For my final column ever (wild to think my time has come to an end!), we’re counting down the top 10 photos of the spring semester! Despite the fact that my favorite kinds of photos are features, all but two of these turned out to be action shots. Here are the photos of the week!
10.
Baseball and softball can be pretty difficult to shoot sometimes because it’s not always easy to predict where the next play will happen. Some shots, like this one of UIC’s Vidal Colon sliding into second, are more able to be anticipated
though, and we can get better compositions. My favorite part about this photo is that we can see the ball still in the air while Eric Maisonet watches it get to his glove. The tag was late and Colon was safe, but this photo of Margo’s is really cool to see!
9.
For all outdoor sports, the lighting situation is the first thing I notice. I need to pay attention to the weather and the sun in order to compensate for the light in terms of my settings. In this case I knew the sun was going down and was watching the shadows on the field as they moved so I could get photos of the pitchers, batters, and infielders in the best lighting earlier on. At the same time, I enjoy high angles sometimes, and I knew I could use the light to my advantage to get a photo of Harrison and her shadow moving together. The result is something I find really nice to look at, and it has a clean background to go along with it!
8.
Photos where both players are facing toward me are always nice to see (again, faces!), and the tension of competition is clear here. The way they loom over the hoop on the other end and fill the frame does a lot to emphasize their size and make them appear larger and more powerful, which is a fun effect of perspective and proportion in terms of their position on the court and the low angle I’m shooting at from the floor. I’m also drawn to the ball, which Stone is dribbling between his legs. The orientation of the lines on the ball is pretty pleasing to me and it’s a small detail that really brings the full composition together and makes it rise to the top 10!
7.
I can’t say it enough times: I love love love clean photos. Most of the time, a crowd in the background of a photo can enhance it and provide another form of visual interest, but there can absolutely be times where it’s distracting. Photos with clean backgrounds have so much appeal to me, especially in a setting where you know there’s actually a lot of people watching just out of frame. Being able to find compositions like this is a super helpful skill to be working on in terms of your situational awareness. Beyond that, being able to see both of their faces, the diagonal line from Slaughter’s hair and Craft’s arms, and the ball being perfectly positioned directly above them with the lines on the ball lined up the way they are is just beautiful.
6.
I genuinely really love photos like these. The way the pitcher’s leg is still in the air, the bat is positioned in a way that frames the scene and helps lead our eyes around the composition, and the ball is perfectly between the pitcher and batter makes it so much stronger. It’s a great example of using foreground interest as a compositional technique with the batter out of focus. This photo also does a good job of pointing out how we get creative in our framing for what can be a somewhat boring repetitive action to show it in a more visually interesting way!
5.
Compared to a lot of the other photos here, this is a very unique one, and not just for the fact that it’s a feature photo. It’s not everyday that media gets access to the locker room after the game, so I was stoked for Dan. I’ve been in several situations where there’s a ton of cameras crowding around a player and we usually do our best to avoid getting the others in our frame. Here though, I’m very much in support of Dan’s decision to shoot wider to show the other cameras in frame because it gives additional context to the scene that we might not necessarily get otherwise, and to me it emphasizes the pressure these players have on them to perform and the ways they can’t necessarily avoid attention when things don’t go the way we want them to. It’s honestly kind of difficult to look at, but that’s the difference between photography and photojournalism sometimes.
4.
I said it at the time, but shots like this one Dan took of Olivia Kelly doing a back handspring on the beam really make me think about how impressive gymnasts are. Moreover, having the little sliver of beam along the bottom gives context to where we are at the competition level, and shows us where she’s going. Being in the photojournalism and documentary program and taking all three offered capstones definitely gives me an appreciation for both video and still photography work, but there are some moments where I think photo is better. Some photos can make it look like a skill is a fall, but photos like this one where Kelly is frozen mid-air are so clearly better in a photo format in my opinion.
3.
Everything I’ve ever said in any of these columns should be considered to have an asterisk next to it, because there are always exceptions to the “rules” I talk about. For example: normally, we would want to shoot a bit tighter than this. That being said, I think in this case for the dunk it’s perfectly acceptable to go wider, and I’d even be fine with it being so wide to show this whole part of the court in frame. That’s besides the point though, because Margo took this awesome shot during the game against Vanderbilt (her hometown team, by the way) and it’s no. 3 on our list! Another thing that stands out to me about this photo is that the crowd is a bit more in focus than usual, and because of that we can see the beginnings of their reactions. That paired with Pierce’s concentrated face is great!
2.
This is definitely one of my favorite basketball photos I’ve gotten for a number of reasons, with the sprawl of Dowell’s and Verhulst’s limbs combined with their expressions and lines of sight being the biggest. I played around with a few different crops but decided to leave it a bit wider because I liked being able to see Dowell’s feet lifting up off the ground. Above all: we can see both of their faces!
I mentioned in one of my February columns that judging for Pictures of the Year International, the oldest photojournalism competition in the world that’s hosted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the J-School, had just wrapped up. In April, some of the award winners came to Columbia for a reception to be honored for their work, and many of them offered portfolio reviews. Based on their feedback and additional feedback from my professor, Jackie Bell, this photo made it into my portfolio and is on my website! (Side note: my website does exist, I just haven’t bought my domain yet. Check my Instagram bio in a few weeks and maybe it’ll be there…)
1.
I’d say it’s pretty fitting for the title of my no. 1 favorite photo of the semester to belong to a feature photo. And what a game this was! This game against Oklahoma featured not one, but TWO buzzer beaters from Trent Pierce and Mark Mitchell, respectively, and the energy was absolutely electric! I remember running across the court immediately after the shot that won the game trying to catch up to the players to cover their reactions. It was one of the most exciting games I’d ever been to, let alone covered, and this photo of Mitchell smiling during his interview is just the cherry on top.
And there we have it – my time at Rock M has officially come to a close. Thank you to Karen for recruiting me and taking me on, to the colleagues I’ve worked alongside over the past year, and to Margo and Dan for contributing their time to the photo department. An extra special thank you goes to all you readers who came back week after week to hear me nerd out about photojournalism and see the work we produced. Your support means so much and I’ve appreciated your constant presence more than you realize!
I’ve still got another year at Mizzou, but since I’m taking on a position as assistant director of photography at the Columbia Missourian I’ve had to make the decision to step away from Rock M after my year on staff. If you want to stay in the know on what I’m up to and the work I’m doing, follow me on Instagram (@henderson.visuals), and also make sure you follow Dan (@danmurphmedia) and Margo (@margoj_photography) while you’re at it! Don’t be a stranger and M-I-Z!
