re: This Bama/UT game photo is interesting. Whoever took it should be up for a Pulitzer...

I like the dude sitting in the front row giving zero fricks.

Tua and Ruggs were reserve players in that game

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It’s a solid pic, but Ole Miss @ Auburn in *that* gif is my favorite player and fan reaction.

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What are you talking about? There are more players in the block photo than any you just posted..

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As someone who has photographed numerous sporting events using film and a manual focus SLR, the block photo, while terrific, was an easy shot. All of the action is about to take place at a known location following a stoppage of play and was shot from the end zone from a distance where depth of field and focus were easily bracketed.

I'm not arguing the photo itself, again, its terrific and capture's the moment perfectly. It is just that any hack could've taken it 30 years ago with a monopod, a film camera and auto-winder. A 10 year old could've taken it with a digital camera with auto-focus in 2009.

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And even better ones than those when you start looking, especially older photos. The photography from some of the really old games was much better (probably because it was far more difficult so it required skill). Today sports photographers take a 1oo photos of a scene and an editor picks one out.

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That's only partially true. Almost every stadium has a media room. Photographers hit that as soon as they can and start downloading photos immediately to a laptop. If they are good at their job, they will have locked or flagged interesting photos during spare moments in game action and this will speed up the process. They will usually pick an initial 20-30 photos, add in professional exif information and event tags, and upload to their wire service. These are made available to either the wire service customers or the newspaper/website. An editor will pick from THOSE photos down to a final handful for publication. A common alternative will be a themed sports shoot - such as, maybe an editor will say "We will be writing an article next week on the QB who is a potential Heisman candidate. Make sure you get a few hundred shots of THAt guy, good clear ones out in space." And so forth.

The wire service will keep the photo set active and tagged by event, and any purchaser, magazine, website, etc. will have access to them for years. But for the BEST money to be made, speed is of the essence and getting important game action photos online IMMEDIATELY might mean the difference of big paydays for photographers. I have been paid for photos several years after taking them. Not much, but the checks do come every once in a while. I had one fan photo published about four years after taking it - the fan pic made it into a calendar, and they paid me $30, whoo frickin' hoo. Newspapers typically want action shots only. Wire services will want action for immediate sales, but the residuals come from shots taken of fans, good clear solo player shots taken during warm ups, coaches, no-name players, stadium, etc. More general stuff gets used all the time.

Note that it is VERY hard to get prolific enough to build a base to earn enough residual income to make it a profession. Over 75% of all serious sports photographers I know have other jobs that are somewhat flexible in schedule.

Just for a fun comparison, here's how they did it in the old film days. I.e., before the early 2000's. The newspaper editor would hand you maybe 10 rolls of 1600 ASA film for a night time game, with instructions to be back downtown at the newspaper office before the end of the game so they could develop the prints from negative strips and get them on the AP wire as the game ended. That's right... 240 or so shots of the entire game, and they were gonna be of MUCH lower quality than you'd see today. That's why you don't see the number of late game last-minute shots from old legacy games, there was usually nobody was there to shoot them.

Trash arse Vols

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he raced BACK to the OPPOSITE end zone to get the shot from behind the action. This was done at a full sprint. I know this for a fact because I was about 5 yards behind him.

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Yeah, Its obvious it is an end zone shot, but that's pretty cool that he did that. Good on him for having the insight to make that call to get the shot.

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And candidly, a 10 year old will not have that kind of experience, nor the several thousands of dollars worth of professional equipment he had. JMHO.

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Certainly correct on the equipment and of course a 10 yr old wouldn't have a clue where to set up as you were dead on about it being all about positioning.

Kind of off topic, but the equipment advantages today are laughable. In the 1980's I and just about everyone else was using a Nikon F3. I felt like I was the shite when I I was able to get my hands on a 300mm 2.8 lens. It barely mattered at night games in Tiger Stadium. We were shooting Tri-X 400 and still having to push it twice to get anything usable. The only saving grace was the telex machines of the day were so shitty, it didn't matter.

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That was the last game my Dad and I watched together before he passed away last 26 October. He was a happy man that night We stayed up late watching all the post game interviews on YouTube which he found fascinating ... Mom made him come to bed around 2AM even though he didn't want to go. We were having fun. Must have heard him say Go Vols ten times that night.

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We had no chance that game and we all knew it but it had some really fun moments I’m glad that the last game with your dad was one in which you and he had so much fun together. Part of the reason I watch CFB is that it connects me to npmy mom (she’s a huge fan) and stepdad. It binds us together across generations. I’m dry sorry for your loss but happy that you have such a great memory.

When the time comes I hope we are all lucky enough to have memories like that.