On the surface, working for a professional sports franchise may look like the ultimate glam rock gig of photography, but the workflow from the capturing of an epic image to the point where it gets out on social media or web involves several people, all of which have to function efficiently and very quickly while not sacrificing quality to present the image and brand of the organization.

Nashville Soccer Club is in the middle of a very successful USL Championship campaign (currently in 2nd place in the Eastern Conference) and is preparing to make the jump to Major League Soccer in 2020. I’ve been with the club in it’s various levels of competition since it’s inception in 2013. My duties with the team are to serve as the team photographer on game days as well as shooting their promotional media day prior to the season. With new players joining the team during the season, we will conduct additional “mini media days” as needed.

The team also has a full time staff photographer, Sierra Swenson who captures team related events during the week and on game days, we tag team together shooting the match. We sometimes have and additional shooter for big games or when Sierra is working in the crowd capturing everything going on in and around the stadium other than the game. Everyone in the organization is great to work with and they have really done a great job in making a point to hire only friendly people, and no grouchy people. This matters… seriously!

GEAR / SOFTWARE / APPS

If you want more details on this, head over to the GEAR page. Quick version:

• (2) Sony a9 with grips, one with the 70-200 2.8 GM, and the other with a Canon 400 2.8 IS II with a Sigma MC-11 adapter. I also keep the Sony 24-70 2.8 GM on my person for use as needed

• (1) Canon 1DX with a Canon 15mm 2.8 fisheye

• iPhone 6s Plus with SmugMug and Sony Imageing Edge apps

• MacBook Pro with Photo Mechanic and Lightroom Classic

• Next year in MLS, we will use the FTP functions on the Sony a9’s and use hotspots to upload directly to an FTP server

WHAT ALL THAT ^^^^^ HAS TO BE ABLE TO DO

• Capture great images

• QUICKLY get images to a TEAM server throughout the match

• QUICKLY get images to the LEAGUE at halftime and at the conclusion of the game

HOW WE DO IT

Before I get into this, I want to restate how there are multiple talented and creative people involved in this process: Nick Bastoky, Andrew Fair, Lucy Gonzalez, Cutler Klein, and Erik Sharpnack. The whole department is overseen by Austin Gwin (Director of Digital Marketing) and James Cannon (Vice President of Marketing).

On gameday, I turn up between 2-3 hours prior to kickoff and usually stay about an hour after the conclusion of the game. Sierra and I have a run of show each night which we put into our lanyard pouch and we coordinate the various on field pregame tasks ranging from capturing images of the starting XI, sponsors, player escorts, pregame festivities, and the VIPs which may turn up at the last minute. If you have a game plan for all of this, it may seem like organized chaos, but the key word there is organized!

From before player arrive to the stadium through the warmups and the entire match, both Sierra and I are sending images from our cameras to iPhones and then uploading them to our SmugMug server for the digital content team to select, edit, and put out on web and social media.

HOLD THAT POSTGAME!

94th minute game winning goal from Nashville SC's Bolu Akinyode

During the game Andrew, Nick, and Cutler are upstairs in the press box manning the various communication channels and sifting through the images we upload from the field. They have a great vantage point to see the entire field and venue as well as keep and eye on where I am in relation to the play. Unlike most sports, soccer can have a 1-0 final score so getting that money shot for the one defining play of the game is essential. That moment usually comes in the 90 minutes of the game but in the case of last week, it came in the 94th minute of the only 3 minutes of allotted added extra time, and it felt like the stadium was part of a volcanic eruption!

When something happens like happened last week in the final 30 seconds of the game, everything changes. The score had been tied 1-1 and postgame stores, images, and graphics were certainly already in progress, but with the game winning goal in the 94th minute everything turned on a dime. Having top class people working together means everyone just knows and expects things to work as they should. Within a few minutes of Bolu Akinyode’s game winning goal, images were already up on the server being selected, downloaded, edited, posted, and incorporated into graphics and stories.

MORE

If you’re looking for technical information on how I use my gear to make all this happen on my end, check out the next post “Workflow II-Technical.”