Not long ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph Tedy Bruschi of The New England Patriots.
Tedy had a stroke a couple years ago, but has made an amazing recovery, and has started a foundation for stroke awareness, called Tedy’s Team.
My crew was hired to shoot stills of him, while we piggy backed on a video crew’s set. I’ve done jobs like this in the past, and also having worked behind a video camera on a set, I knew what the unspoken golden rule was: Video Gets Priority.
That means they set up their lights and shoot, then they give you a couple minutes to step in and snap away, under their lighting conditions. It sounds nerve-wracking, I know, but it’s just the way these things are.
Luckily, these were talented folks, and the lighting was great. Now I don’t know squat about football, so engaging Tedy was going to prove difficult. Luckily, we found out that we both hailed from California, and that we both lived in San Francisco at one time. Phew. Thank God he didn’t ask me about football.
The bonus of this job was being able to shoot some shots of him out on the practice field with my Graflex cameras.
It’s not that I mind shooting sports figures, I’m just hoping that next time I get that call, it’s for Tom Waits!
