In September, I photographed the shots that would be used for the NC State men’s basketball poster. Chris Alston in marketing and promotions wanted to have action photos of the players mirroring action photos of players from the ’83 team. 2008 marks the 25th anniversary of the national championship team with Coach Jim Valvano.

The players were given a copy of the photo by Chris of the ’83 player they were going to emulate while I set up the lights to strobe the court. For each player, I met quickly with him to look at the photo with him and discuss strategies to getting the right shot. We took three or four photos and compared what I had on the camera vs. the photo. Usually I needed to talk with the player again to have him move his angle or hands and retry. For the most part, the photos came out pretty good. The poses were not perfectly the same, but given the time pressures we had, I though it was a pretty solid job.

Kudos to Chris Alston and staff for coming up with this idea. I thought it was a really creative way to remember the the ’83 team. Thanks to the players too. They were eager to do the best they could to honor the ’83 players and do the best job possible. They were patient and accommodating.

Below is the poster. The ’83 player is in B+W behind the current player.

Whoever said “timing is everything” in sports photography left out the other important part: lighting. This post will be of little interest to most people, but for students of photography or those looking to learn more about sports photography, I hope you find it of interest.

One aim of sports photography is to isolate your subject. Typically that is done through depth-of-field, namely a shallow one. You keep your subject in focus, but objects 2 to 3 feet in front of the athlete are out focus. Depth of field (DOF) is determined by three main things:

1. The focal length of the lens used. All things being equal, longer focal lengths leads to a more shallow DOF.
2. Distance to the camera to the subject. The closer the subject is to the camera, all things being equal, the more shallow the DOF.
3. The aperture or f/stop. All things being equal, as the lens is “opened up” (moves towards f/1) the DOF becomes more shallow.

But light can also be used in to isolate a subject. In this case, a sports photographer has to be lucky but also has to be able to spot the chances where the perfect lighting can be had.

Below is a photo from Carter-Finley Stadium, home of the North Carolina State Wolfpack Football team. There is about an 8 minute window on the field when the sun is low enough that Vaughn Towers cast a shadow over the field and stands, but there is a sliver of light that cuts through the openings where the exits are. It lets in just a tad of light over a very small part of the field, but if you can get a picture of a play in this light, it’s just perfect:

Notice how only the player(s) are in the light, but the stands and even foreground are in the shade. These moments don’t come often, but keep your eyes out for when it comes.

—- Update October 8, 2007 —-

Below I thought I would add an example of a flat photo where the subject blends in with the background. This is typically what you get as again, the sun has to be in the perfect position to get the lighting like you saw above.

Wanted to highlight some excellent work by Ethan Hyman, staff photographer for the (Raleigh) News and Observer. Ethan did a shoot of both the new football coaches together and taped the process. Thought fans would find it interesting. [LINK]

Well, this is going to probably be the final posting on the Andrew Brackman project. (sniff, sniff). Time to retire the project and the postings around it. Before I did, just wanted to share and write down some final thoughts about my experience.

First, I had a lot of fun doing the project. Andrew was great to work with, not to mention easy to work with. He made my job very easy and it is something I would do again. It took, of course, a lot of my time and energy. But it was worth every moment. This was new and uncharted territory for me and I was apprehensive at first. But Andrew, his family, the coaches and all the players made it as easy as possible for me. They all made me feel welcomed and I appreciated that greatly.

When I first started photographing sports as a student at UNC, the higher-profile athletes seemed larger-than-life. I stereotyped them as the kind of people who were different from everyone one else, and would not care to deign you with their company or attention. A short 5 second autograph would be the only interaction you could hope to have with them; and they may not even look at you in the eye when they did that.

But there have been times that athletes have broken down my preconceptions. An athlete at UNC or NC State emails me and tells me they appreciated all the photos that I took of them. Wow, that means so much to me personally when that happens. An athlete recognizes me and learns my name, saying hello to me on and off the field or court. When I was in Washington, DC, I worked for Jerry Stackhouse of the Washington Wizards and found him to be a great person. I did some photography work for Stackhouse and his family, and they welcomed me in their house – fed me too. I was amazed by how normal he was. But where previous athletes have broken down my preconceptions, Andrew Brackman shattered them for me.

My very first one-on-one experience with Andrew was doing his head shot his sophomore year in a moment he probably doesn’t recall any more. At NC State, we do all the head shots for the winter and spring athletes over a course of two days in late August. Andrew missed the two assigned days to get his head shot for baseball. (I guess he doesn’t break down the ‘scattered brain’ stereotype of athletes). So to compensate, we did his head shot the same day we did the wrestling team photo as the lighting equipment necessary would be already be set up. There were a couple wrestlers who also missed their head shot. As I was setting up he walked into the wrestling room where I was alone to have his head shot done. I realized that we did not have the box of baseball gear necessary to do his head shot. The box containing the baseball caps, jerseys and Under Armour shirts were in Bruce Winkworth’s office. So I told Andrew that I would need to get the box first. I left the wrestling practice room and Andrew followed me to Bruce’s office. We spotted the box in Bruce’s office and as I was about to bend down and get it, Andrew said “I’ll get it” and picked it up. A simple act, but it really surprised me. Andrew was also on the basketball team at the time and I guess I was expecting him to want me to do all the hard work. I felt bad about my prejudice about him, but after that day, I changed my opinion of him and respected him a little more. Of course, I thought it would be inconsequential. I expected to never really have any interaction with him and didn’t expect anyone would care about my opinion of him. But he made a fan out of me. If anyone did ask, I would say that I was impressed with him, even in what was a short encounter.

Obviously during the project I got to know Drew fairly well with all the time we spent together. In the process, I found him to be an extremely friendly person with a constant grin on his face. As a bit of a prankster, practical jokes pulled on his team mates were par for the course. So this is an advance warning to the Yankees clubhouse.

I never saw Drew get mad at anyone. When I think back on him I see him constantly smiling, laughing and always upbeat. Half my pictures of him off the mound are him with a smile across his face, almost as wide as he is tall. When he did get mad, it was only at himself. Drew was his worse critic and when he didn’t live up to his high-standards, he would be hard on himself. One vivid memory was when he pitched against Maryland on March 9th. There was an admittedly bad 3rd inning for the Pack, but in the game, which Andrew pitched all nine innings, he struck out nine and walked only one. Maryland scored 5 in the 3rd inning but Andrew remained resolute and strong; never backing down. I think it would have done in most pitchers. Despite his good performance, he was upset with himself that whole night. I joined Drew, his family and a handful of the other baseball players out for dinner that night at a sports bar. We watched the NC State men’s basketball team beat UVA in the ACC championship 2nd round that night. But I remember Drew sitting quietly, absorbed in his thoughts about the game that just ended a few hours ago. It was the only time that I was scared to talk to him.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Drew carries himself in an insouciant manner even before pitching. I don’t mean this in the pejorative sense; I mean it complimentary in fact. He just didn’t get noticeably stressed about starting. He didn’t lock himself away and not talk to anyone. He didn’t become a mental case if little things went wrong before pitching. Yet he treated the role of starting pitcher very seriously and came to the game focused and ready for battle. .

As Bruce Winkworth said to me once, “Drew will surprise you”. Sometimes I thought he wouldn’t remember anything I said. But, he surprised me. Once he had a CD of mine that I loaned him to listen to. It was a band called 30 Seconds to Mars that he first introduced me to. I bought the whole CD and left it with him before the UNC game to check out so he could hear songs on the CD he didn’t know about. I never did get the CD back from him, partly because I didn’t make it out to his apartment afterward. Once he left Raleigh, I thought the CD was forever lost, so while in Chicago, I bought another copy at a music store that was going out of business, and selling everything that wasn’t nailed down at discount. A month later, I met Drew his family and a few friends at a restaurant. There Andrew came up to me and pulled the CD out of his pants pocket. I just couldn’t believe he remembered. So Bruce was right, he will surprise you.

Finally, the guy is just surprisingly humble. Very self-effacing, the only thing that draws attention to him the fact he dwarfs most people at nearly 7 feet in height. He’s not showy at all. His mom invited me to a signing day party they had last week for a Andrew. I couldn’t come because it was in Cincinnati and too far for me to travel. But the guest of honor almost didn’t come either. His mom said he didn’t want a party and was too humble to have one.

It is hard to imagine Andrew being a first round draft pick and a future NY Yankee. Not because he lacks athleticism or skill. No, because this doesn’t happen to your friends, especially those so seemingly normal. Even today, it’s hard for me to really get it through my head that Andrew has signed a multi-million contract with the Yankees. Since when did normal people move into the upper echelons of athletics? I guess it has been happening all the time. But most of us don’t get the opportunity to know an athlete beyond their stat sheet and seeing them on TV. So I’m fortunate to have had the chance to know one before they “made it big”.

With his combination of amazing talent and athleticism, and yet humble nature, he is certainly a sui generis. So I wonder: If a first round MLB pick and future NY Yankee pitcher can be so down to earth and normal, why can’t all the other athletes I’ve met in my life be?

Thanks for everything Andrew.

Hard to believe that the Andrew Brackman project has come to an end. About two weeks ago I had the pleasure to have dinner with Andrew and his family. It was bitter-sweet because I knew it marked the end of the project. But it was good to see them and one has to be happy for him and his career. He signed on Wednesday for $4.5M.

I struggled with what to do with all the photos taken during the project and eventually decided to put them in a self-published book. Pitching Ace: A Portrait of Andrew Brackman and the 2007 Wolfpack Baseball Team is a culmination of about four months of photos and around 100 hours worth of work done to sort through, archive and select photos for the book plus the time spent assembling the book. Hard to believe it would take that much time, but I found the end result to be worth it.

The book is 120 pages, hard cover and measures 13×11 inches. Bruce Winkworth, NCSU’s baseball sports information director, was kind enough to lend his editorial assistance.

The book has already been printed in a first edition and was limited to four copies. They were distributed to Coach Elliott Avent, Bruce Winkworth, Andrew Brackman (I think his mom stole his copy) and me. The first edition had a black and white cover and will never be printed again. In it’s place is a second edition which is identical except a color cover. (Update 9/14/07: The spine is now red with white lettering.)

I’m making the book publicly available for sale to those who want a copy. Sorry for the high price but the book costs a lot of money for me to print; there are no economies of scale going on here. I make very little on the books and am not selling them to get rich. I would make more if someone bought a single 8×10 print than this entire book honestly. The book is sold directly through the printer, blurb.com. You can click here to order the book from their site. They will ship the book directly to you.

The book contains photos of the entire team and is supplemented by text brought over from my blog. It provides a great behind-the-scenes look at life of the team. I hope all those who enjoy Wolfpack baseball will treasure this book for years to come.

I have a link to some of my favorite black and white images from the project that you can find here.

Earlier this year, Annabelle Myers, NCSU associate athletic director for athletic communications, talked with me in her office about the athletic department’s vision for the 2007 media cover. They were inspired by the cover for the DVD to the TV series The Closer and wanted to bring the concept to our cover. The goal was to have Coach O’Brien at the forefront, with his hands planted on a reflective conference room table, and the players behind him. I was excited about their idea. It is always great to have a client that thinks outside of the box and wants to try new ideas.

The photo shoot took place at the Murphy Football Center in the TV studio that has a green screen installed. Wolfpack fans are familiar with this studio as this is where the coach’s weekly show is filmed. The green screen facilitated the process of photoshopping out the background around the players and placing them onto a solid black medium.

I packed every single light and light modifier that I had in my arsenal. The shoot was not overly complex, but I expected it would require a lot of light modification. Indeed it did. We used anywhere between three and four lights utilizing softboxes, grids and snoots.

We photographed Coach O’Brien first. The first challenge was finding a table that was high enough for him to lean on, and had a good reflectivity so that his hands would reflect. Annabelle, Pat Norris (also of sports information), Rob Bradley (my friend who was helping) and I scratched our heads for about 10 minutes trying to find a strategy. We finally settled on the coffee table that appears on the weekly coach’s show as a prop. We raised the table by stacking it on top a couple crates and boxes. It was ingenuity at its best; although coach had to be careful to lean too hard on the table or it would tip over.

We had to work a couple angles and ask coach to move his hands in different places before we finally found just the right angle to that had the perfect reflection and perspective. Coach was very pleasant to work with and patient as we moved him around literally inch by inch. After we finished with Coach O’Brien, we photographed the six seniors that are pictured on the front. Each player was photographed seperatly because there was not enough room to photograph them as a group in the room. Also, we wanted to light each person slightly differently to the final image would not look flat.

For the back cover, we photographed the remaining seniors including Marcus Stone, pictured on the right. Marcus is smiling because Annabelle was able to get the always stoic Marcus to actually crack a smile.

(Quick note, the back cover is missing one person because we had one player not show up. I photographed him about 3 weeks later, but he did not make the pre-production mock-up that Annabelle sent me. The final printed version obviously has him.)

Congrats to Drew who was drafted in the first round by the NY Yankees in this year’s MLB draft. Check out gopack.com for more information.

I sent him an text message (really instant message on AIM) to congratulate him. I stopped short of calling him a “Damn Yankee”. He is up in Cincinnasty Cincinnati now with his parents.

Today was less about the “Brackman project” and more about the “baseball project”. That is, I focused most of my energies on the entire team. I probably took only about 12 pictures of Andrew. Although it is never possible to have “enough pictures”, I have enough of Brack now that I feel comfortable branching out.

It was a rainy day for most of the afternoon, but cleared out before the 7pm start time, delaying the game for only 10 minutes. While players waited under the dug out for the rain to clear, I roamed around taking interesting pictures as they presented themselves. For example, Drew Martin told me I should have my camera ready: He and Marcus Jones were going to have a bubble blowing contest. After plopping 4 to 5 pieces of gum in their mouths, it took a good 5 or 10 minutes before they were able to get the gum and the correct consistency. While they competed with each other, it was a late-entry, Kenny Ford, who won hands down.

Typically I will hang out on the right side of the dugout; either at the ramp or the break in the fence between the ramp and the remainder of the dugout. Today I decided to station myself at the left-most side where the batters go out. After shooting there for the game, I had to ask “Why haven’t I been here more?” The location provided some new angles that I did not have before. With the late game time and consequently low light, I had a to use a special lens that allows me to shoot in low light, the Canon 50mm 1.2L. The 50mm focal length works well for subjects up close, but does not allow me to take photos of subjects more than 8 yards away. So instead of action at the mound, I used the opportunity at left dugout to take photos of batters getting ready: putting on gloves, getting their helmet, etc.

On Friday, I sent Andrew Brackman an instant message; he was pitching the next day on Saturday against UNC-Chapel Hill and I wanted to see if it was okay for me to get with him beforehand at his place and take some photos of him preparing for the game. We talked more later Friday before the game while Eric Surkamp and the other players warmed-up. He said it would be no problem for me to come over. I then asked if I would be a distraction and if so tell me and I would not come. I’d rather not get photos than to distract him before a game. As usual he said it was fine. I am continuously amazed at how he does not get distracted by me or anything in general. I think he could go through a simultaneous FBI interrogation and IRS audit at 6pm and still be ready and focused to pitch by 7pm. Some other pitchers can become mental cases if the dome light in their car burns out the day before they pitch. But not Drew.

I arrived at his apartment around 4:30. By that time, the other players would have been at the stadium for the 7pm start but the starting pitcher always comes later. While in his room I took note of a few items in there. Under the glass on the top of his desk was a photo of Gregory Parrish, a young NC State fan who at that age of 2, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Gregory had been virtually adopted by head basketball head coach Herb Sendek and the basketball team. Andrew talked about his experiences visiting Gregory at his house, lifting his spirits when he fought cancer. When Gregory died in September 2006 at the age of 12, Andrew was a pallbearer at his funeral. Stories like that tell you what kind of a person Andrew is.

Also in his room were trading cards of former basketball coach Jim Valvano and posters of Bo Jackson who like Andrew, was a successful dual sport athlete. I joked with Drew because behind his desk on a corkboard affixed to the wall, my business card with only two others was pinned up. I told him I must have made it to the “big time” to have my card up on his wall.

I took a few pictures of him around his room. I think he spent most of the time going through his closet trying to figure out what pair of shoes to wear. Taking pictures of someone in the privacy of their space is always uncomfortable for me; I jokingly told him I feel like a paparazzi at times.

We left his apartment around 5:15pm and hopped into his truck. I pulled a CD by the band 30 Seconds to Mars out to listen to. A few months ago Drew turned me on to the band when playing their album debut song “From Yesterday” in the locker room (Andrew is a music encyclopedia by the way). I loved the song and bought the whole CD. He had not heard the other songs on the CD and there were some killer one that I wanted him to hear on our way to the stadium. Around 5:30 we arrived at Doak. As he walked through the parking lot to the clubhouse fans stared wide-eyed at him.

For night games, Doak Field has the most beautiful lighting you can find, at least for two innings. As the sun goes down, for the first inning, there is a beautiful golden cast that illuminates the pitcher on the mound from head to foot. By the 2nd inning, the light illuminates about half the pitcher as the light falls behind the clubhouse. By the 3rd inning, the light is gone and you are at the mercy of the remaining light. But 5th inning the fun is over as only the stadium lights provide illumination. I discovered this golden light yesterday when Eric Surkamp pitched. Just as I took hundreds of photos of Eric in this fantastic light, I took hundreds of Drew the first two innings as well.

Though the Heels won tonight, Brack pitched a fantastic game. I was standing beside Wolfpack pitcher Kyle Rutter during the game and at one point he said Andrew was clocked three times in the first inning throwing 99 mph balls.

At his apartment…

Beautiful light in the 2nd inning…

Monday, May 1st – UPDATE

I realized I forgot to add statistics. Here they are for those keeping score:

Shutter Actuations

• Pictures taken today: 2,012
• Previous total: 2,152
• Total Pictures taken for project to date: 4,164
  

Hours spent on project:

• Hours this weekend spent shooting: 15 hrs
• This weekend’s Post production: 20 hrs
• Previous Hours: 38.5 hrs
• Total Hours to Date: 73.5 hrs (36.75% of 200 hr estimate)

Game one of NC State baseball vs. VA Tech was rained out. The team will have a double header on Saturday. So Brackman and Surkamp start on Saturday; Stallings on Sunday. I was hoping Sunday would be the double header as I need to get some photos of Surkamp.

The team did some light practice and hanging out today.

Here some random photos from the day.

Watching NCAA Tournament on TV in the Player’s Lounge.

At the batting cages…

In the training room, players discuss trades for their fantasy baseball team…

Update (11:53pm): Here is a gallery with more photos.