My first Full Page Plus in SI

[dmwierz]

Shameless Personal Plug Alert! :D

My wife just picked up the mail and brought it into the house, and while I was looking through this week's Sports Illustrated, imagine my surprise when I saw an image of mine taking up page 32 and 33. Yahoo! Not my first shot in SI by any means, but my first one of this size.

Here's the original shot (ignore the horrid pink lights in the background - they dim the lights over the crowd at ND during the game and this turns them this putrid pink color).

http://www.pbase.com/dmwierz45/image/109852752.jpg

Edit: replaced the scan with a photo of the SI pages.

http://www.pbase.com/dmwierz45/image/109852790.jpg

Does this qualify as a (Double Truck)/1.5 ? :rolleyes:

Thing is, this wasn't even my favorite shot from that game and I saw it in SI and thought: "Huh, I wonder who got a full page + shot of T-Will in SI?", then I looked at the credit and yelled out something or another about a stinky yet sacred substance!

Dennis

[LostShootingStar]

Wow, that's a pretty cool accomplishment, congrats! http://m08o1124znfu179.imageshacknow.info/img/2465/o09a0208gstn/POTNsmile.gif
http://m08o1124znfu179.imageshacknow.info/img/3218/n08d1214eybr/1by1.gif
http://m08o1124znfu179.imageshacknow.info/img/3200/n08d1214eybr/1by1.gif

[golemite]

congrats!!

[AustinRoepke]

How'd they get your shot?

And congrats!

[Huskers69]

Dennis, that's awesome congrats.

[dmwierz]

Thanks, everyone. Austin, I work for various wire services and was covering this game for one of them.

[skintero]

Fantastic shot!

Just out of curiosity, and I have zero desire to be a professional sports shooter, what does SI pay for a shot like this?

[The Moose]

It never is the favourite shot that makes it, is it? Congrats though! Looks good.

[dmwierz]

Thanks again, everybody.

Skintero, I dunno what the payday will be since I haven't had a shot of this size in SI before. Probably a lot less than most folks would think.

[jamesb84]

Nice shot Dennis...I really ought to scan in some of my tearsheets...i had my first double page in a national in January, and I remember thinking then "damn this is a good shot".

For those in the UK, it was...THIS SHOT (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/rugby_union/article2170771.ece)(though a better crop than that one) and it was a double page spread in the paper.

As you say, it's probably not as much $$$ as people think! I got a nice sum for mine, be interesting to see what yours is/was.

James.

[Big Hands]

Well done Dennis! It is an excellent image.

Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
Jeff

[Sledhed]

Congrats Dennis - I'll give you a call when I get back from Spring Training and we'll go to lunch.

[Tigershark]

Congrats Dennis, happens to be my Son's favorite player in College

[TheSportsGuy]

Oh man! That is awesome.

This is one of the goals that I would love to accomplish. Man, to have a shot in a great magazine like SI........ I think I would s*** myself.

Congrats man.

[eigga]

Great pic and congrats. You have helped me so much as I have gone from a Dad with camera to a "pro" with a business over the last 3 years. Wish you continued sucess, and I also would be interested in pay range if you are willing to share.

[bobbyz]

Congrats Dennis.

[Zivnuska]

Bravo and Congratulations! Terrific Dennis.

I'm off to buy a copy of SI.

Phil

[MJPhotos24]

Congrats Dennis - rounds on you now that you're rich! haha, if only :) I know they used to pay pretty nice for a two pager, not sure what it is now.

[TheSportsGuy]

Oh Snap!! Dennis in North Carolina!

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff215/NCStateDude/IMG_6566.jpg

[DDCSD]

Outstanding!

[wesley_winterink]

Congratulations, Dennis!! Just by coincidence I happened to see that on your pbase site (which I have bookmarked) although I liked the Troy Jackson photo right next to it a little better!!

[wfcs1962]

Congrats Dennis, I'm another who has learned much from you and others who post here and I hope to keep learning.

[Duncan Frenz]

I was happy just to get 3rd place in the county art fair when I was in high school... Just goes to show how relative things are.

Congratulations on getting the spread, I'd be overwhelmed as well you should be! Great stuff.

[xochi2]

Dennis

Congratulations! You'll never really know how many of us; admire your work, listen to your advice with reverence and use your photography as the high bar of excellence! Thank you! BRAVO!

[Simon Turkin]

bw! When payday roles around will you throw up a number near it its none of ne ones business but i was always curious how much a shot like that goes for bw!

Nice work congrats

[tmalone893]

Congrats Dennis. Very nice shot and thanks for sharing some of your experiences with us.

[Perry Ge]

Congrats Dennis!

[dmwierz]

Thanks, y'all.

[*Knowledge*]

Wow congrats, I was reading that article today.
Much respect.

[dawiyo]

Congrats Dennis, saw it today as well.

[SPORTshot]

Wow, very cool man ! I hope, I can get to that level one day.

How many digits are we looking at here in terms of pay scale.....2,3, or 4:shock:

[Zivnuska]

It's very cool to be able say that the guy who helped me with my middle school pictures of my daughter has this huge pic in SI.

Everybody you've helped shares your joy.

[dmwierz]

Hey, guys. Thanks again. I understand how folks might be interested in how much a placement like this pays, but I honestly don't know, and may not find out for a while since SI can take a while to pay.

[tmalone893]

It's very cool to be able say that the guy who helped me with my middle school pictures of my daughter has this huge pic in SI.

Everybody you've helped shares your joy.

+1 on that statement.

[DDCSD]

Just pulled mine out of the mail box. I'll just say it again, "outstanding"!

[Biffbradford]

... while I was looking through this week's Sports Illustrated, imagine my surprise when I saw an image of mine taking up page 32 and 33.

Huh? Don't they ask permission to use your photo, and where did they get it from? Did you submit it? I mean, this is SI, not someone's blog. :confused:

[dave kadolph]

It's very cool to be able say that the guy who helped me with my middle school pictures of my daughter has this huge pic in SI.

Everybody you've helped shares your joy.


One of my mentors is now published in the big league.

May this open many other doors for you!

Congrats and heartfelt thanks!

[dmwierz]

Huh? Don't they ask permission to use your photo, and where did they get it from? Did you submit it? I mean, this is SI, not someone's blog. :confused:

??? Biff, once the images are uploaded to the wire service, one never knows where it's gonna end up until it ends up somewhere. SI (or anyone else who picks up an image) doesn't need your permission - you agree to the image being used for editorial purposes in accordance with the terms of your credentials and agreement with the wire service and the publication agrees to pay to use the shot. That's the whole idea behind shooting for a wire service.

In fact, I often don't know one of my shots was used until I get a check in the mail (or sometimes when the wire service notifies me).

Thanks again to everybody for the kind words. The buzz has almost worn off from last week, so now I gotta get a full double-truck or even a cover!

[SYS]

Oh man, am I jealous!! :lol:

Congrats!! :D

[Dan-o]

Show off!. :) Congratulation Dennis, I guess I'm just surprised it is your first.

[drmac]

??? Biff, once the images are uploaded to the wire service, one never knows where it's gonna end up ........ That's the whole idea behind shooting for a wire service.




Can you further explain? Does a wire service contact you for specific pictures or do you volunteer to upload? What wire service do you upload to? Other information?

[Biffbradford]

Can you further explain? Does a wire service contact you for specific pictures or do you volunteer to upload? What wire service do you upload to? Other information?

Yes, thanks for the explanation, I had no idea and if you've got more info, I'm all ears! http://emoticons4u.com/cool/681.gif

[dmwierz]

I can't explain how it works for everyone, but I'll tell you how it works for me.

There are a finite number of wire services in existence. I found an up-and-coming wire service a few years back and fortunately they were looking for shooters in my region. I had been working for a small wire for almost a year prior to that (got connected through networking contacts - another story entirely), and prior to that covering HS sports for a couple years for two national prep sports photography organizations. So, I had a portfolio of images I could show, which also included a lot of youth stuff.

The Photo Editor at this wire liked my stuff and approved me to shoot for them. With this wire, most of the time I tell them which events/games I want to work, and they apply for credentials.

I try to choose games where at least one of the teams playing has a player or players who are newsworthy, or pick a team that is doing something interesting - this is work, not just fun - you need to not only take good pictures, but they need to be of somebody whose picture someone will want to pay money for.

Then, I cover the game, usually taking somewhere around 300-500 images. During the game, some wires require you to transmit your best images as the game unfolds. For MLB, this means every couple innings or more frequently when a great play or something else very interesting happens and you get a shot of it. For Pro/NCAA football and basketball, this normally means transmitting during halftime. These wires are normally the ones who sell a lot of images to the daily newspapers - they want the get their shot on the Web ASAP to make it into the dailies before anyone else does (sometimes, especially in the evening, you're dealing with newspaper publication deadlines - they need the images in time to include them in the next edition).

It's my job to pick the best shots (one of the most important things an aspiring sports photographer can learn to do is to evaluate their own work. When you're doing this for real, you and only you will be there to pick the winners from the losers). Once the winners are chosen, they need to be edited and captioned. Editing usually means sharpening, toning, straightening, cropping for effect, resizing to the proper size (wires have dimensional requirements) then captioning and when you're done, transmitting to the wire's FTP site. Some shooters transmit live from courtside, or rinkside, or from the sidelines of a game. Others do this from designated photo rooms that the teams or schools provide.

Captioning is a lot of work, too. Those captions you read are normally written by the photographer while at the game. This means you have to write the who/what/where/when and how for every last image you select. There are tools (like Photo Mechanic) that make this easier, but in the end captioning is done one by one for each image.

Once the images are transmitted to the wire service's FTP site, in some cases, they go to a Photo Editor who reviews them. He or she may call you if you haven't submitted anything they can use, or to tell you your images are dark, or too bright, or the white balance is off, or if they need more/some shots of a particular player, etc.

Or, more likely, once you've earned your stripes and shown you can submit consistently quality shots, your images will go directly to the wire service's servers and be released to the World to be searched by the daily newspapers and other publications. More on this later.

So, you've transmitted maybe 10 images during the game or at halftime. Directly after the game you go through the rest of your shots and pick another 30-40 and go through the whole thing again (edit, caption, re-size, etc and then transmit). You get used to staying 1-2 hours after the game is over. It's never hard to find my car in the parking lot as it's usually one of the only ones left there :) .

Now what happens to the shots once the wire service gets them? Part of the captioning process embeds information in each image called IPTC data: (http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/iptc_naa.html#whatfield and http://www.ap.org/apserver/userguide/codes.htm). Once again, it's Photo Mechanic to the rescue, but you the photographer have to set up all the automated information that goes into each images IPTC data (teams, location, date, league, time, etc) and then each image has to have the players' names (properly spelled, of course) embedded within the appropriate fields in the image's IPTC data (in addition to in the caption).

When a publication like SI is doing a story on a team or a player, they log onto the many wire services they work with and do a search (keyword search) for that player, or that team using software that searches the IPTC keywords and other fields. If they find something they like, they purchase the rights to use it from the wire service. They (eventually) pay the wire service and then the photographer gets paid.

What this means is, when your shot is published, there was something about that image taken of that player (or team) that the publication liked over all other images they found of that player/team. Get the idea of how tuff the competition is?

More often than not, the shots of mine that have sold (to SI, ESPN the Mag, etc) have been what are known as "stock" images - not a shot of the great play of the game - more a good capture of a player or players doing something interesting (think: peak action and faces - see my podcast, episode one).

The Great Play shots are normally taken by the newspaper (dailies) photographers or the big wire services, like AP or Getty. Or, in the case of SI and ESPN, their own staff photographers take many of these shots, though it's easier to get a great action shot in SI, ESPN or Sporting News, et al.

That's a brief explanation of how I've worked with a few wire services. I also shoot for a few publications, and in this case, my images usually are only used by these publications, but once again, I only know when they've chosen one of my images when I or somebody else sees it, or when the wire emails me ('cuz they've seen it) or, as a last resort, when I get paid.

While I still own the copyright/rights to these shots, the teams sometimes get irate when you shoot their game for one publication and another one prints an image you took for the credentialing publication. This is usually a team-by-team thing.

So you see, my shot of T-Will was, for whatever reason, the right shot of the right player taken at the right time, being sought by the right publication - above all the other shots they had of him. What I'm saying is there is an amount of skill involved, but you have to have some level of luck, too. Most of my absolute best shots never get sold 'cuz they're of players or teams (or even sports) that aren't being written about, or somebody else has a better image than I did (or they shot with strobes and I shot ambient light - something that happens a lot at big-time basketball and hockey games - the Big Guys get the best shots with the best color and saturation and exposure 'cuz they're using strobes, and the rest of us shooting ambient limp by trying to do the best we can).

Phew, that was long. Hope it helps anyone interested to understand the process.

[SYS]

That's great, I enjoyed reading the process of working with some of these wire services. Thank you so much!!

[DDCSD]

I can't explain how it works for everyone, but I'll tell you how it works for me....

This needs its own thread and sticky at the top of this section!

Thanks for that Dennis!

[Biffbradford]

Quite informative and very much appreciated ! http://emoticons4u.com/happy/045.gif

[drmac]

WOW! Great explination! Thank you for the info

[Huskers69]

That's real cool Dennis, I would matte and frame that SI picture if it was mine.

[KatzNK9]

Congrats! Well done!