Scene on the Road

October 19, 2008: Hallway Shadows

$454.8 billion record-high federal budget deficit got you down?

Nothing like a championship hometown team to provide that psychological pick me up.

I felt it when I saw the homemade banner with the red P’s hanging on the fence near Philadelphia International Airport, driving by after the Phillies had arrived back home on the red eye from Los Angeles earlier that morning.

As a photographer this baseball post-season, that bed sheet is about the closest I’ve gotten to Phillies coverage. But the playoffs were so exciting, I couldn’t help talking to my sports-shooting colleagues about it every day. First about the Inquirer going digital for the first time the last time the Phillies were in the playoffs, then just to get some vicarious thrill from hearing about how and what they’re shooting.

So what’s it like to cover a World Series-bound team anyway? I’ve shot exactly two Phillies games since I covered Spring Training in 2002, and have not worked a single game since the move to Citizens Bank Park. So I had to ask somebody else.

I started with David Maialetti. He came to the Daily News in 1997, shortly after I returned to the street, after working a few years as an editor. I remember thinking, “Hey, this kid’s got game,” as I watched him work and saw his images in the “rival” newspaper the next day. Our papers have always been under the same publisher, but have always had separate editorial staffs, and different styles and readerships, so we’ve never really been competitors, but Dave and his fellow Daily News photographers have kept me on my toes over the years when we’d show up at the same assignment.

That will be changing soon, as eventually our two staffs will be combined (as will the copy desks and editorial assistants), and we’ll all be shooting for both newspapers. We started it toward the end of the Phillies season, and a few weeks ago the Inquirer and Daily News newspaper names were dropped from the credits – they now simply read “staff photographer.”

Anyway, that’s Dave on the right, with Inquirer, oops, make that staff photographer Ron Cortes, posing at Dodger Stadium after they arrived for game 4 of the series. They’d both covered the Eagles game in San Francisco the day before.

Dave grew up in Philadelphia, in Lawndale. When he was in high school, he and his younger brother Brian got into a few games during the 1993 World Series. We won’t say how, just in case the statue of limitations lasts longer than Veterans Stadium. So even though he’s been following the Phillies his whole life, he says the importance of their making it to the playoffs “finally sunk in when I was all done sending photos,” after the fifth game.

Dave was positioned in a photo spot above the first base dugout. With him in Los Angeles, was Ron Cortes at third (somewhere in the left photo above), and Yong Kim at first (he's in the right version). For game 3, Michael Perez did some shooting third, and then he went into the tunnels under the outfield seats to edit everyone's photos and transmit back to the newspaper. He performed the same editing duties for games 4 and 5 when the other two photographers arrived.

The elevated spot is someplace photographers don’t normally shoot from during the regular season, so that makes it different Dave said. “But a downside is that a lot of the photos look the same.” He shoots every play as if he were the only photographer covering the game. “We’re all on it, but you never know if someone is gonna be blocked.”

Toward the end of Game 5, when it looked like the Phillies would do it, Mike and the others started preparing for the finish. Ron geared up for the beer and champagne showers, putting on “a cheap poncho, with Mickey Mouse on it no less, a throw away." He also made sure his camera and lens were covered. The plan was for him and Yong to go into the locker room while Mike and Dave edited the on-field celebration photos. Yong was also to be the pool photographer, shooting the trophy presentation in the area Fox-TV had cordoned-off, along with Phillies team photographer Miles Kennedy.

In his elevated spot, Dave was thinking about who he would focus on at the end. He and the other photographers had been talking about how closer Brad Lidge always celebrates every win. “He does a fist pump, and we all have shot similar photos of him before,” Dave recalled as he thought about shooting somebody else. “I decided I would try to follow Charlie (manager Manuel). I stayed on him, even though part of me was looking to see where Ron and Yong were,” as they all ran on the field after the game ended. As Dave followed the manager through his lens, he knew the other two photographers were shooting the players, but he still “worried that I was missing something. I had the manager of the team, but he isn’t really one of the stars. I kept thinking how much he had going on in his life. Manuel seldom shows any emotion, so it was a rare moment when he raised his finger to point to someone in the crowd. Then he went back inside. He wasn’t out on the field very long. He was either going into the club house to celebrate or maybe he was going to start work on their next game.”

Meanwhile, in between editing, Mike had run up into the outfield stands above him trying to make a photo from a different perspective. It worked, as Pat Burrell took off for first, watching his single sail into left-center, scoring Chase Utley. For a real Southern California perspective, Mike got to listen to Danny DeVito cheering behind his third base postition (when the “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” star wasn't enjoying those World Famous Dodger Dogs®)

While Dave was reminiscing about the ’93 phillies, fellow Daily News photographer Yong Kim was back on familiar turf. You have to use your imagination, but there is a whole set of snapshots of him, posing in this very same spot when was a kid, when his uncle would bring him to Dodger games.

He had photographed at Angel Stadium in Anaheim while working for the Orange County Register, but the NLCS was the first time he’d been in the ballpark as a working photographer.

The Dodgers set up a wireless internet connection at each of the shooting positions, so balancing his laptop and his two Canon EOS-1D Mark II N’s on his lap, he was able to download and then edit, caption and send his photos between innings, instead of using messengers to carry his cards to Mike. “I liked it. It’s possible you might miss good action,” but he thought the tradeoff to be able to instantly send photos of critical plays back to the paper on deadline.” He admits it is more practical with baseball than other sports. The Reuters photographers were set up to upload their entire card directly to an editor’s remote computer. When the game ended, Yong said, all the Phillies rushed out of the dugout and started spraying beer and champagne on all the Phillies fans in the crowd. One of the photographers stood up shouting "Computers! They can’t get wet!!!” Yong said the players looked kind of sheepish, and then moved on. He shot Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal, sliding safely under catcher Carlos Ruiz to score a game-tying run in Game 4. That was the one where the Phillies came from behind to win 7-5 and take a 3-1 lead in the series. Back in Philadelphia, he was also right on for another defensive play, Shane Victorino's leaping catch of Casey Blake's fly ball that preserved the Phillies win in Game 2.

This post was starting to get long...so I split it into two parts.

click here for more.

October 20, 2008: Morning Frost

October 21, 2008: Kindergarten, Allen M. Stearne School, Unity and Hedge Streets

This is part two of a post on Inquirer and Daily News staff photographers coverage of the Phillies postseason. (Click for Part One) I was talking to Yong Kim and Ron Cortes about being in the team’s locker room in Los Angeles:

Yong Kim and Ron Cortes were both dowsed in the Phillies locker room during the beer and champagne showers. I already mentioned Ron’s protective gear, but he could have used some eyewear as well, like Pedro Feliz here as Utley pours it on. Ron said he could only shoot for a few minutes because he “got burned in my eyes from the champagne. It also eventually became almost impossible to shoot there as it was wall-to-wall people.”

Jerry Lodriguss wasn’t in Los Angeles, but I had to share this photo of him anyway from LAST YEAR, when the Phillies won the division. Jerry has the distinction of being the only photographer hired at either newspaper here specifically as a sports shooter. He was freelancing for Sports Illustrated at the time, and had worked before at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and for United Press International.

I thought his photo of Brett Myers scoring (with Jimmy Rollins behind him rounding third on Victorino's two-run single) in the second inning of Game 2 was shot with a remote.“Nope,” Jerry replied, “just happens we don’t have any…” He has used them before, and had a wireless remote at one time, but it broke and was never replaced. The Inquirer and Daily News photographers covering the series shot it pretty low tech, and without a lot of gear. They all use Canon EOS digitals, all 1D’s, either Mark III’s, II N’s or II’s. Most just use two bodies. Shooting on the field position they use 400mm f2.8’s and the 70-200 f/2.8. Sometimes for day games they might put a 1.4x converter on the 400. In California, the games started early enough that there was still daylight, but for the series now, they’re all scheduled for 8 p.m.

The single afternoon game at Citizens Bank Park for the NLCS gave photographers a chance to play with the light a little and shoot more than just game action. Mike caught Myers in a patch of sunlight running between first and second and Dave photographed him in deep shadow – at least compared to the sunny stands – while he was winding up on the mound.

I mentioned before the now-joint staff. Both newspapers used Ron’s photo of Lidge and Ruiz celebrating the pennant clinch on the front. The huge photo on the Inquirer’s wraparound “second front” photo was Dave’s. Behind the four shooters in L.A. were photo editor Alen Malott, photographer Michael Wirtz, filling in as an editor, and Michael Plunkett in the color lab. They were the ones here getting everything into the newspaper, and updating it as newer photos arrived from Mike’s laptop.

During the 1993 Series, the Inquirer had brand new color printing presses and was still working out a lot of the kinks, so deadlines were earlier than usual. So early that a lot of home delivery customers received newspapers on their front step in the morning that didn’t even have the final score of the previous night’s game.

No problems like that this time - everybody gets the latest news - except the few Inquirer readers in Harrisburg or Washington, DC. The front page on the left, the first edition, is what the out-of-town readers saw on the Thursday morning after Game 5.

Really different for the playoffs this time is the web, especially for photos. Jennifer Musser-Metz, lead systems analyst for Philly.com and web developer Nadya Harvey had been working on a newer template for slides shows, taking them out of Adobe Flash Player. The Phillies played their way into the postseason before it was completely automated, so Inquirer director of photography Hai Do and media editor Karl Stolleis have been hand-tweaking most of the photos in the galleries on the Phillies photo page. Hai is on his way to edit the game photos from St. Pete.

It has been a huge success. Last Thursday, the day after the clinch, the top four most read "stories" on the website were ALL Phillies photo galleries! Readers looking at Game 5, the fans celebration, the team's airport arrival made up 33.5 percent of the total site traffic.

Meanwhile, here in Philadelphia, photographers were out shooting action as well.

John Costello said he “wanted to do something with live tv,” ever since the first time he saw the high definition video screens in the atrium lobby of the Comcast Center.

John called in advance of the game, and they let him get up in the bucket truck they use for washing the windows. Unfortunately the broadcast format didn’t match, so they couldn’t get the game to show on the full 83 by 25 foot LED video screen and there weren’t very many baseball fans around to watch. But…on his way out he did photograph some fans watching from outside, before heading to South Philadelphia for the victory partying on Broad Street.

At the same time Steve Falk was documenting the fan action in Mayfair...

...and David Warren had South Jersey covered. Steve photographed the police arresting overzealous fans, while John said they mostly had a laissez-faire attitude. Around 1 o’clock in the morning though, he told me they starting saying “hey, I gotta get up in the morning…and so do you. Now break it up.”

Then, with a full week to first wait for Game One of the World Series begins, it's on to feature stories about the fans getting RED-dy!!

Senior photographer Clem Murray photographed Sister Elizabeth Anne DeWaele, who teaches fourth grade at St. Thomas Apostle School in Glen Mills.

Inquirer photographer Eric Mencher just told me about Gen. Colin Powell citing a still photograph in his endorsement of Barak Obama over the weekend. Powell told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press he saw the picture in a magazine "photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan." I asked Eric if he knew what the photo was. He didn't but said Maureen Dowd had a column on it in the NY Times today. After reading her column, and learning Powell had seen the photo in the New Yorker, I knew right away it was the work of Platon, a part of his portfolio “Service,” about men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. I was just looking at the whole set of photographs myself just last week.

Powell said it was the crescent and star denoting the soldier's Islamic faith that touched him, and he was troubled by Republican's falsely suggesting that Obama is a Muslim and therefore associated with terrorists.

Wow, I was thinking as Eric mentioned it to me. It's always great to hear about a photographer influencing world events. I have to confess though, I was hoping the picture was shot by some unknown newspaper photographer toiling away somewhere shooting photo essays nobody wants to publish, but are subjects that are important and deeply personal to him or her…

Back in the late 90's while still an art student in London, British Vogue named Platon the “best up-and-coming photographer.”

His debut book, “Platon’s Republic” was a collection of portraits of powerful Americans. The most familiar picture is the one that became known as the Bill Clinton “crotch shot” after it appeared on the cover of Esquire in 2000. The New Yorker also has a podcast interview with Platon about his subjects and his pictures.

As Eric said to me as we walked in the Inquirer hallway, "It shows people do pay attention to still photography and it does matter."

October 22, 2008: New Lighting and Multimedia, the Ben Franklin National Memorial

October 23, 2008: W.E.B. DuBois Mural, 6th & South Streets

October 24, 2008: 2nd & Market Streets

October 25, 2008: During Phillies Rain Delay