Taking the Right Shot
Have you ever seen an athlete, mid-air, frozen in time? A historic moment encapsulated in a single image that screams “stare at me, this is important.” The idea that each moment will appear and evaporate within seconds, regardless of how long the game is, creates daunting parameters for those tasked with the job of capturing these instances. Armed with a camera, and the knowledge that a single event could create a career defining image, means that to miss a moment, could spell regret and endless disappointment for those behind the lens. Sports photography requires patience, timing and near perfect placement at a caliber most are unable to comprehend. Each game generates vastly unique opportunities to capture photos, but even with drones and the massive uproar in technological advancements, images from sporting events spanning decades can appear drastically different while remaining oddly similar.
Courtesy of The Library of Congress
South Dakota's Greatest Basketball Classic - The State High School Tournament of 1923, in the Northwest's greatest auditorium - the famous Corn Palace, Mitchell, S.D. 5000 spectators witnessing Yankton and Mitchell
Film photography dominated the larger part of the first 50 years of the National Basketball Association (NBA), but as a new century approached, digital photography blew the doors open to a completely different realm. Some, like current Senior League NBA Photographer Andrew D. Bernstein held onto, and continued to use film well into the 2000’s. Regardless of the unbelievably pure and crisp images that film was able to attain, all NBA staff photographers, including Bernstein, currently use digital cameras to capture each game. Today, every image taken at any official NBA game, no matter the location, takes approximately four seconds from when the image is captured to reach the NBA headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey. These days, photos from a game can be posted to over 60 million social media followers within five minutes.
Courtesy of The Library of Congress - © Carol M. Highsmith
Chicago Bulls basketball game at the United Center, Chicago, Illinois
Prior to the era of instant photo sharing, photographers had to develop film following every game and sort through their images to locate the best ones for publications. In 1949, when the Basketball Association of America (BAA) officially changed its name to the NBA, images from games were rarely nationally published and usually reserved for use by local news outlets. Now, photographers arrive to stadiums approximately five hours before a game to stage lighting, take test shots and hook-up multiple cameras all linked via Ethernet to allow for instant uploading. A majority of cameras used in modern games are remotely triggered, while the photographer remains on the ground capturing images from a single set point.
© Pelle Cass
Atlanta Hawks, 2015
“I try to avoid everything I know about regular sport photography. I’m not really interested in using photography for any factual revelations about the body in motion any more than I’m interested in narrative. I am interested in the strangeness of time itself and the things that a camera can capture that nothing else can.”
Though the notion of instant sharing is ideal for business and the consumer, some photographers have begun to approach image taking with a more artistic manner. Garrett Ellwood is a photographer who attempts to stage dramatically lit images that isolates athletes from fans. Alternatively, works done by Pelle Cass, fall on the more experimental side of sports photography. By utilizing compositing techniques, Cass can generate an image that manifests as an entire game’s worth of action, in a single image. It isn’t just the speed that has evolved, but the vision of what is capturable. The exploration of new ways to photograph the sport of basketball isn’t just dependent on the photographer and the equipment used, but also on one’s ability to view the game in capturable sequences.
© Myles Polger
Former NBA stars Stephen Jackson and Joe Johnson go head to head in an intense battle during the championship of Ice Cube's "Big 3" at the world famous Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA.
The future of NBA photography can already be witnessed through the rise in free-lance photographers like Myles Polger. Thanks in large part to social media platforms like Instagram, photographers like Polger have gained a stage to accompany the works of NBA press photographers. Presently, photography in the NBA has come as close to live coverage as ever, but in terms of artistic value, it’s hard to argue that digital is outdoing film. However, as stunning of an image that film may have produced in its heyday, it is evident that the NBA and its photographers will continue to further move away from previous technologies. While the NBA continues to speed up the transfer of image sharing, its photographers always search for the most defining and stunning shot to showcase the art of sport.
