Photographers Blog

By Lucy Nicholson

Celtics v Lakers, Borg v McEnroe, India v Pakistan, Ali v Frazier, Red Sox v Yankees

There are sports matches and there are match-ups that up the ante because of a bitter rivalry.

There’s nothing fiercer than a Boston-New York contest.

For decades, Boston played the underdog while the ghost of Babe Ruth conspired with latter day Big Apple legends like Bucky Dent and Mookie Wilson to leave New England in tears.

After the Patriots won their first Super Bowl in 2001, the Red Sox finally snapped their NY curse. Championships seemed to flow to the region (three Super Bowls, two World Series championships) until heavily favored New England met the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII in 2008.

The spoiler was New York Giants receiver David Tyree, who leaped into the air and snagged the ball with one hand and pinned it against his helmet in a remarkable 32 yard reception from quarterback Eli Manning in the final two minutes to set up a win for the underdog Giants.

By Leonhard Foeger and Lisi Niesner

Imagine a snow-covered mountain, imagine an 85 degree grade at the steepest point, imagine wearing a race suit, goggles and nothing else but a helmet and a back protector for safety. Now clip on your skis and speed straight down at a top speed of 90 miles per hour. Crazy, don’t you think?

We are talking specifically about the 3,312-meter-long “Streif” downhill course on Hahnenkamm mountain in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbuehel. It is regarded as the most difficult track for racers and the most challenging assignment for photographers on the Alpine Ski World Cup calendar. Several racers have crashed in years past and some were seriously injured, but the winners gained immortality.

Early morning race day, skiers and photographers start to prepare to do their best work. Racers get ready at the starting area close to the top of Hahnenkamm inside a cozy tent next to the start house where they can stay warm and concentrate on their adventure of speed. On the other hand photographers have to carry their gear — which includes cameras, lenses and, of course, skis — up the hill to find a position to shoot action images on the course. They have to establish their positions at least one hour before the race starts. Sometimes the FIS race director moves photographers who could be standing in the way of a crash to a safer spot. Cold temperatures, snow and wind make photographers dress in very warm clothes, thick gloves and ski boots, while ski racers wear a thin race suit like thermal underwear to minimize wind resistance.

By Rick Wilking

Do a Google search on this new celebrity and there are 299,000,000 results. Brad Pitt? No, he only has 187 million. I’m talking about the newest phenom in the world of sports – Tim Tebow.

Being a Denver-based photographer where Tebow plays starting quarterback for the Broncos has kept me in the vortex of the Tebow storm. Going back to his first start late last season and then training camp in August, we’ve been focusing on his young career. Would he start this year or would he not was the hot topic back in late summer. Kyle Orton was eventually chosen as starter but when the team went 1–4 Tebow got the nod and Orton was out. Then the fun really began.

Tebow was a superstar in college at the University of Florida (first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy, won not one but two NCAA National Football Championships) but how would he do in the big leagues? He was a first round draft pick in the NFL meaning many had high hopes for him to succeed. But the NFL game is so much different than college there’s no guarantee a player will repeat. Scrambling around on the field can only go so far in the NFL before getting tackled repeatedly by much bigger and faster players will destroy you.
Being a rookie in the league with a great pedigree means extra attention to start with but then add this element: religion. I don’t think a sports writer out there can remember any athlete starting most press conferences with “First and foremost I have to thank my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”

By Bogdan Cristel

After 40 hours of flying Bucharest – Amsterdam – Beijing – Auckland, I arrived in New Zealand; my first time in the Southern Hemisphere.

The first nice surprise here was that both my check-in pieces of luggage arrived on the same flight (I expected it to take a week and to be on the safe side packed a toothbrush in my hand luggage).

After a day of adjustment, with serious jet-leg (New Zealand is 9 hours ahead of Romania), slowly the Rugby World Cup started for me.

In the third installment, Sydney-based photographer Tim Wimborne describes what is necessary to keep the file fresh throughout the tournament and to satisfy different client needs.

In the second of a series of multimedia pieces, Bucharest-based photographer Bogdan Cristel talks about the focus required to cover the Rugby World Cup.

In the first of a series of multimedia pieces, London-based photographer Stefan Wermuth talks about the challenges he anticipates at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.

Several weeks back I was told I would be having a serious case of the blues for a fortnight – processing pictures of the swimmers, divers and water polo players competing in the FINA World Championships in Shanghai. Pictures from the event would be edited by China chief photographer Petar Kujundzic and sent to me and my colleagues Karishma Singh and Allison Ching in Singapore to process and transmit to clients.

For two weeks, I would be looking at a sea of images where the main color was blue. So it made me nervous whenever I saw my least favorite color – green – appear on skin tones. It took constant communication with the on-site photographers and editor as well as the Picture Desk team here in Singapore, not to mention close scrutiny of the histogram in Photoshop, to ensure the athletes didn’t look jaundiced or ill. In fact, correcting the color on pictures taken in the swimming pool in Shanghai was as challenging as it was in Beijing three years ago when I processed aquatics images at the Olympics.

Speaking of challenges, I wonder if processing swimming pictures and physical “hardship” go hand in hand. In Beijing I was at the Water Cube, cut off from my colleagues at the media center and having to make a daily trek up 115 steps to the top of the press tribune area. I worked on a 14-inch laptop with barely an inch of elbow room, often perspiring in the warm environs. Here in Singapore, I was banished to a corner affectionately called Siberia because it is cold, quiet and almost hidden from view from the Picture Desk team. The lighting was rather dark, too. Editing images was done on a 17-inch monitor, which still cannot compare to the 22-inch Macintosh screens that the sub-editors on the Picture Desk work on every day.
But despite my complaints about the Water Cube, it was absolutely thrilling to watch the events unfold live before my eyes. Working on the FINA Championships pictures in a country removed from all the action lacks such excitement, but there still exists an adrenaline rush from subbing and sending them to the wire in the quickest time possible.

This year’s riders of the Tour de France covered 3430.5 km (2131.6 miles), divided into 21 stages, according to the Tour’s official website.

What you may not know is that the Reuters pictures team covering 2011′s most-watched sporting event managed to tally up some 10,000 km (6213 miles).

I was excited to cover the race but aware that despite careful planning, any big job can have its moments of near disaster. After meeting at the Reuters office in Paris with team leader (and Italy chief) photographer Stefano Rellandini and French photographer Pascal Rossignol we checked all our equipment, made sure our laptops were working, that our passwords were valid and that Mifi was setup. We picked up our local phones and configured wireless transmission devices from cameras. One thing’s for sure — the planning stage is essential on a big job like this, and a good team spirit never hurts either.

Excitement best describes my feelings about Formula One racing. Ever since Ayrton Senna battled with Alain Prost in the late 80′s my heart was linked to this circus and more so when Colombian driver Juan Pablo Montoya won a place in the Williams team. He even managed to take the checkered flag in Monaco which was enough to make a whole country crazy.

Those were the days of being a sort of slave inside the dark room, learning and dreaming about having the opportunity to shoot at the side of a track, any track, Interlagos in Sao Paulo was the closest at that time, so it became my objective for years.

Moving to Australia brought my dream one step closer and I went to Albert Park in 2009 for my first ever Grand Prix.

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.

When I was first told that I would be covering the Australian Open tennis tournament, I was very excited as it is a major global sporting event and I would get to fly out from Japan where it was cold, to a hot and sunny down under.

At the same time, frankly speaking, I had a feeling of fear and worry, since I had heard scary tales about shooting the event from a photographer who had covered it multiple times. Dreadful stories of heat, the scorching sun, cameras getting too hot to function and sometimes so hot that I wouldn’t even be able to touch it. I was told that one photographer’s computer had broken because of the extreme heat, and that sometimes the photographers’ chairs at the courtside got so hot that it was unbearable.

Another worrisome issue was the physical intensity of the coverage, especially the first few days, as I was told I’d be busy as there are nearly 130 preliminary matches in total. It would be so demanding with no time to rest and eat. When I heard about this, I wasn’t sure whether I could survive what sounded like a major ordeal. So the advice was to never wear short sleeves but instead, wear a white long-sleeved shirt, a hat, put on sun block, drink water constantly, cover up the gear with towels to block the heat and don’t over pace. Everything is a build up to the Men’s final, the finale of the two-week-long tournament.