It's all in the timing......

[Dallas Dem]

Watching the Super Bowl, and looking at all the game pictures in the papers and online yesterday, got me thinking.

Broadcasters and sports reporters always talk about different sporting events being "a game of inches."

"Were the receivers feet inbounds or out, as he caught the ball?" "Did he cross the goal line or not?"

And, in all different types of sporting competition, there are similar questions.

But for sports photographers, it's all in the timing. Professionally speaking, they don't really have a vested interest in one team or another. Their main concern is: did they get the shot? And I guess that's why there are hundreds of them roaming the sidelines and end zones at the Super Bowl, looking for..........the shot. And someone WILL get it.

So, did you ever miss that one BIG shot because you're timing was off, or just not close enough?

Summer before last, I spent the day at the Texas State Fair. I wanted to get the human cannonball blasting out of the cannon, at just the precise moment. So I set the camera controls for a 3-shot "burst" (which I thougth was an appropriate selection), and hoped for the best. As soon as I heard the "boom," I pressed the shutter.

Unfortuantely, the sound and compressed air shot out the back of the cannon mechanism, right where I was standing. Instinctively, I turned to my right (away from my subject matter) and bent at the waist. The third "burst" captured the ground and my sneakers. The first two shots were relatively OK, though. Not the EXACT timing I had hoped for........but close.

Here are mine, and feel free to post some of your missed "timing" shots too, if you got 'em:

[flamin lib]

1. Sports photography can be quite dangerous. A number of photographers

are injured and some even killed every year. It's like being a combat photographer. I remember talking to a guy who photographed Vietnam in the 60's. He said it was like watching TV; that whatever was on the viewscreen was somehow remote and not real. Then he got shot and all that changed.

On the flip side, when I was in college majoring in photography one of my classmates got permission to shoot all the Cowboy's practice games. She was 5'4", weighed 115 pounds, blond and dressed in Daisy Duke shorts and T-shirts. They ran the play to her side of the field every time. Can't count the number of times she was "tackled" but never hurt . . .