John M. Setzler, Jr.

Trevin Parks - Hickory

Originally uploaded by John Setzler.

I have been doing this for over two years and it’s taken me a while to learn an important lesson in newspaper sports photography. I have thought about this before, but for some reason I haven’t been able to get myself into the proper frame of mind to do it.

Beginning with my next basketball games on Friday night, I will have two objectives at each event I cover. The first objective is to complete whatever the newspaper assignment requires. Oddly enough, that isn’t always easy to do in poor light. The second objective, the one I don’t seem to pay enough attention to, is to get at least one usable photo of every possible player I can, including the head coaches of each team.

This would be easier to accomplish if I started at the beginning of the season. I obviously won’t complete this task for every team in the basketball conference with just two weeks left in the regular season.

I KNOW that I will be asked for additional unpublished photos for use in the newspaper in the future. Sometimes, I have a problem providing what the sports editor is looking for. Being able to do this is dependent on me having a library of usable unpublished photos, especially of coaches and key players in the game. In basketball, those key players would be the normal five starters on each team plus the first two off the bench. In football, it’s going to be the offensive and defensive backfield players, plus the receivers. In soccer, it’s going to be anyone who is offensively active in the game. In wrestling, it’s going to be every kid who hits the mat. In baseball, it’s going to be the pitchers and the sluggers. Those are the ‘key’ sports that I need to work a little harder with.

My next basketball games are on Friday night. I’ll be covering two games, so that means I need approximately 30 photos. They don’t all have to be high action shots like the newspaper assignment requires. These additional photos are most commonly used for feature stories and to highlight players who receive various awards. In reality, I wouldn’t have to accomplish this task in a single game. In most cases, I will cover each team more than once during the season. I need to get a roster early in the season and make sure that I have identified and covered those key players by at least the third time I cover them during the season.

We’ll see if I can be successful at this on Friday night… I’ll try to post the results of the experiment this weekend…