Friday night proved a great night for BYU football, though it didn’t seem too hard for them as they soared to a 47-0 victory of Hawaii. Shooting a blowout is not that exciting for those of us on the sideline, as the second half seems to stretch on and on and more photos of BYU offense running the ball gets redundant fast. But at least I was covering the winning team.

For our part, my fellow staffer James Roh and I came away with some great images to illustrate BYU’s dominance, and Hawaii’s inability to put the ball in the endzone.

BYU football is a big deal for our newspaper, and I always go into a game with a healthy amount of stress. But as BYU racked up the points and I accumulated some solid images of key plays, that stress evaporated and I was able to have some fun trying to perfect my game.

The hardest part of shooting football, for me, is capturing receptions. You are looking through a 400mm lens with a very narrow field of view. You watch the quarterback as he takes the snap and drops back. When you see that he is lining up for a pass and not a running play, you have to take your eye away from the viewfinder and try to figure out who it is going to. Swing the lens in their direction, glue your eye to the camera, line up your focus point, and pull the trigger. This has to happen fast. And it is hard.

It is a running joke of mine, that my fellow photogs are surely tired of, that if you nail it on a quick pass (good framing, sharp focus, capturing the moment right as – or right before – the ball hits the receiver’s hands), it will inevitably be incomplete or a penalty will recall the play. 

The above image illustrates just such an occurance as Hawaii’s Jeremiah Ostrowski bungled the play and the ball dropped to the grass. This is frustrating, since I am bound to miss an important reception here and there. When I nail it, I want the play to mean something. But, since Hawaii’s failure to connect the dots in key moments was part of the story, it fit the gallery nicely.