Photography isn’t just snap-and-go, it’s an art

Dahlberg’s Power Play

Snap. Crop. Edit. Place.

This mantra is one that plays through my head repeatedly, almost on a constant loop that doesn’t usually take a break.

As a sports photographer, and pretty much the only one on staff, the demand for getting photos of home games usually occurs every weekend.

I might have a free weekend every once in a while, but usually, there is something happening either on a home court or field.

With this job though, I have rediscovered my interests in athletics and found that I have a knack for the job I have. Capturing pictures of athletes, games, and powerful moments is interesting, mainly because it’s the ability to freeze a moment in time, granting people the ability to look back on that time whenever they have the desire to reminisce.

The job is meticulous though and is very time-consuming.

It starts with going to the athletic event to get the photos. Depending on the time of year, I could be going to something on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which happened at one point with basketball games on Friday and Saturday which was followed by a Sunday wrestling match.

Next is transferring the photos onto the newsroom’s desktop, which will take longer based on how many photos I’m actually moving. Then the time it takes to look through those photos to find the ones that are good enough to publish can take hours and the editing hasn’t even begun yet.

With editing, one must crop, lighten, tone and possibly even edit the vibrancy of the photos. Photos have to be saved in an RGB mode and a grayscale mode if it goes on an inside page or saved in CMYK if it is on a colored page.

The final-ish step comes when the pictures get pulled onto a page, but the worst part of the time committed is that there are a number of photos that can’t make the pages because of the limited space we have.

But I still love my job even if it stresses me out to the border of burnout. I still want to pursue a career in photography anyway.