, it actually feels glamorous but that is pretty rare.  Most of the time, my job is just as mundane as your job.

When you see a really nice photo or a photo from some big event, all you are seeing is the tip of a hulking  iceberg.  What goes into covering that event is usually massive logistics, way too many hours and time away from family.  Take this Auburn game for instance.  I left Friday night at about 9:30 after getting off from work and drove to Auburn.  One of my children is a senior at Auburn and she literally lives a block and a half from the stadium.  It is about a three and one half hour drive so I arrive in town about 1a.m.  I can’t park at her apartment so I have to park in a “secret” location and transfer all my gear to her car.  We drive to her apartment and unload all that gear.  It is now 1:30. We talk together and watch a few minutes of TV and get to bed about 2 a.m.

I have to be up at 6:30 to go to the athletic complex offices to pick up our season passes which include our parking passes.  Arrive at 7 a.m. to pick up the passes which goes remarkably well.  Normally these passes are mailed to us but there was a SNAFU this year on our end which put us in this last minute position.  Now I drive to the media lot which they moved this year and is further away than ever.  Thankfully, my gear is at my daughters’ apartment.  I walk from the media lot to her apartment which is about a mile and a half.  Now I can shower and get ready to go to the stadium for the 11:30 game time.  Had I been driving to Auburn on game day I would have needed to arrive a minimum of two hours ahead of game time.  For a big game, make that three to four hours ahead of game time.  Traffic is the worst nightmare of all on game day.  Both Auburn and Tuscaloosa are fairly small towns and both will be crowded with way over 100,000 people coming in for game day fun.

I arrive at the stadium about 9 a.m. with the assistance of my daughter who carries some of my gear for me.  Go through the security checks and make my way to the photo workroom which is field level beneath the stands in the north end zone.  Auburn has a very small workroom so it pays to get there early to get a spot.  During big games they set up tables outside the workroom to accommodate the media horde.  It is no big deal today.  Now, it is true that they serve us a pregame meal.  From long experience I know to avoid the pregame meal for an 11:30 start.  The main course is an egg concoction that I made the mistake of eating once years ago.  It was a hot day just like Saturday and by the end of the first quarter, well, lets just say, there were unpleasant side effects.  Today they have some cookies and hot dogs in the interview room so I grab some cookies now and a hot dog later on, but just one hot dog or the side effects will be the same!

Game time finally arrives and it is hot.  Auburn hot is a particular unpleasantness all its own.  The game absolutely drags by.  It is a good day for Auburn but the replay official seems to be reviewing about every other play and that dang official in the red hat keeps stepping onto the field signifying a TV timeout.  Man, I mean no harm to that guy, but DUDE, GET OFF THE FIELD!!!!  To make matters worse, I have nothing from the first half and I have to shoot the half time show because we have local cheerleaders participating with about 700 other cheerleaders, seriously, from around the state.  And I missed my son’s first soccer game, not just of the season but his first soccer game ever.  I really hated that.  I texted back and forth with my wife to keep up on how he was doing but that was nowhere near as satisfying as actually seeing his first game would have been.

Shooting the cheerleaders was more difficult than shooting the game.  I had to run, and I mean run, around the stadium to find the girls and, you guessed it, the groups I needed were on opposite sides of the field.  This meant a whole lot of sweating and trying to get photos of two groups for our front page.  I did it but the effort expended and the photos made did not equate.

I drop in to the work room just long enough to download my cards then back for the second half.  At least I am getting pictures now but the game is still dragging by.  Midway through the fourth quarter, and completely without warning, a cloud burst hits.  Fortunately, I am able to get my camera covered by I get drenched.  The rain lasts for about five minutes then the sun comes back out and it is now both hot and extra humid.  Nice!  The game finally ends.  It is about 3 p.m. and my daughter joins me in the photo workroom.  I edit my stuff down to twenty images, crop, caption and transmit and leave the stadium at about 4 p.m.  This is actually making pretty good time.  It usually takes a bit longer.

Katie and I walk back to her apartment and drop off my gear then walk a block back down to Momma Goldberg’s for a bite to eat.  After grabbing a semi-quick meal, Katie wants birthday photos taken in her new dress so we do that and then finally pack up my gear and she drives me to the media lot.  I finally get on the road for home about 5:15.  After an uneventful drive home I pull into the driveway at 8:30 and the day is finally over.  Had this been a really big game like the Iron Bowl or a game with Florida or Georgia, I might still be sitting in traffic trying to get home.

The final toll on the day is about seven hours of drive time and seven more hours at the stadium.  A pleasant visit with my daughter.  An average day of shooting, not too bad but no great images either.  And one missed soccer game.  It is a long, exhausting day and I love every minute of it, except the traffic.  College football is my favorite thing to cover so, despite all the logistics, hard work and long hours I will shoot all the games they can give me.  So yeah, on the surface it looks like I have a fantastic job and, if you are willing to put up with all that goes in to covering a game, it is pretty cool but don’t give up your day jobs any time soon.  I mean, there are enough people on the sidelines already!

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 shot the Auburn vs Southern Miss game in Auburn Saturday and I still have the D3 and the 400 f2.8 from NPS.  Sadly, it must go back before too long but just having the camera and lens is a confidence builder.  Never the less, having equipment doth not a photographer make and I was having an awful first half.  I felt like I was getting shots but in reality I was missing it in every regard from not getting the moment to missing focus.  When I downloaded images at half time I was able to see that I basically had nothing and that I was having some really bad auto-focus problems that I didn’t have the week before when shooting Alabama and Clemson.

What to do, what to do?  Well, when a football team has a bad half they go into the locker room and make changes to their game plan.  They adapt to the other team and try to make things happen differently in the second half by not repeating the mistakes of the first half.  Hey, if it is good enough for football teams it must be good enough for those shooting the game.  I had primarily shot the first half from the back of the end zones and I shot from my knees.  This created an environment where I was missing shots due to poor focus.  It doesn’t matter how good the gear you are using is if you are not giving the AF sensor area enough information to work with.  Basically staying in one position throughout the first half also created a sense of laziness in my attitude too.  Sometimes it is just better to move it a little bit and keep pace with the play moving up and down the sidelines with the teams.

Coming out for the second half I determined to try a different AF setting on the camera, to stay closer to the action, to shoot at least some of the time standing rather than kneeling and concentrate on getting the AF sensor in the right place.  Shooting with the D3 is somewhat different than with the D2Hs.  The controls are all in familiar places but there are more choices on the D3 and I didn’t have a manual so some of it was trial and error.  But no matter what, I needed to have larger images in my viewfinder to help the AF function properly. I used the dynamic focus tracking some in the second half and tried a couple of different focus tracking settings.

The whole standing up versus kneeling thing is not much more than psychological.  It is slightly easier to swing the camera left and right while standing rather than while kneeling.  It was mostly just to change things up and give myself a mental edge.  Moving along the sidelines more and keeping pace with the teams forced me into the rhythm of the game.  A little running around the back of the bench area carrying all that gear is good for the body and it can’t hurt the soul and it is good punishment for laziness too!  Btw, laziness is a terrible enemy.  It was very hot Saturday and staying in one place was cooler but it was causing me to miss pictures.  Like the Marine Corp says, a man never drowned in a pool of his own sweat so I needed to move it and shake off the lethargy.

While man may never have drowned in a pool of his own sweat, that torrential downpour that struck during the second half certainly could have.  Fortunately, it only lasted for a few minutes but it was enough to soak me to the bone.  I had rain gear but it literally went from a drop or two to a downpour in about 30 seconds.  I got a sleeve over my camera and lens but I was drenched before I could slip on a rain jacket.

End result, my half time adjustments worked.  I got much better stuff in the second half and I got a nice image of one of the kids from Decatur making a big play in the game.  Jerraud Powers, a Decatur High grad, intercepted a fourth quarter pass killing a comeback attempt by Southern Miss. (That’s the photo at the top of the post.)  I had missed a photo of him in the first half making a nice open field tackle when I allowed the AF sensor to go high throwing him completely out of focus.  The bottom line here is don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again if you are not getting the results you want.  Shake things up and keep moving and trying new things until you hit on some combination that works.  Talk to a pro fisherman sometime about this.  It will be an eye opener to you for your photography.

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.

NCAA disclaimer:  The photos in this post are for educational purposes only.  The photos are not available for sale, disbursion or any purpose other than for viewing by readers of A Little News.

I don’t know how fashionable it was to be emotional before Tiger came along with his famous fist pumps and yells, but it has certainly become more of an emo sport since he came along. I think Tiger shattered a whole lot of long standing golf idols while still managing to respect the game and its history. For all of us who have played golf as duffers, we know all about emo golf. Our golf is usually punctuated by negative emotion since few of us hit shots like the T man. We are more likely to spice our shots with thrown clubs, words our moms would not approve of and those looks of knowing disgust.

For photographers who have never covered golf, this may come as a surprise. Golf, the buttoned down game of knickers and funky plaid pants, has emotion. Looking for emotion on the course without, of course, becoming a target for someone’s thrown club, can really spice up your photography of this grand old game. Obviously, by far the most common emotions you will see are negative emotions. The grimace after a mishit drive or the bending over backwards lean after a missed putt. Sometimes the emotion shows up while players are waiting to hit. Sometimes it comes like a storm after they hit.

Like every other aspect of photography, being in the right place at the right time with the right lens and actually looking for those moments makes it much easier to shoot. You can get emotion at any time on the course but around the green you will be able to see more emotion than anywhere else. Golfers watching the ball roll to the hole are a great place to snag an emo picture. The reaction to a good putt or a bad putt are your best chance at emotion photos. Another place you will see plenty of emotion is on and around the tee box. When golfers, especially amateurs, hit poor shots they can really put on a show. You will see them drop clubs, make faces and yell things to the ball which don’t really matter to you or to the ball but it is good theater.

One thing to keep in mind when shooting the negative emotion stuff is not to overdo it. Get your shot and move on. Don’t go nuts over it because that can really irritate the competitor and most of my tournaments are the local variety where nothing other than a little pride is on the line. Most of these guys aren’t pros and won’t ever be. If I am shooting the boys who are getting paid then I would be more inclined to press the matter but that won’t help you any with your local club tournaments. Be sensitive to the situation and shoot accordingly. Of course, no one gets worked up over you shooting positive emo. You can just lay on the shutter and bang away. It all evaporates quickly anyway.

Another thing to keep an eye on is body language. A lot of golfers can play all poker faced but they will usually give away their feelings in the body language and this can be seen from a long way off. Watch the way they are walking and you can sometimes see joy or anger and that will give you a good clue where to find the emotion. Some players are just naturally more expressive than others anyway. Find one of these players and just mine them until you have some good stuff. Many times at club tournaments you are not really too worried about the leaders, especially in the early rounds and finding emotion will give you some nice photos to work with and it will keep you away from having the always present club swing photo in the paper for three or four days. It is just double eagle territory when the leaders are the ones who are giving up the best emotion. Where are you anyway Tiger Woods? Want to come play in Decatur?

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

I’m not Emily Post but here goes a little lesson in golf etiquette. Golf is the most peculiar sport I have ever run across when it comes to dos and don’ts while shooting the game. One would think that the clicking of a camera shutter would not even register on a golfer who was intensely concentrating on his game but any little noise seems to cause problems. Since this is a fact of the game you have to be particularly conscious of not being obtrusive in either positioning or in decibel level.

I was shooting the Spirit of America golf tournament one year at the Burningtree Country Club and legendary PGA golfer Jerry Pate was there to watch his son. Of course, I had to get a picture of Jerry watching his son so I introduced myself to him and we conversed briefly. The last thing he said to was, “Just make sure you don’t shoot during his back swing.” You may have seen Tiger Woods on TV dressing down a photographer for shooting when he wasn’t supposed to. It seems that the back swing is taboo.

The best safe guard is to just shoot with long glass. Sound, especially on a windy day, doesn’t carry very, particularly if you are down wind from the golfer. The other advantage to long glass is that golfers are fairly sensitive to your proximity to them. The long glass gives you a nice buffer and keeps you “out of their face” while still allowing you to get tight shots. You are still going to get some golfer who is just camera conscious and he will give you anything from an evil eye to some verbal abuse to even calling a course marshal on you for just pointing a camera at him. Fortunately, not all golfers are Princess and the Pea sensitive.

There are really two sets of rules when covering golf. There is one set for professional and serious amateur events and another set for club and charity tournaments. When I have covered the Hooter’s Tour, they have passed out a set of media guidelines which you are asked to follow. They are specific but very much common courtesy and common sense. You are expected to behave just like the photogs covering the PGA. Hooter’s is a bit like AA baseball is the the Major Leagues. These guys are serious and are trying to make the tour. The second set of rules are much more relaxed and apply to the fun events such as best ball charity tournaments. Most of your high school and college tournaments should be treated the same as a pro event.

No matter which kind of tournament you are covering, there are some basic things you should do and not do. Obviously, don’t be disruptive, especially when a golfer is in his back swing. Once he has made contact with the ball, fire away. Remain at a respectful distance from the golfer while he makes his shot. If you are unsure, ask someone such as a course marshal or even another golfer who is not involved in making a shot. Stay out of the golfer’s line of sight unless you are really quite far away. When you are shooting from a position ahead of the golfer you can use a low shooting position or use a tree or bush to help shield you from the golfer’s view.

Be conscious of your movements and don’t move around while the golfer is making his swing. It is also important that if you are driving a cart not to drive in the immediate area of a golfer making a shot. Many times you will have a driver or an escort of some kind who is a golfer and they will be mindful of this anyway. When you are around the green, you can usually get closer to the golfer but it is important not to move around while he is putting. Movement is very distracting while a person is standing over a ball. In a big tournament, the golfer can be very tense and even more sensitive than normal. Keep in mind that the people you are photographing may be playing for money or standing or both. You don’t want to be the cause of a bad shot that could cost him money.

Finally, put your cell phone on silent or just turn it off. There is really nothing more distracting than having a cell phone ring while you are shooting pictures. Imagine how much more distracting that is to a golfer trying to make a shot. You can sum up the etiquette of shooting golf with two guidelines; keep quiet and be invisible.

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