Nice Professional Football Helmets photos
Check out these professional football helmets images:
Football: Jets-v-Eagles, Sep 2009 – 08
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Note: this photo was published in an Oct 31, 2011 , with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page
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I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that, until last night, I had never been to a professional football game in my life. Baseball, basketball, and tennis: yes, of course. High-school and college football games: sure, though that was a long time ago. Indeed, the last college football game I watched (in person) was in the mid-60s, when I was invited to the annual Harvard-Yale game by a Radcliffe student I had begun dating — a development to which my MIT college roommate reacted, in shock, by howling, "Radcliffe? You’re dating a Cliffie? She must be a pig!" After which he pulled out his flute, every time he thought she might be present when he returned to our off-campus apartment, and played "Old McDonald Had a Farm" until he collapsed in gales of laughter on the stairwell. Highly inaccurate, I hasten to note, and totally unfair. But I digress…
Anyway, a freelance writer, Mitch Ligon (whose photo you can see in one of my Flickr sets), invited me to accompany him last night to the New York Jets – Philadelphia Eagles game out in the New Jersey Meadowlands — another first-time experience. I was given a photographer’s press pass, which gave me access to the locker rooms, press box, various other "inner sanctum" locations … and, most important, the football field itself. I was given a red jersey to wear, told to stay outside the yellow dashed lines that ring the field, and turned loose for the evening. I felt somewhat inadequate, because I knew that the "real" professional photographers would be equipped with high-cameras and monstrous telephoto lenses beyond anything I had ever touched, or could possibly afford; and even though my Nikon D300 and 70-300mm zoom lens is fairly respectable in amateur circles, I had no idea if I would be able to take any decent photos at all…
The other problem is that I know little or nothing about the nuances of football, beyond the obvious fact that the quarterback either passes the ball, or hands off to someone who attempts to run the ball downfield. Punts and field-goal kicks are also a familiar concept, but if you don’t have a good anticipatory sense of who is about to do what to whom, it’s easy to miss the "moment" when the perfect shot might be available. Also, I didn’t really know anything about the players, aside from the respective star quarterbacks: Philadelphia’s controversial Michael Vick, and New York’s newly-named starting quarterback, Mark Sanchez. I had looked at the team rosters on the Internet before the game, so at least I knew their jersey numbers (#6 for Sanchez, and #7 for Vick, as you’ll see in the photos) — but the "action" was often so far away (at the other end of the field) that I couldn’t tell whether the starting quarterback, or one of the substitutes, was making the plays.
Nevertheless, by the beginning of the second quarter I was feeling a little more comfortable — if only because I found it easy to follow along behind the other professional photographers as they marched (or ran) from one end of the field to the other, in order to get their equipment set up for what they expected would be the next great shot. By the end of the game, I had taken 1,100+ photos, including several of Michael Vick in a post-game locker-room interview; and from the sound of the clickety-click-clack of my fellow photographers, I could tell that many of them had taken several thousand. I’ll spare you the technical details of my feeble attempts to get some decent shots; I had picked up some good tips from the sports-photography chapter of Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography, and I did my best within the limitations of my equipment and my lack of familiarity with the situation.
What impressed me most about the whole experience was the scale of modern professional football — the scale of everything. It’s one thing to read that there are 80,000 people in a football stadium; it’s another thing to actually be there and hear the simultaneous roar of those 80,000 people as a quarterback is sacked or a long pass is completed. It’s one thing to read that a professional football player is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 350 pounds; it’s another thing to stand next to several dozen such giants. Heck, I thought there were only 20 or 30 such giants on each team; I had no idea that there were 64 of them (a number which will be pared down as the pre-season comes to an end), or that there might be 20-30 different coaches. And then there are the hundreds of "staff members" scurrying around all over the place, carrying out their various duties and assignments; and there are the security guards and State Police, who spent most of the time scanning the stadium crowd rather than watching the players, presumably watching for scuffles or fights or … well, who knows what. There are cheerleaders too, in this case bearing the official name of New York Jets Flight Crew; I had expected half a dozen, but there were two dozen perky, long-haired beauties, with permanently frozen smiles, who who danced and pranced before the crowd at every conceivable opportunity.
All of this has resulted in the photos you’ll see in this album. I had to delete roughly a hundred of my original images, because they were out of focus, or because a referee decided to walk in front of my camera at the wrong moment; and another 900 were "okay," but not terribly exciting. I’m sure that none of them are as crisp, sharp, and well-composed as those taken by the Sports Illustrated photographer and the other professionals on the field; but I did end up with 72 "keepers" that I hope you’ll enjoy…
… and, yes, I probably will attend another football game or two in the years ahead. Whether I’m lucky enough to get down on the field again is anyone’s guess….
NY Jets vs. Buffalo, Oct 2009 – 03
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These NY Jets players were all huddled in the "tunnel" that leads out to the field, just before their arrival was announced to the 76,000 fans in the stands. As best I could understand the situation, I think all of the backup players and second-string players came out first; then the members of the starting team were announced individually over the loudspeaker, and ran out onto the field to the cheers of the crowd…
Actually, I was informed by someone, long after this game was over, that the guy wearing the #09 shirt was actually a fan, not a player. He had won some contest that allowed him to wear a suit and helmet, and join the team as they ran out onto the field before the game started. As you can see, he looks like quite a happy fan at this point…
Note: this photo was published as an illustration on an undated (Oct 2009) Boxxet blog titled "." It was also published in a Dec 28, 2009 blog about a subsequent, unrelated Jets game, titled "." And it was published in an Apr 19, 2010 , with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page. It was also published in an undated (Jun 2010) blog titled "."
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In mid-October, I attended my second professional football game, with a photographer’s press pass that let me get down on the field to photograph players, referees, cheerleaders, other photographers, fans in the stand, and anyone else who looked interesting. (My first such game was a pre-season contest between the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, which you can see by clicking .)
I learned some lessons from photographing the Jets-Eagles game, and I showed up this time better prepared, and with some new equipment. It was great having the Nikon D700 with the capability of shooting at ISO 6400; but the 2X extender that turned my 70-300mm FX lens into a 140-600 lens seemed incapable of focusing automatically; I finally gave up and removed it. Overall, probably the best improvement came from the monopod that I dragged along on the trip; it greatly improved the stability of long shots with a telephoto. Ironically, it may also have created the illusion that I was a professional photographer, for the "real" professional photographers (who had studiously ignored me during the previous game) actually chatted with me a couple of times. I didn’t have any of the bazooka-sized monster-telephoto lenses they had, but maybe they thought I wasn’t a completely unprepared hobbyist…
Anyway, I shot the first half of the game with the D700 and the 70-300mm zoom lens by itself; and I shot the second half of the game with my older D300, whose half-frame body turned the 70-300mm zoom into a 105-450mm zoom. The stadium was sufficiently well lit that I could shoot at a reasonably high speed (typically 1/640 second) without having to go above ISO 3200 most of the time.
But technical details aside, this game was very much like the last one: I was down on the field, surrounded by 76,000 roaring fans who made conversation virtually impossible. I’m accustomed to watching most sports on television these days, with magical close-up shots provided by TV cameras like the very ones I saw strategically placed around tonight’s football game; and when I’m befuddled by something complex or unexpected in whatever I’m watching, I know I can always depend on multiple instant replays (from various angles) and the incisive commentary from a TV sports anchor who knows far more about the players, the rules, and the details than I ever will.
Down on the field, all I could do was try my best to follow the action, and shoot anything that looked interesting. It usually (though not always) started with a snap to the quarterback — but it was sometimes on the other side of the field, or down at the other end of the field. Like the other photographers, I scurried back and forth from one end of the field to the other to be as close to the action as possible … but in many cases, all I ended up with was a picture of a tangle of bodies, and no clear idea of what had just happened.
After watching the Flickr statistics associated with my previous Jets-Eagles set, I was amused to see that the most popular photos were those of the cheerleaders … so I included about 5 photos of the cheerleaders in this set. (And for whatever it’s worth, I certainly did not envy them in their skimpy uniforms, while they did their best to cope with the 45-degree weather, and the chilly wind that whipped across the field.) I also found the fans interesting and occasionally picturesque, so you’ll find about 10 fan-related pictures in this set.
Since I was on the field through the generosity and permission of the New York Jets, I naturally rooted for them to win. But they played pretty sloppily, and their rookie quarterback (Mark Sanchez, whose #6 jersey appears prominently in some of the photos) was intercepted five times. The regulation game finished in a 13-13 tie, so the game went into overtime … and I’m such a dummy about football that I didn’t even realize that it was a sudden death overtime. But when the Buffalo Bills kicked a three point field goal with 2:44 remaining in the overtime period, and all of the players immediately walked off the field, I quickly figured out what was happening…
Anyway, I took a little over 1,200 images and whittled it down to 60 "keepers" that I think you’ll enjoy looking at. Another 200 had to be deleted immediately because they were out of focus, or because a referee decided to run in front of my camera just as I was pushing the shutter button … but I’ve still got roughly 940 images of jumbled piles of football players that will probably continue to sit on my computer until I run out of space on my hard disk. C’est la vie…
Percy Harvin with his helmet off on the sidelines
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Nice, I like this shot. Out of the site of fans and just getting themselves amped up to play.
Yeah, that’s exactly what was happening. The only sad thing was — as far as I could tell — these were the second-string players, or perhaps members of the "special teams". They came out first, all in a bunch, and while the crowd cheered them, they weren’t announced individually over the loudspeakers.
After they had run out onto the field, the starting players (and especially the stars) came out one by one, accompanied by fiery cannon blasts, huge puffs of smoke, and frenzied cheers from the fans, while their name was called out as if they were rock stars appearing on stage…