I Am A Moron

Hi, I'm Mike and I'm a moron. See the guy in the image below? That was how I felt last month when one of my hard drives began to act up and was making funny noises. No problem, thought I. I'll eject it, unplug it, plug it back in, and go from there.

Bad move. When I plugged it back in, all it would do was make clicking, whirring noises and my Mac would not recognize its existence.

I panicked. This was the 3TB hard drive that had all of my images from this past year. Everything. All the RAW images, processed JPG's, TIFF files for making large prints.  All the hours and hours of images from my telescope's CCD camera. Every Florida State football game with thousands and thousands of game images including the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, every men's basketball game, every women's basketball, the entire FSU baseball season, volleyball, soccer. All of my images from Madrid and Barcelona. Studio photo shoots.

Could this really be happening? Over an entire year of work gone from one minute to the next?

I called every local computer place in town. Nobody could help as none of them have a clean room in which to assess the situation and perform data recovery. Finally, I found a data recovery place with great reviews. I contacted them and shipped the drive off that morning. I felt better. They would surely be able to help me. I figured even if there was some damage to the drive they would be able to recover most of the images.

So I waited. They called back after a week. The drive needed new parts. They would install them so they could get it running and then perform a ghost image of the contents to see if any data was recoverable. Progress, I thought.

Time passed. I had heard nothing. Then I got a call - the drive was running and the ghost image was 85% finished. They still couldn't tell me if any data would be recovered but I was certain it would all turn out OK.

Until yesterday. That's when I got the email. No data was recoverable. They were very sorry and were returning the drive. It should make a nice desktop paperweight. And a vivid reminder of what a moron I am.

The reason I'm a moron is because I was lazy. As I was downloading cards to the hard drive and processing away I was not backing up the images on a second drive. The same goes for a couple of other hard drives that I had never gotten around to backing up. I told myself that I would eventually get around to backing all of them up but I just never got around to it. How stupid was that?

The lesson has been learned. Very painfully, but it has been learned. I've gone back and made sure every hard drive is backed up.

But, everything I've done for the last year or more is gone. Well, most of it. I will be able to retrieve all the Florida State sports images I turned in to a client that has them all in the cloud. That will get me all of the processed game JPG's for FSU football, basketball, etc. I can go to Facebook, Google+ and my website and copy/save all the photos I uploaded into galleries on those sites but those will all be 72dpi, 1600 pixel on the along end, watermarked images that will never make any kind of print. But at least it's something.

If you have never backed up your images, don't be a moron like me. Go out, pick up one or two drives and back everything up. When you least expect it, a hard drive failure can wipe out all of your work in one fell swoop.

Hey, Let's Go See A Rodeo Tonight...In The Rain...

After being cooped up for two consecutive days inside our cabin in the North Georgia mountains this July 4 Holiday weekend, my spousal unit had had enough. We arrived Wednesday evening and It had been raining for two days and nights non stop, keeping us from even thinking about doing anything outside. On Friday night, the spousal unit cracked. There was a rodeo slated to start that night just across the Georgia/North Carolina state line and we found out it was going to take place rain or shine at 8:00 pm. Saddle up, kids, we were gonna be rootin' tootin' cowpokes.

As things would have it, when I was trying to decide what camera gear to take to the cabin for the long weekend, the last thing I expected was to do anything resembling sports photography and certainly nothing requiring long, fast lenses. I thought that if there were going to be any photo adventures while in the mountains, they would be of the landscape/wide angle variety so I packed accordingly. One D3S body, 17-35mm f2.8, 35-70mm f2.8, and 15mm f2.8 fisheye. In an oh-what-the-heck moment, I threw my 70-200mm f2.8 lens in the bag along with a 1.4X teleconverter just in case. Whew. With the 70-200mm at my disposal for the rodeo, I figured I would at least be in the game, so to speak.

I would much rather have had my 400mm f2.8 with me but then I also would have much rather have had a rainless, mud-less night too. From the moment we left the cabin for North carolina until we returned it rained. The rodeo grounds were nothing but one huge mud pit. As you got anywhere within 50' of the barricades surrounding the competition area, every step you took meant sinking to your ankles (or deeper) in mud. Without any rain gear for the camera, lenses, or me, the only way to shoot was to hold an umbrella over my head with one hand and shoot one handed with the camera in the other hand. Given the mud and the difficulty walking, lugging a monopod-mounted 400mm from the parking area to the barricades would have required Moses to part the mud so I could get to/from the barricades without me and the gear ending up in the mud. Sometimes mobility has its advantages at the expense of lens length, I guess.

With only one hand to handle the shooting chores, I zoomed out to 200mm, settled on some basic exposure settings and used a new shooting technique - swing the camera up one handed to eye level, lock in on the moving subjects as quickly as possible, fire off frames until I couldn't hold the camera up any longer, and lower the camera back down. Not exactly the most stable of shooting platforms and it showed in the images I managed to get. Few were anything remotely close to the sharpness I expect to get but there was nothing I could do.

As far as sharpness goes, there were other dynamics in play that didn't lend themselves to sharp images. For one, it didn't help that I couldn't get as tight as I normally do with a 200mm focal length limitation. In order to show some semblance of action in the final images I had to crop. Man, did I have to crop. Next, because of the marginal lighting available (which consisted of four banks of high school football field type stadium lights made dimmer by the rain), I was at ISO 3200 and could only manage shutter speeds of 1/400th second. Never having shot a rodeo before, I hoped that was fast enough. I didn't want to up the ISO any higher because I knew I would be cropping images beyond ridiculous bounds. my D3S's are amazing when it comes to high ISO shooting, but when you're enlarging ISO 6400 noise by 400-500%, images are not going to look good. So I opted to go down to ISO 3200 and hoped 1/400th would stop the action sufficiently. Sometimes it didn't, sometimes it sort of did.

Then there was the issue of constant white balance changes. When we finally got back to the cabin and I downloaded the card, I saw that not only were the lights barely marginal in terms of brightness, the color and intensity shifted from frame to frame. In a five shot burst, one frame would be cyan, one magenta, one dark, one yellow, and one decent. The decent one was not always the best action shot or the sharpest shot. On some of the images (like the one above), the color issues were so bad I simply gave up trying to correct the color and just went to Black & White.

Now, you'd think that after all the griping and complaining above that I regretted trying to shoot the rodeo Friday night but nothing could be further from the truth. I actually enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with a few serviceable images under the worst of weather conditions, shooting one handed, and having to make do with a lens that was nowhere close to being long enough. I also learned a lot from shooting my first rodeo. I'll use the experience to make my next rodeo a lot more productive since I now know what to do in terms of positioning and shooting angles. And hopefully it won't rain....

Moosing Around As The Weekend Approaches

It's Thursday and the work week is coming to an end. Here's a few things that come to mind as the weekend draws near....

Photography FUNdamentals - A Free Book By Moose Peterson

+Moose Peterson is one of the most gifted photographers I've run across as I've stumbled my way through photography over the years. I had a chance to finally meet the Big Guy in Orlando this spring at Photoshop World and attended a couple of his seminars. What a huge treat. On top of being a monster in the field of photography, he's one of the nicest, most affable people, you'd ever want to meet.

Moose specializes in wildlife, conservation and aviation photography but has an incredible grasp for all types of image creation. Always seeking to share his knowledge with others, Moose has come out with a free, downloadable iPad book called Photography FUNdamentals, intended for beginners and experienced photographers alike, that covers all the basics of photography. The idea behind the book is to walk you through the minefield of photography so stuff like depth of field, exposure, composition, and other key elements to creating a Moose-like image becomes second nature. Once you no longer have to think about these things, image creation becomes much easier as you can concentrate on bringing your imagination to life instead of techie stuff.

Here's a short YouTube video that contains the details on how to take advantage of this wonderful tutorial for photography. 

Prints For FSU Head Basketball Coach Leonard Hamilton's Home

Yesterday morning, the phone rang and I picked up. It was FSU basketball coach Leonard Hamilton's administrative assistant wondering if I had a moment to speak with Coach Hamilton. Uhhhhh, yeah. The call was to inquire as to whether I could put together 4-5 thumbnail images of each returning FSU basketball player from which he would select one for each player. Coach Hamilton then wanted to know if I could make 24" X 30" prints of each one so they could be framed and hung in his home.

No problem, said I. It would be an honor to have my images gracing the walls of the Hamilton household. I've scoured through the hard drives and picked out 53 images of the ten  returning players. They have been reduced to thumbnails and e-mailed to Coach Hamilton's staff. As soon as I am notified of the selected file numbers, I will be re-processing the images,  enlarging them to 24" X30", and making the prints.

Photoshop World in Las Vegas??? Dare I go?

I've been invited to attend Photoshop World at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas this coming September as a guest of Messr. Scott Kelby. The shootin' would start on Tuesday, September 3 as Scott has set me up with Moose Peterson's Pre-con workshop, a 7-hour Photo Safari with Moose. Seminars then run all day Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday with the always-much-anticipated after party on Wednesday night  and lots of other activities during non-seminar hours. I had a blast at PSW in Orlando this past spring and would love to make the trek out to Vegas for this one. Hoping I can figure out some way to make it.

Hoping To Get The Green Light For A Warbird Shoot This Weekend

Heading down to East Central Florida this weekend to visit two of my favorite ladies (the Moms - Mama O and Mom-in-Law) and am hoping to nail down access to some aircraft I would love to shoot. The site has a bunch of historic and just mega-cool planes and I am drooling at the thought of being able to set up some lighting gear and shoot the daylights out of some planes.

I've gone through the list of aircraft and after a lot of hand wringing, I've decided that if given access, the three planes I will concentrate on (for now) are the C-47 Skytrain (above, L), the B-25J Mitchell (above, R) and the ME208 Messerschmidt (below).

The C-47 was instrumental in the Normandy invasion during WWII and about as iconic an aircraft as you get. The B-25J Mitchell was used to bomb Japan shortly after Pearl Harbor to serve notice that the U.S. would not go down without a fight. The ME208 (actually a Nord Noralpha painted to represent an ME208) is just a a very cool mid 1930's to 1940's aircraft that set all kinds of endurance records in its day.

It would be a sweet birthday present to have a chance to go crazy on these planes and I'm hoping everything will work out.

Ciao.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

I'll begin this post by letting you know that it is somewhat of a rant. I apologize ahead of time but I know I will feel a lot better after I vent.

Right after the 1st round of the NFL draft ended, a friend and fellow photographer posted some of her wire service photos on her Facebook page of the three Florida State players that were drafted that evening. MV (as we'll call her) is gainfully self employed as a sports photographer and shoots for a high profile wire service. Anyone who shoots sports for a wire service knows that the pay is minimal in comparison to the number of hours that go into shooting any given assignment but it beats a sharp stick in the eye.

Anyway, within a matter of hours, I saw this post from her on Facebook:

"Gotta love when websites use 2 of your images without credit (and possibly without consent).

http://www.chantrant.com/2013/04/noles-dominate-nfl-draft-tie-with-bama-for-1st-round-pick.html#comments"

It seems the author of the Blog took it upon himself to "borrow" the photos (read - steal) and use them on his Blog post. Somehow, MV noticed that her photos had been used. in all likelihood without her wire service's permission, and contacted the numbskull. To his credit, Mr. Blogger took the Blog post down. MV posted this update:

"Well that was quick. Article Removed. CAUGHT THEM. Should bill for the time that my photos were live. haha.

The same thing has happened to me in the past and it's no fun to have to call/e-mail/otherwise track down the transgressor(s) and go through the process of either being paid for use of the images or having them take them down under threat of all kinds of unpleasantness (it helps that I'm a lawyer). 

In response, I began to add a small watermark in a corner my images before posting them on line. To the less than scrupulous, that was nothing but an easily overcome annoyance. The watermarks were just cropped out or cleverly removed in Photoshop. I have since begun plastering a much bigger watermark across the middle of my images, something I resisted doing so as not to detract from the images. I know that to the truly adept Photoshop savants, even these watermarks can be removed sufficiently to serve their purpose but at least I take comfort from knowing that they're going to have to work for it if they're going to use my images without my approval.

After I saw what happened to MV, I tracked the Blog site down and found an e-mail link. I sent the individual a brief message that went something like, "Using other people's images without permission is stealing. Shame on you."

Mr. Blogger e-mailed me back with a "Who, me?" resonse, asking me to what photos I was referring? I guess he thought that by having taken the Blog post down, his theft would go unnoticed by the rest of us. I replied and told him exactly what photos were at issue. Caught with his pants down, he sent me this reply:

"Hi, Mike:  A couple of things about those photos.

- They came from a Google Image Search and I didn't see photo credits on the images. That's typical as photos from search engines get used and reused on various sites and the name of the original source gets lost. Also, there was no watermark photo credit that would tell me where they came from.

- I apologized to her and deleted them after less than 12 hours on the site.

- I didn't profit from her photos. As you see on ChantRant there's no advertising. It generates zero income. In fact, I spend my own money to host and maintain it. Like you, I'm an older grad. Also a booster who expresses his decades of love of FSU Football with a personal blog. This brings up a question, though. In the future, could I use her photos -- or yours -- with permission, if it includes a prominent credit and a link to her site? It would be  a quid pro quo, since I can't pay but can provide promotion for her work. I already have an agreement like that with a Tallahassee photographer, who sells individual photos to readers that like his work."

Are you kidding me? You did a Google search and found photos taken by someone else and you just downloaded them and passed them off on your Blog as yours? Whether they had watermarks or photo credit, didn't it dawn on you that you didn't have permission to use them? Just because they're on the internet, you don't have a license to steal them no more than you have a license to pass yourself off as a French model, Monsieur Blogger. How would you like it if I copied and pasted your Blog posts and passed them off as mine after doing a Google search for articles?

Whether you profit or not, you're still a thief. You spend money on hosting your Blog but you never thought about spending money for photos? Obviously, you must believe the photos provide value to your Blog or you wouldn't bother using them. Dude, you're free to write all you want about FSU sports and show the Seminoles all the love in the world, but if you want to use photos, you have at least four options that don't involve theft: 1) get geared up and spend the hours that MV spends producing her images and generate your own images; 2) ASK FOR PERMISSION BEFORE USING SOMEBODY ELSE'S PHOTOS; 3) buy the photos; or 4) use the photos that this other photographer is willing to let you use.

As for your whether you can use her photos in the future in exchange for photo credit/promotion, that's between you and her but I would strongly suggest you work it out with her ahead of time. If I was her, I'd tell you to...never mind. 

And no, you do not have my permission to use my photos. If you had contacted me before you showed your rear end by doing what you did, I may well have given you permission to use my photos in light of your circumstances. I've allowed use of my photos for many worthwhile causes when they've given me the courtesy of asking me ahead of time. But in light of your dubious ethics, I would prefer not to be associated with you or your Blog. 

OK kids, now I feel better.

Off To The Cabin

First thing this morning, I'm off to our cabin in the North Georgia mountains to check up on the place, do some spring cleaning, catch some trout, and just relax for a few days. Not sure if I'll have the time to post anything on the Blog until I return but I'll try. As soon as I return, I'll be shooting the last 2-3 days of a USTA Pro Circuit tennis tournament but until then, hello mountains.

Breaking Into Sports Photography

The one question I am asked more than anything via e-mail, Facebook messages or Blog comments is how I was lucky enough to get my foot in the door as a professional sports photographer. Back in June of 2009, I was talking to Scott Kelby and he thought it would be great if I would author a Guest Blog post for his Blog on how one might go about getting credentials for sporting events. I was more than happy to oblige, so I set out to describe how I went from a one-time photographer who had moved on to other things to how I got back into the saddle, got credentialed and started getting paid to do something I love.

In responding to the questions and e-mails I receive, I usually go back to Scott's Blog and forward the link to my article. Despite its age, I believe it is still relevant and hopefully helpful. For anyone interested in sports photography, I've copied and pasted the Blog post below in the hopes that it will be helpful to you too.

_________________________________________________________________

From Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog, published June 3, 2009

Breaking Into Sports Photography 

by Mike Olivella

Photo by Steve Cannon/AP

When Scott told me that I would be a guest blogger today, I was floored. Given the many incredible folks that have preceded me, I’m flattered to join such a select group. I only hope that my ramblings below provide you with useful information.

Sports photography is an exciting, challenging endeavor producing images that blend art with a defining moment frozen in time. I’m convinced that success is the result of 1/3 luck, 1/3 equipment and 1/3 skill/expertise. Let’s face it – you can be the most talented photographer on the sidelines, but if these three factors don’t come together for that one brief split second, there’s a good chance you won’t get the shot. What separates the good sports photographers from the rest is the consistent convergence of: 1) anticipating what may happen; 2) having the right equipment in hand; and 3) a bit of luck. 

Unfortunately, luck is something that you cannot control. You can do your best to take luck out of the equation, but I’ve taken way too many shots where I was in the right place, I had the right camera and lens, I was all over the play and then the referee ran right in front of me as I fired the shutter. If bad luck rears its ugly head, resign yourself to the fact that it happens to everyone and move on.

If I had to identify my numero uno rule of sports photography it would be – get the face and the ball in the frame. That is not to say an image can’t possibly be of use if doesn’t contain one or both of the above criteria; however, images with the athlete’s face in full view, accompanied by the ball in the frame, are typically going to be the images of choice.

But I may be getting ahead of myself. Many of you would like to know how to get on the sidelines, on the court or inside the ropes to shoot. Here's the road map that I followed to break in, along with a few suggestions that will hopefully be helpful.

Before coming back to professional sports photography, I was just a dad with a point & shoot camera. The extent of my photographic outings was limited to family snapshots. In 2005, I dove back into photography after getting a Nikon D50 and a couple of inexpensive lenses for Christmas. I soon added lenses to the limited arsenal and got to shooting anything I saw. I called local high schools and offered to photograph games for free. Living in Tallahassee, I attended Florida State games, matches, tournaments and events and shot them from the seats. Anything I could do to build a portfolio of images, I did. That included upgrading camera bodies and lenses. Finally, I felt that I had enough quality images to show what I could do. I created a web site (baselineshots.com) and posted my images so I could conveniently display them.  I was now ready to take the next step to fulfill my goals – obtaining credentials and getting paid for my work.

The end of the 2004-2005 FSU basketball season was approaching but there were a couple of home games left on the schedule.  I went online and obtained the contact information for the Sports Information Department at Florida State. I called and talked to the Director (known as SID’s) in charge of basketball, introduced myself, and gave him a brief rundown of who I was and that I wanted a chance to shoot a basketball game from the floor.  I gave him the URL for my web site and told him if he would be so gracious as to give me a floor credential, I would provide him with a disc of images from the game for free. He called back and told me that my credentials would be waiting for me at Will Call.

One of the very first images I submitted to FSU

I shot the game from the floor and afterward, I determined that a grand total of five images met the standards I had set for myself in terms of crispness and composition. I put them on a disc and turned them in. I called back a few days later and asked if I could shoot the next game. I was offered credentials, shot the game and managed to get ten images I deemed to be of sufficient quality. After I turned those in, I saw that a couple of them were used on the FSU Athletics web site. The door was opening.

After basketball season ended, I contacted the SID’s for some of the spring sports, introduced myself and went through the same discussion I had gone through with the basketball SID. Now I had the advantage of my work product having been seen and used by FSU, so obtaining credentials was much easier. I found out later that Sports Information Departments have regular meetings where they discuss a variety of topics, including photography and photographers. My name had come up as someone the FSU folks thought could be of value to them. As I continued to provide them with usable images, my standing in their eyes apparently grew.

After two years, I felt that my services were of sufficient value to justify being paid for my work. It’s one thing to temporarily shoot for free, but if your work measures up to professional standards, you should insist on being paid a professional wage for your efforts. I felt I had reached that point as my photos were being published routinely in all forms of media by or through FSU. The relationship had served both our purposes well – I got the chance to build a solid portfolio by going through FSU for credentials and FSU received free, quality work product as part of the bargain. But now it was time to reach the next level – pay for play. FSU saw it the same way and I was elevated to one of FSU’s paid sports photographers. A second opportunity came down the pike shortly thereafter when the Seminole Boosters hired me as one of two Featured Photographers for their publication, Unconquered Magazine.

Shooting The Masters is one of my dreams that eventually came true.

In the meantime, my portfolio naturally grew and included images from more and more sports. With more shooting opportunities, I replaced many images with better ones as the blind hog found acorns here and there. My status as a photographer for a major college sports program gave me valuable credibility when trying to secure credentials for professional sporting events. I simply went to the internet, looked up who was responsible for issuing credentials and either called them directly or e-mailed them. For any such contact, I went through a basic discourse, which goes something like this: “I am a sports photographer for Florida State University. I would love to shoot your event. I have a web site which features my work. Please take a look when you have a chance, and if you think I can be of service, I’ll shoot your event for free and provide you a disc of images. In doing so, I hope to prove to you that my work product is good enough that perhaps next year you will consider hiring me to shoot for you.” I got very few refusals and this paved the way for many opportunities to photograph a wide range of professional sports such as golf, tennis, cycling and stock car races.

Here are a few more tidbits that may be of help to you.

Do not turn in any images that are not top notch (soft focus, noise, etc.). It is far better to turn in a small quantity of really good shots than a disc full of marginal ones mixed in with good ones. The same goes for images posted on your web site or used in your portfolio. Always favor quality over quantity any day of the week.

Post-process all images carefully and properly in Photoshop, including color balance, saturation, brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, sharpness and noise. Crop them to enhance the images. First impressions are critical. If you turn in or use marginal images, you will be deemed a marginal photographer and your chances of being asked to come back decrease significantly. Also, you’d be surprised as to how many folks turn in their images right from their cards, without any processing. When your images are compared to those (and they will be), yours will surely compare favorably to those that are not processed.

When you’re on site, identify photographers who shoot for entities that might use your services in the future (AP, Getty Images, etc.). Introduce yourself, tell them that you’re trying to break in, give them a card and hang out with them so they can get to know you. Ask them if they can put you in touch with their editors so you can hopefully fill in for them if they have conflicts. Make contact with those editors and give them your web site. Sell yourself. The next time their company needs coverage in a pinch, you might just get a call to cover an event – credentials and some extra money. This is how I broke in with AP and now I’m one of their stringers, shooting sporting events for them when time permits.

Determine ahead of time where you are allowed to be and where you are not allowed to be. The quickest way to have your credentials pulled is to traipse into an area that is off limits. For example, at football games, there are dotted lines around the field of play, outside of the sidelines and the end zone. You are not allowed to cross these lines. Do so, and you will surely be admonished. Do it repeatedly and you will be headed for the car and you won’t be back.

Go through issues of Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, ESPN The Magazine and the sports section of newspapers. Another good reference source is past Media Guides for the event or sport that you will be shooting. Look at the photos that are published. Good, tight action shots will appear, but so will wide angle and art shots. Most photographers concentrate on the tight action shots to the exclusion of wide angle or artistic shots. Magazines, newspapers and Media Guides routinely include photos that depict the pageantry of the event/sport and wide angle/art shots that capture it.

No one had ever thought to try this before I thought of it. The resulting image was unique to say the least.
Photo by Steve Musco

Use every ounce of your imagination to find interesting angles and subject matter that does not necessarily depict action. I was told that the main reason I was received so favorably by FSU in the beginning was because I made a concerted effort to shoot wide angle or art shots with a unique perspective as a compliment to tight action. My photos gave them something they needed but didn’t get often enough. Anything like this will serve to distinguish you from others.

Michigan is one of the many NCAA institutions that have hired me to shoot their teams when in Tallahassee.

All schools travel to play away games, matches, etc. and very seldom do they bring a photographer with them. Most love photos of their players in their away uniforms for media guides. Check the schedule for any given sport (I check FSU’s home schedule) that you want to shoot and find out what teams are coming to town to play. Then go to those schools’ athletic web sites and identify the SIDs for the sport. Make contact with them and offer to photograph their teams for a reasonable sum. If they take you up on your offer, either you or they can then contact the local school and obtain credentials.

Contact your local paper’s photo editor. Give him/her your web site. Tell him/her that you would like submit an occasional photo for publication in the paper in exchange for photo credit. After a few are published, inquire as to whether the paper would consider using you as a stringer, filling in when their photographers are otherwise tied up. After you prove that you can deliver quality images under deadline pressures, not only can this be a source for credentials, it’s a means of getting paid for your work so you can pick up extra cash for that new lens you are dying to have.

If you don’t have a laptop and a card reader, get them. The first question I was asked by AP when I solicited an opportunity to shoot for them was whether I had the capability of uploading photos from the venue I would be shooting. Had I not owned a laptop and a card reader, it would have been the end of the discussion. Load your laptop with the tools of the trade. I have mine set up with Photoshop, Lightroom, Noise Ninja, Genuine Fractals, Microsoft Outlook and FTP Surfer. If you’re going to take advantage of opportunities such as shooting for a wire service, you must have the capability of immediately downloading images from cards, processing a set of images, and uploading them to the designated FTP site before leaving the venue. These entities have deadlines and they can’t wait for you to get home and upload at your convenience.

Have the right equipment. I’m not talking about Nikon versus Canon (although we all know which is better, right?). I’m talking about nothing but f2.8 (or faster) lenses, camera bodies that will shoot at a minimum of 5 fps, rain protection, monopod, etc. Don’t think that you will be able to get by with inexpensive lenses that are slow, even if they reach out to 300mm, especially if you will be shooting indoors or when light begins to fade. Sports photography requires shutter speeds that dictates the fastest possible lenses so you can keep the ISO as low as possible. The higher the ISO, the more noise, and at a certain point, you cannot overcome the noise no matter how good the composition of an image might be. I buy almost all of my equipment used from KEH Camera Brokers in Atlanta or from B&H Photo in New York. That has saved me a bundle and has allowed me to buy lenses and bodies that were otherwise out of my price range. I also stay away from anything but Nikon lenses, as I have found (the hard way) that Sigma, Tokina and Tamron lenses will not hold up under the repeated use/abuse that sports photography demands.

Be mindful of the other photographers around you. The worst thing you can do is inadvertently step in front of another photographer who is all set to fire the shutter and your head ends up in the shot. The fact that you didn’t mean to get in the way is no excuse. It’s up to you to look behind you to make sure you’re not in anyone’s way. The sidelines are a crowded place and many make their livelihood with their photos. Everyone works together to get what they need without interfering with others. If you mess up someone’s shot, you will get an earful. If enough complaints get back to the person that issued your credentials, your days on the sidelines will be over.

There’s a lot more that I could write on this subject but I think I’ve worn out my welcome. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note at mike@baselineshots.com and I will try to answer them.

Thanks to Scott for giving me a chance to appear on his blog and to all of you for taking the time to read this. Last but not least, never forget – one only fails when one fails to learn from failure.