Have you ever wondered why the photos you see in Sports Illustrated are always the best pictures you have ever seen? Well, I can tell you it is because the photographers at SI are the hardest working, most dedicated, photographers I know. I had the pleasure of working as an assistant for John McDonough last week covering the NCAA Tournament at the Rose Garden and I have never worked harder in my life….and I was just an assistant! The actual games were played Thursday and Saturday, but the tourney began for us on Tuesday. That morning the FedEx driver dropped off 9 cases and 500 pounds of equipment to my studio. The cases included lenses, cameras, grip gear, flash wizards, etc. That afternoon, John and his assistant Jordan Murph flew into town and after a quick trip to Chipolte (thanks Jordan!) we headed off to the arena to begin the setup. The first thing we did was figure out where to put remotes. We did a walk through on the floor looking at different angles and then went up to the catwalks so John could decide where to put overheads. Once we got it all figured out, Jordan put up the overhead remotes, we turned on the strobes and ran sync lines under the stands to the back of the basket. We had 9 remotes. I’ve labeled the locations in the photo above (side 1 is the right side, side 2 is the left):

X- Our shooting positions. John would be on one side and Jordan or myself on the other.
1- Overhead Side 1 – Nikon D3 with 200-400, tight on the key and hoop
2- Overhead Side 2 – D3 with 70-700, shows entire key from 3 point to baseline.
3- Floor Side 2 – D3 with 17-35, horizontal wide shot right next to the basket looking up. This was my favorite angle, click here to see a photo from this camera of Gonzaga’s last second shot to go to the sweet 16.
4- Wide 3 point Side 2 – D3X with 12-24. Wide shot showing a 3 pointer in the corner, camera would sit right in front of whoever was in the spot and was fired by Jordan or myself via a pocket wizard if a 3 pointer was shot right in front of it.
5 – Downcourt Side 1 – D3 with 70-200, zoomed to 175, this angle showed the lane on the opposite side of the court
6- Side 2 Side View – D3 with 24-70, showed the side view of the lane and hoop.
7- Vertical Floor Side 1 – D3 with a 17-35, this camera was right in front of whoever was in that position, a vertical wide shot
8 – Floor Side 1 – D3 with 17-35, same as side 2, low, wide view from right under the hoop.
9 – 3 point cam Side 2 – D3 with a 70-200, wider shot showing all of the 3 point line, as well as the shot clock above the basket. During the second round, in a close game, I would go upstairs and remove this camera from the remote rig and follow the action from one side of the court to the other and it was fired on the system. This is called a drone. I didn’t actually fire it, John did. I just made sure to follow the action and frame it correctly.

John would also shoot with 4 hand held cameras, a D3 with a 70-300 was the main master camera, a D300 with a 200-400 was the downcourt camera, another D3 with a 200-400, off system and a D3 with a 17-35 that was off system for pre game or post game, for a total of 13 cameras.

All of the remotes and handhelds (with the exception of the pre game cams) were wired together using the flash wizard system. The flash wizard is an extremely advanced pocket wizard. It lags each camera and when John triggers the system, it instantaneously opens the shutters on all the camera’s (or just the side he is shooting) and then once all the shutters are open, tells the strobes to fire. Thus, each camera is perfectly synced to one set of lights and with one click, you can capture 10 frames of the same exact moment from 10 angles.

Here is a photo of John after the last game of the weekend editing the remotes:

During the games, our job was to monitor the remotes, adjust remotes if needed, make sure the lights were firing, fix any issues with Pocket or Flash Wizards, fire the wide 3 point remote, fix the floor remotes after they got run over by a player or kicked by a ball boy, swapping batteries in the remotes between games, and pulling cards and replacing them at the 10 minute mark, halftime and end of game. Then I would run to the media room and download and transmit the images back to New York. we shot everything RAW and jpg, we would send the entire take of jpg’s (usually about 1000+ images a game) back to the editors in New York and then they would pull back the RAW’s of the images they select.

John is an amazing photographer and an even cooler guy. If there is a classic basketball photo in the last 20 years, chances are he shot it. It was very fun to watch him work. Even though we were working with 13 cameras at once, he knew exactly what every camera was capturing at any given moment.

Thursday had 4 games. We put in about 17 hours that day, eating only a banana and a vitamin water here and there and at the end of it we had thought we might keel over and die. The games were so close together, John never even left the floor all day! He is hard core! We went to Portland City grill with Bruce Ely afterwards and I’m pretty sure we ordered one of everything and ate it all in about 5 seconds. Saturday was a cake walk compared, even though it was a 12 hour day by the time we pulled everything out and packed it all up. Then we went out to eat with the Oregonian crew and then Bruce and I took John to the Doug Fir and some other bar near by. We had a blast.

Like I said, I have never worked so hard in my life and I wasn’t even shooting. Go pick up a copy of SI and when you look at the basketball photos, know that a lot of sweat and teamwork went into making those amazing images, not just in Portland, but at every venue.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under Editorial, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.