Recipe for great sports photos: talent, technology and planning

While basketball fans were gearing up for the first weekend of NCAA tournament play, including thousands watching games live in Columbus on Friday and today, Dispatch photographers were at Nationwide Arena hours early to set up their gear.

Some of it is high above the court — literally in the arena rafters — and some of it is far below the arena seats, on the event level near the Zamboni parking area.

The Dispatch is blessed with talented photographers, and I know that many of you appreciate their good work because you tell me when you see something you like. They shoot thousands of photos a week and pick the best of the best to reflect life in central Ohio. Those photos bring stories to life in print and provide a richer and deeper experience in slideshows on Dispatch. com.

Photographers also shoot plenty of videos, which also appear online.

But there’s much more to this team’s talent than meets the eye. Some readers probably have seen Dispatch photographers at work during sporting events. They are crouched at the glass during Blue Jackets games, standing on the sidelines at Crew SC and Buckeyes games, and kneeling or sitting on the hardwood floors during basketball games. They do the same for hundreds of high school sporting events.

What readers don’t see is the planning and preparation

the photographers do ahead of many games.

Dispatch photographer Adam Cairns, for example, was preparing last week to cover nine basketball games in three days — four NCAA games at Nationwide Arena on Friday, three high school tournament games on Saturday and two NCAA games on Sunday.

He did a walk-through at Nationwide on Thursday to check in with officials there and check wiring and equipment he will use during the weekend.

The equipment includes a computer in the photo work room with a hard wire running to a spot near the court so that he can connect camera to computer. He also planned a trip to the rafters to check the strobe lights we installed there years ago.

With permission from

Nationwide Arena, we permanently mounted eight lights there. And we have four lights mounted in Value City Arena at Ohio State. Multiple strobes allow for more even lighting, faster shutter speeds and a better opportunity to record those action-packed moments you want to see in The Dispatch and on Dispatch.com.

Those strobes are connected to our cameras via a wireless remote. Cairns uses two cameras, so he has a remote on each one.

He also has a separate remote to fire a camera that he mounts in the rafters above one of the buckets — or above one of the nets for hockey games.

Ever wonder how the photo team gets those great shots looking down through the rim and net as a player goes in for a dunk? It’s courtesy of a Canon 1DX with a 200mm lens clamped to the riggings high above the floor. (And secured with extra-strength cables to avoid anything accidentally falling to the floor.)

“It’s scary high up there,” Cairns said. “And you’re up there mounting $7,000 worth of camera equipment while hanging out over the edge of the catwalk.”

More amazing than all of that prep to get those overhead shots is that once the photographer is back on the floor for game coverage, he or she is virtually firing blind.

Photographers can see that action is happening at the net, but they do not have a viewfinder view from the overhead camera. So when Cairns sees something exciting happening under the net, he squeezes the wireless remote attached to the camera in his hand, and the Canon in the rafters fires. That camera records the images on a memory card and also sends them to the computer in the photo work room so that they can be reviewed after the game.

“We don’t count on the overhead shots for our coverage,” Cairns said. “They are a bonus to show a

perspective that most people would never see otherwise because you can’t physically go there.”

Meanwhile, during lulls in the game, the sports photographer is looking at a screen on the backs of the cameras to begin the editing process by electronically marking photos deemed the best from those plays. Because many games are played in the evening close to our deadline, there is little time after a game for photo editing. And photographers shoot anywhere from 300 to 2,000 frames per game, so they must edit as they go if they hope to hit our deadlines.

During longer breaks between periods or at halftime, they race from the floor to the photo work room, load their best frames into the computer and send them back to the office for posting in photo galleries on Dispatch.com or for the sports pages in print.

And if they are really up against deadline, photographers have the technology

to send photos to the office directly from their cameras via a connection to their cellphones.

Sports fans sometimes see the photographers crouched close to the action and think that it would be pretty darn cool to have that seat, but it’s not as glamorous as some might think.

In addition to all of the mental work involved, there’s also a physical toll. Try crouching or kneeling on wood or metal while holding heavy camera equipment rock-steady for two or more more hours.

“And the players are right there — sometimes diving for balls — and you don’t want to injure a player or be injured,” Cairns said. “You’re trying to get the shot and protect the camera and the players. You don’t want to become part of the play.”

Alan D. Miller is editor of The Dispatch.

amiller@dispatch.com @dispatcheditor