Sony Alpha Universe post on My Most Meaningful Photo of the Year

Lake Mills HS FB Coach Tyler Huber rides the bus with his team enroute to what would be their final game of the season in the third round of the playoffs against rival Lodi.

Frame grab from a Sony a7SIII with 24-70mm f2.8 GM II lens on a DJI Ronin RS3 Gimbal shot at 4K.

Here’s my longer post about the project which goes more into detail about some of the tools and techniques and distinctions that I gained from this project:

This year was full of wonderful weddings, portraits, and commercial work, but the project that was the most meaningful was my video-only project documenting the entire season of our local high school football team in a project I called “A Season With the L-Cats, 2022”.

Our town is small (6200 people) and located in south central Wisconsin and is sports crazy (in a good way) Football is probably the biggest sport for our town as in many towns across the country.  We even have a true cross-town rival that is literally a walk across the street from our campus.

When head coach Tyler Huber reached out in the spring asking if I had any video from the previous season, I shared a couple of shorts that I did as little “concept videos”.  They were rather raw, but he loved what he saw.  

I asked if he would allow me access to document the team behind the scenes from the beginning of the season until the end and he was an enthusiastic yes.  To my wife’s chagrin (she knows that she’ll be a “Friday night widow” during football season), it was a go!

I set out on this project for a few reasons:  

One, I wanted to do a deep dive, BTS of the season so people could see and understand the glory as well as the pain that these kids go through.  Football, I believe, is America’s game and the teamwork, camraderie and sheer brute force of the game is fascinating. 

My primarily love over my career is documentary projects and particularly of sports.  I have documented three previous football seasons (though primarily with still photos — two for Tesoro HS in CA and the 2019 L-Cats in our first fall back in Wisconsin) so this was my first doing all video.

Two, I wanted to fine tune and hone my video skills so that I could be as confident shooting video as I am shooting stills.  

And three, I wanted to get significantly better and faster at video editing.

At the heart I believe that all photographers will become videographers if not now then some time in the future and I want to embrace what I consider to be inevitable.

I believe the project was successful on all fronts.  

There were moments of great joy and sadness over the course of the season that I witnessed on the field and behind the scenes.  From season-ending injuries for some players, to overcoming all odds and beating a dreaded rival at Homecoming, there was the full gamut of emotions.

As the season progressed, my shooting skills became significantly stronger, I believe.  And while I’m not quite as “unconscious” (in a good way) as I am with shooting stills only, by the end of the season I found my groove and what proved to be my preferred working method.  

(That method was a Sony a7SIII with a 24-70mm f2.8 GM II on a Ronin DJI RS3 gimbal with the “secret weapon”, the DJI Twist Grip Dual Handle that I supported by attaching a Peak Design Slide Lite strap (two small rig D-Ring screws were attached to the Twist Grip).  The second camera was a Sony a1 handheld (on Active Stabilization) with a 70-200 f2.8 GM II with a Sony 1.4X tele extender.  That gave me a bit more reach and then a fixed f4 aperture.)

For frame rates, I found that 60P worked best for me when shooting action and I preferred shooting the locker room at 24P.  

I used a Rode Go II for part of the season with a small Rode Micro or Deity D4 mini attached to the camera using a Rode splitter cable.  This allowed me to get a track of audio from the Rode Go transmitter and then a track of audio for the shotgun.  That was on the gimbal camera.

On the a1 with the longer lens, I usually used a small shotgun microphone or, later in the season, I added the Sony ECM-B10(?) for high quality audio through the MIS hotshoe.

(I also tried a DJI Microphone over the season and found that I was having some issues with a too loud signal, which may very well have been my problem of having the gain too high on the camera.  Both the Rode GO II and the DJI Mic record the audio track as well as transmit the signal so you have a back up…while not a 32 bit float recording unit, it does very well. )

The third and final goal from the project was to increase my speed, quality and confidence of editing (in Final Cut ProX).

I would guess that by the end of the season my editing time per episode was cut by 30-50% if not more.  I also got better at exposure at capture plus  having a better sense of what I wanted and needed for the particular episode as well as having a running catalogue in my brain about what had already been done.

Bottom line with editing, I found:  Quick keys are your friend and learning the basics such as setting an in point (I) and out point (O) and then favoriting a clip (F) were critical but some less well-known quick keys such as  Option-Left Bracket (to delete all the footage BEFORE the playhead on a clip) and Option - Right Bracket (to delete all the footage AFTER the playhead on a clip).

Learning those last two commands probably saved me and my wrists from the tedious task of using the blade tool, highlighting the clip, and then selecting the gap to delete.  

I am extremely grateful to Tyler Huber, the head coach, as well as the rest of his coaching crew, Athletic Director Steve Considine and the school administrators who graciously allowed my presence during the season from the first day I showed up (in the rain) to the heart-break of losing to Lodi in the third round of the playoffs.  

I also want to thank the players, student trainers and their parents for allowing me to document this aspect of their lives.  The kids were open to the project without any hesitation and just did their thing while I did mine all through the season.  I can only suspect that it had to be hard knowing I was there for the heartbreak as well as the joy, and yet they were great sports about it.

This labor of love project showed the capabilities of these Sony cameras and lenses and what can be done by a one-person crew.  It was a tremendous experience and only makes me want to do more of this type of work in the future.

This image is of Coach Huber quietly riding the team bus to what would be the final game of the year, their playoff loss to rival Lodi High School.

Shot with the Sony a7SIII, 24-70mm f2.8 GM II on a DJI Ronin RS3 gimbal using PP11 (S-Cinetone).