Photographers Blog

By Mike Segar

For any photojournalist, when you cover events of any kind, be it sports or news or daily life, you really never want to be part of the story. Your assignment; to be present to make the best possible images of the events unfolding in front of you is a privilege, and ideally your only mark on the event itself is to come away with as compelling a visual record of what happened as you can under the byline REUTERS/Mike Segar…

However, sometimes… you just can’t get out of the way.

Photo courtesy of Richard Mackson for USA TODAY Sports

My assignment at the London 2012 Olympics along with my colleague Sergio Perez from Madrid, is basketball; 15 days of basketball games, 6 games a day, as nations compete for the Olympic Gold medal. Even for basketball lovers, that’s a lot of basketball.

This is my first time covering an Olympic basketball tournament. I have been fortunate enough in my career at Reuters to have covered many NBA Championships and NCAA championships. I love basketball as a sport that I play, love to watch and love to photograph. Action at the feet of the world’s best players is exciting and fun. My close friend and colleague at Reuters Shannon Stapleton and I spend many hours talking about the game. I always look forward to being on the court, close to the action of the NBA, NCAA and in this case the Olympics where many NBA stars are competing.

On day four of competition one of the world’s best teams, Spain, faced Australia in a second round match-up. The Olympics set up for photographers is somewhat different than for an NBA game. There are cardboard “A-boards,” a short angled wall bearing the Olympic rings and London 2012 logo, between us and the floor along the baseline. In an NBA arena photographers are slightly closer to the court and sit in one row with nothing between us and the court as we sit at the feet of the fans in the front row. At the Olympics, there are padded seats on the floor for us and then a bench behind us for a second row of photographers.

My editor for this tournament is Jeff Haynes, a veteran sports photographer and editor based in Chicago who was editing my pictures from Chicago through Reuters’ Paneikon remote picture editing system. In addition to my cameras and lenses, a laptop connected to our network was also placed behind my seat to ingest images from my cameras.

Kids playing streetball or millionaires performing in a highly choreographed show? Sport or showbiz? Welcome to the NBA All-Star weekend slam dunk contest.

One of the most satisfying moves to watch in basketball, and one of the easiest to photograph is the dunk, as the player soars above the rim and jams the ball through the net.

The contest pits some of the most athletic NBA players against each other as they compete to execute the flashiest, most difficult, or original dunk.

Often people I know are impressed by amazing pictures of basketball players fighting for a rebound or trying to score a basket, taken from behind the glass. They always ask me from where are these pictures shot because they didn’t see a photographer in the area. The answer is always the same: a remote camera!

Probably everybody in the business knows how to set up this type of camera, but for people outside the industry, it can be a mystery. The first thing to know is the equipment required: aside from a camera and a wide lens, other items needed are two magic arms, a piece of black paper to avoid reflections, a pair of radio transmitters and steel cable to secure the elements.

To get the best pictures, the most important thing is to choose the right place to set up the camera which is usually the lowest and closest area next to the rim. After choosing the camera position, you have to strongly secure both magic arms: one of them holding the camera and the other holding the first magic arm. This is a key step in order to avoid the camera falling during the game as a result of the vibrations produced when the players or the ball touch the glass. After that you can set up the camera at the correct angle while looking through the viewfinder and imagine where the players and the ball will be during the game.