Seeing Soccer in Half a Second

It’s not often you see an entire team lined up at the goal mouth. Castaways number 20 is kicking the ball towards the Salt Spring net. Meanwhile, Salt Spring appears to be in various states of readiness (or willingness) to get in the way of the shot. This image is brought to you with one repair due to a clothing malfunction (unseen to the spectators but captured but camera in 1/1600 sec).

But wait there’s more. Below is a series of shots. From the first image to the last, exactly one-half second went by. Even if you were close enough to see the action with the naked eye, there’s no way you could see exactly what took place. What did the referee see? Was there a foul?

As an aside, I’ve been noticing a call from some photographers to slow down. Take only one image at an event. Manual focus only. Use only a 50 mm lens. Film good, digital bad. Huh, what?

I too miss some aspects of shooting in the late 70′s with a Leica or Hasselblad. But really, a lot of that is just romantic thinking. Particularly with moving subjects. And deadlines. And editor expectations.

In the seventies we did everything we could to capture the action for sports magazines. From pre-focussing where the long-jumper would be at the peak of her flight, to staying up all night in the darkroom and getting the film to the bus station by sun-up. There was a lot of stress. As a young photographer, I remember changing film without looking at the camera; both to keep my eyes on the action, and (sigh) to try to change film faster than the photographers around me!

We still work to deadlines. We still do our best to capture the decisive moment. We just do it better now. And we have just as much stress.

We still communicate. But we wouldn’t tell our editor that we prefer to slow down, unplug, mail a handwritten letter rather than send an email…