Ronnye Nelson – Valdosta State

Ronnye Nelson at Valdosta State

I shot Ronnye Nelson, a running back at Valdosta State, for the New York Times.

As a photojournalist for 30 years, photos that go with stories are mostly just to show that person’s face.  People want to see what the subjects of a story look like.  They are not intended to “sell” the person.

That being said, I have photographed individuals in all occupations and walks of life.   I worked hard to bring personality to the photograph.  When I was shooting photojournalism it was not as much to “sell” the person but to document the person in such a way as to visually stop the reader and make them look at the image.  The longer a viewer’s eyes are on the photo, the more likely they are to read the story.

That is also true in my commercial and corporate photography in north Florida.  Why have your readers, advertisers, corporate report recipients just flip through your piece and move on.  No matter what the piece your producing in print or the web, don’t you want your viewers to linger?  To study the photo and decide to read the copy?

I knew I wanted to shoot this young man’s photo in the stadium at dusk when I was driving up at three o’clock in the afternoon.  I also knew that my arrangement was to photograph the young man at 5 pm in the team locker room which was well before dusk.   Once set up to shoot in the locker room , I asked about shooting a second shot in the stadium.  Ronnye would have to come back at 7 pm on the Friday night before their game

I made it 3 blocks before pulling into a vacant parking lot at 9:30 pm, downloaded my cards and did a rough edit to make sure I had what I thought I had.

It’s not like I could have done anything at that point had my visual ideas not translated to pixels but the need to make sure almost always over powers me when the deadline is not immediate.  That’s partly a results of years of instant deadlines, as well as, partly an addiction of all creatives.

Satisfied I headed out to Tallahassee arriving home at 11:30 to work up a final folder of 10 images and transmitting them to the New York Times before pulling the covers up to my chin at 2:30 am.

Listening to: Van Morrison – Tupelo Honey