Moment of Impact

  A few weeks ago my friend Gary called me and said he noticed one of my pictures in a Sports Illustrated book called The College Football Book at Barnes & Noble. Gary told me the picture took up the entire page. He described the image to me and I knew exactly which one it was.

  I shot the picture during the 2007 football season when Cincinnati played USF in Tampa. In fact the picture stands out to me for many reasons not just because it made it into an SI coffee table book.

  On that particular play I was in the North endzone and focused on the quarterback, who was in full sun, while he dropped back to pass. As he turned to his right and released the ball I started turning to the receiver who was straight ahead of m. As I turned my lens to the area of the catch I began to rack the shutter speed down to help open my exposure up because the receiver was in the shadow of the stadium.

  I fired off about 10 frames as the ball entered the receiver's hands and never expected to see what I saw in between frames. The receiver's helmet flew off upon impact with the cornerback who was tackling him.

  After the play I reviewed the sequence on the back of the camera to see if I got the hit. "Holy Cr@p!" was my expression when I saw the frame. I zoomed in to make sure I had gotten the focus in time as everything happened so quickly. It was dead on.

  The reason why this images stands out is not because of the impact but because of the format. I know you're probably scratching your head and asking, "What?"

  You see while I was able to open my exposure up a stop it still was under exposed by another 1-2 stops. In other words it was dark.

  Because I shot the picture in the JPEG format I was only able to "fix" the image to a certain degree. Had I set the camera to capture in the RAW format I would've been able to get more detail and color balance out of the file.

  Because of the that image I now shoot everything in the RAW format. You just never know when you'll need it to save your butt.

  {If you are interested the book is available on Amazon or if you're at B&N check it out in their Sports section of Non-Fiction. The picture is on page 131.}