The Joe Nicholson Photography blog
an online archive of my ephemera from my life as a photojournalist
Football on Thurday night? Yes, football on Thursday night.
Last week, Seattle was introduced to Thursday Night football, part of the NFL’s never-ending quest to monopolize an even greater portion of American sports fans’ media consumption. It used to be they just played on Sunday. Then, once the college season was over, they started playing on Saturdays. Then, 40 years ago, they started to play on Monday nights too. Five years ago, they expanded it to Thursdays for the second half of the season. So now, in December you can watch NFL football four days a week. What a wondrous age we live in. On to the pictures!
I long ago tired of shooting the player intros from the field, so this game I decided to shoot the player intros from the stands above the tunnel. It’s a nice elevated angle, but it’s too crowded with too many people until all but the last few players are introduced. With the combination of light, smoke, music, the environment oozes testosterone to a practically intoxicating level.
Some fan in seats above the tunnel handed Marshawn Lych a 12th Man flag to wave as he was the last to be introduced. Lynch had a monster game, dominating the Eagles to the tune of 148 yards and two touchdowns:
The Eagles backup quarterback, Vince Young, was pressed into service by injury and had a performance approximately 180 degrees from Lynch. He threw four interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown:
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll enjoyed the game-clinching score:
Over on the opposite sideline, the sentiment wasn’t quite as merry:
Eagles fans attending the game seemed to finally grasp that the preseason pick to reach the Super Bowl wasn’t going to come to fruition.
While I won’t say that I’m a fan of night games, especially against East Coast teams like Philadelphia, with the accompanying early deadlines those cities entail, I will admit that having a Sunday off is quite enjoyable. Good news for my Sunday next week: the Seahawks host a game on Monday instead.
More blog posts to come soon!
Apple Cup win by UW gets a high-five (or four…)
UW head coach Steve Sarkisian gets a high-five (or four, in this case) from Dubs, the Huskies’ mascot, following a victory in the Apple Cup against Washington State. Sure it’s a bit of a contrived photo op for the dog’s handlers, but, you know, whatever. I have a soft spot for pictures of dogs.
This year’s Apple Cup was at the Clink, excuse me, CenturyLink Field. Oh, how I long for the quaint days of yore when previous corporate overlords like Qwest paid for the naming rights to our sports palaces. The site of the game was moved from Husky Stadium because of an accelerated renovation schedule. Since the Clink will be the Huskies’ home field next season, I decided to get a photo of the stadium and downtown skyline at kickoff. However, what meager amount of light in the clouded sky was pretty dim even though it was only 4:30 p.m..
Additionally, the painted end zones for the Seahawks kind of kills the photo. So goes life; at least I tried.
Jermaine Kearse stiff-arms out of a tackle. The next frame would have been better, since the Cougar’s head was pushed down lower, but the framing was too tight and I only had about 1/10th of his helmet visible.
Though it kind of looks like he’s being sacked, Keith Price actually scrambled for a gain of about eight yards on the above play.
Chris Polk was the story of the game, dominating the Cougars.
He brushes his shoulder off following his third touchdown of the game. Ho-hum, just another day for him, I suppose.
Everrette Thompson celebrates a fourth-down stop (and appears to have three or four arms thanks to another player standing directly behind him).
Keith Price passes during the first half.
Desmond Trufant tips a pass away for an interception.
Coach Sarkisian lets loose after a game-clinching touchdown.
Cougars head coach Paul Wulff walks the plank back to the locker room after the game ended. He was fired three days later, winning nine games in four seasons. Honestly, I think they should have given him another year. Wulff took a program that was one of the worst in the country and made them competitive, for a fraction of the cost that UW is spending on their coaches in a location that must be far more challenging to recruit to. But if anything, he knows life can be hard, and I won’t be surprised if he finds success elsewhere.
Three cheers for Halloween
Time has not been kind to these ex-Seahawks cheerleaders, who came back to participate in a Halloween-themed halftime show during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Occupy Westlake Park
After following some of the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street in the recent news, my curiosity brought to downtown Seattle on a Sunday afternoon. Without an assignment, but with cameras on my shoulders, I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about.
By checking their handy online schedule, I arrived about a half hour before their scheduled march to walk the perimeter of the group and get my bearings for what the general vibe of the group was.
Mostly it was just people holding signs and waving at passing traffic.
There were a few pockets of light remaining in the autumnal afternoon, but it was fading and fading fast.
Photographically, it would have been really nice for the light could have lasted longer – overcast skies are so common here that doing things outdoors in sunlight is an opportunity that should be capitalized upon as much as possible.
And for a little unsolicited public relations advice: if they’re trying to present a sunny, optimistic vision for changes to American society, I’d humbly suggest they do as much as possible in actual sunlight. People always look happier and agreeable when they’re in sunlight instead of shadows. Always.
Also, I know they want to be as green and environmentally responsible as possible, but writing “Revolution is Sexy” on the back of a soiled pizza box is a bit of a contradiction. Perhaps that is why the sign is abandoned in the park, along with a likewise attractive ski hat:
At the appointed hour, the group of began marching down the sidewalk, destination unknown. I was at the very front of the mass of people and had no idea of how many of the roughly 1000 people in Westlake Park were participating in it. They eventually all arrived at the Bank of America building at the corner of 5th and Marion and had a protest in the building’s plaza against “the banksters.”
Once they all arrived and after they occupied the plaza for about a half hour and made their voices heard by all of the employees working on a Sunday evening (probably zero, if they’re keeping traditional banker’s hours my dad used to joke to me about – “9 by 3,” meaning the ninth green by 3 o’clock), they decided to call it a day and go back to Westlake Park, seven blocks away:
Despite not having a permit, the police blocked off traffic and allowed the group to take the whole street for a more efficient route back. The protesters filled about two city blocks worth of space, so I’d make a semi-informed estimate they numbered about 800-1000.
On the way back, I noticed a woman in pearls looking out at the march from her window-side seat in a posh seafood restaurant on 4th avenue. Jenny described this as my attempt at being “artsy-fartsy.”
Just yards from reaching the final destination of the march at Westlake Park, the group decided to stage a sit in at the corner of 4th and Pike. Maybe about 70-100 decided sat down, blocking the path of a Metro bus. The police didn’t appreciate this; they weren’t prepared with the manpower to take away the prospective new guests of the King County Jail to their temporary accommodations. While the police dispatched a paddy wagon, the protesters held a vote and, after considering a night spent in lockup, thought better of it and retreated to the legal safety of the park, free to protest another night and day.
A leader shouts to the crowd as they vote on what to do:
Despite being abandoned by the vast majority of protesters, two teenagers held fast to their claim on the intersection as darkness fell. The ranking Seattle Police officer at the scene explained what would happen:
They were taken away:
As I was departing the park – after having a drink with an old friend I bumped into on the corner – I took an overall view of “general assembly” meeting the protesters were holding under the first drops of rain.
I’d guess there was maybe a couple hundred still there.
Who knows where this motivation and energy will go? After having witnessed a similar movement in the late 90s and early aughts with the heyday of the WTO protests, I have a healthy bit of skepticism of what they’ll actually accomplish. They’re tapping into the dissatisfaction the general public has towards the plutocracy, but they could use a streamlined message or thesis that can push instead of a scattered bird-shot approach where they try to address every instance of the “man” holding “the 99%” down. People don’t have time, let alone care, to listen to a spoken-word manifesto on Marx. Fewer drum circles wouldn’t hurt, either.
We’ll see what comes next.
Tokyo Police Club @ Showbox
I photographed a concert by the Toronto indie-emo band Tokyo Police Club at The Showbox in Seattle last week. The principal reason I was there was to shoot fans in front of a “step-and-repeat” background and instantly upload the photos to facebook. This set up was to create a red carpet type of experience for fans, but the execution could have been better. I had to be tethered to my laptop to shoot directly to the hard drive, then an assistant uploaded the file to the facebook page for the concert. The subjects were to then tag themselves on another laptop operated by a different person working for SMG. Unfortunately, both the wifi network at the venue and facebook itself were excruciatingly slow that night, so getting the photos uploaded was not optimally efficient. It still made for an interesting experiment in feeding the instant demand of social media.
I also shot the performances by Beast Makes Bombs and Tokyo Police Club. Apparently, it is required that new rock bands have three words in their names. In days past, I shot my fair share of concerts, but it took me only a few minutes to shake the rust off from getting the photos that I really wanted.
Beast Makes Bombs performs. I ventured into what now passes for a “mosh pit, but was underwhelmed. This sub-genre of music of postmodern hipster indie-pop doesn’t really inspire the unchecked aggression I recall from the Soundgarden and Ramones concerts of my youth. Perhaps that is for the better:
After a quick break (and more step-and-repeat photo shooting), TPC took the stage and I squeezed off some frames during the first four songs:
Mavs @ Blazers, NBA playoffs, Game 3
I traveled down to Portland to cover my first NBA game of the year, just a ho-hum third game of the playoffs on Thursday night. It was a bit like diving into the deep end of the pool, sports action-wise; I can’t think of any larger of a jump from shooting baseball to playoff basketball in terms of speed or intensity.
After the Sonics fled Seattle for some oil patch in the middle of the country, I became a bit of an NBA refugee myself, abstaining from following any team. Without a team to cover, I didn’t really have as much of a professional reason to spend any free time on it. Being less than a three hour drive away and starring a fellow UW alum, Brandon Roy, I could have simply adopted the Portland Trailblazers. However, the intense bitterness I felt over the Sonics departure prevented me from embracing them even half-heartedly. Not to mention the whole rivalry-thing between the two teams. If the Red Sox ever left Boston, I wouldn’t imagine many of their fans would start wearing Yankee caps.
Anyway, I drove down and covered game three against Dallas. I started off with the home team running on to the court for warmups by giving high-fives to kids. I instantly recognized it to be a contrived photo opportunity, but couldn’t help myself from shooting it. It made for a nice frame and was a stock image that I didn’t have in my archive. I probably won’t be shooting it again, however.
Despite arriving at the arena two and a half hours before tipoff, I didn’t get an on-court baseline shooting position, or “lane,” in NBA parlance, so I had to shoot from the stands, which wasn’t exactly the end of the world. The NBA somehow had space for two lanes for shooters from my agency at a Lakers game the night before – the premiere team in the league – but somehow didn’t have space for a single shooter (myself) out in provincial Portland. Anyway, having not shot any pro basketball in the past three-plus years, this didn’t really disappoint me too much since the speed of the game would have created a steep learning/adjustment curve compared to the mediocre Pac-10 hoops I’ve shot in the meantime.
Shooting with the 400mm from the stands creates a nice, shallow depth of field, though there is collateral challenges of people in the stands standing up, cotton candy sellers walking up and down the aisles, etc., Additionally, you lose access to about a third of the court, being either too far away or being blocked by the backboard or post. The above photo of Dallas’s Nowitzki getting stopped by Portland’s Batum, is at about the far limit of range for shooting cross court. The nice thing about shooting from the stands, is that I could move to the other end of the court when momentum shifts. I still had to make educated guesses about what would be the best spot for whatever happened next, but at least there is the option to slightly influence my photographic destiny for the night.
Like any shooting position in any sport, there’s a certain element of luck that’s intrinsic to making a good picture; you need the players to be coming your direction in order to get their faces. If Wesley Matthews drove left down the lane instead of right, for instance (pictured below), all I would have is a photo of him thru the glass backboard, which wouldn’t be usable. But since he went right, I was ready and got the picture:
Nowitzki is an amazing player, by the way. I’d never seen him play in person, but he’s freakishly good. It’s a bit confusing to comprehend when I watched a seven foot man move with such grace and skill.
I hadn’t seen a crowd quite as frenzied since watching Sonics playoff games in the early-mid 90s with my Dad. The Blazer fans are knowledgeable and intensely passionate about basketball; watching them collectively lose their minds in love for their team brought back some cherished memories I shared with Dad for the Sonics.
The Blazers have forced a game six, so I’ll likely be returning to Portland later this week to cover that game, too. Hopefully I’ll have time/inspiration to write up a post for that game.
Cheers!
Crack of the Bat.
Roar of the crowd! Baseball’s back on WNYX!*
A couple days into the season, I got around to shooting my first Mariners game of the year. Like last year, they’re off to a poor start and expectations are probably the lowest they’ve been since 1995. Which makes for some very open photo wells.
I’d slightly botched an earlier play at the plate, which wasn’t super photogenic to begin with, but given I didn’t see a single homeplate play in all the games I shot last season – again, the Mariners were not a good team – I was a little afraid my one opportunity of the year had already passed.
Little did I know that Mariners outfielder Ryan Langerhans would make an ill-advised attempt at home a half inning later, providing me with the above photo. I was pretty stoked.
Good times, good times.*
* – Sorry, as a longtime News Radio fan, I couldn’t help myself.
Some stuff that I’ve shot lately:
Fall has finally arrived and I thought it would be a good time for me to review some of what I’ve shot over the summer. I know I should have found time before now to write a blog post about my past assignments, but I often find it difficult to get motivated for the challenge of staring at a blank screen and creating a narrative out of my photos.
I didn’t substantially improve my baseball shooting at all this season. The Mariners were so horrible that I only shot a scattering of games, either day games of opponents likely to make the playoffs or games Felix Hernandez was pitching.
The above image was shot during a mid-week series against the Chicago White Sox, the favorite team of my youth. Though I was born on the Southside of the Windy City and attended my first games at the old – and far superior – Comiskey Park, I would rather have shot some great photos than seen the Sox win the games. I did manage to get a few nice frames, but nothing fantastic.
Chicago’s irascible manager Ozzie Guillen playfully reacts while signing autographs before a game. It sort of looks as if he’s about to sneeze or was just punched in the stomach:
Lighting strikes twice for King Felix cover photo
The crack of the bat! The roar of the crowd! Baseball’s back, as evidenced by the abundant season preview magazines currently on newsstands.
I recently found out that a photo I shot of the Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez, a.k.a. King Felix, was used on the cover of not one, but two baseball season preview magazines. Both Athlon Sports and the Sporting News found a photo of Hernandez that I had shot fit for their Pacific Northwest covers. After inspecting the credit line inside, making sure this was my photo that was used, I then double-checked the publishing info on the staff box page of each respective magazine. I thought there might have been a merger that I hadn’t heard of in the past couple of years in which both magazines were now owned by one company that might have purchased a single license for the photo and then used it twice.
