On Mar 25, 2006, at 9:07 AM, David Savage wrote:
From what I understand of Cory's original post, what happens at these
events is that they set up several banks of still cameras in strategic
around the court/field/venue, aimed at various points of potential
interest?! (it doesn't matter a whit to me if they are 35mm Rollies',
4x5 view cameras or 1DsMkII's) An operator controls the shutter via
remote, and when the action is in the right area they fire away
without really knowing what is in frame!
There's a fundamental misunderstanding -- these guys know what is in
the frame. They also do not fire off "rapid fire" -- this is why I was
pointing out to Cotty that Rolleis (which were being used in Toronto)
do not have a super fast drive. They can't spray-and-pray -- they have
to make a very well timed single exposure.
If this is the case, then the
guy or gal operating the camera, IMO, is not so much a photographer as
they are a "Camera Operating Technician".
There is no "art" to it. It's a scatter gun approach, plain and
simple. With so many cameras trained on a certain spot, your bound to
get something useful.
Again, fundamental misunderstanding -- the cameras are pointed at
different spots, at different angles.
And no doubt it's financially motivated. It's
got to be a hell of a lot cheaper to have one person operating 25
cameras, instead of 25 photographers with one each.
Again, fundamental misunderstanding -- it is far, far more expensive to
shoot this way than to hire some local guys to shoot digital. There
are lots of guys down in the press area with their DSLRs and long
lenses, and they cover for the papers and the magazines. This setup is
for posters, advertising, billboards -- high, high end stuff. Yes, in
this case it's for Sports Illustrated, who turned it around and
realized that the quality of photography in their magazine had been
steadily dropping.
The guy who shoots this gets somewhere around 10 times what the DSLR
newspaper guys are getting. In addition, he usually has a bunch of
assistants. At least one is up in the rafters with the strobes, and
there are at least two more re-loading film.
IMO the photographer on the sidelines looking through the viewfinder,
framing the shot & picking the right moment to fire the shutter shows
a greater level of skill and creativity than the technician in the
stands pressing a button.
1) the photographer on the sidelines is pressing a button -- there's no
magical interface with his heart that trips the shutter.
2) who said the other guy was in the stands?
3) what if the photographer on the sidelines pre-frames and pre-focuses
and waits for the play that he knows is coming (because anyone worth
their salt knows what play is coming next -- that's how you get the
shot, and it's also why the other team is generally ready to defend) --
is he now a technician, because he pre-focused and then just pressed a
button when the players came into the location he was waiting at? Am I
a technician when I shoot baseball? I wouldn't say so.
If this guy ran from camera to camera to trip the shutters, but they
were still all pre-set, would it now be art?
-Aaron
