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Hit me with your best shot

By Cora Kemp
ckemp4@mscd.edu

It is said, if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life. And I stand by those words every day I stand behind the camera.

I cannot say how many times I have taken crap for only having to push a button; that there is no creativity in the photograph; and the best one, that I’ve spent more than $1,500 on a camera that does not even make my entire photo sharp.

But little do those people know how often photographers throw themselves in the path of danger for the sake of a good photo, which averages to 1/250 of a second of time.

Often shooting at sports events, I have dealt with soccer balls, volleyballs and basketballs going astray and somehow magnetically pulled to this photographer and her gear.

This basketball season, a new object has found itself flying toward this crouching photographer: Metro player Jesse Wagstaff.

A photographer is a fine-tuned machine, trained to know what is going to happen seconds before it actually does. And when you know a 6-foot-8-inch player will send his body flying toward yours, all that runs though the mind in that brief time is “save my gear.”

I have now encountered Metro’s star forward twice during the season, and many of my colleagues believe he is falling for me … literally. But these repetitious incidents just go to show that these athletes play their hearts out just as the photographers shoot their hearts out.

Metro’s games are packed with passion for their sport, from the coaches to the players all the way down to those nerdy journalists on the sidelines.

The next time you attend a sporting event, take heed in the signs that give notice to flying objects, they are there for a reason. And remember that fotogs will do ANYTHING to get that ideal image.