Pablo Sandoval in Sports Illustrated
Posted on September 28, 2009
Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants bats against Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee during the game at AT&T Park on July 31, 2009 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)
Sometimes you can plan for the perfect photograph and spend weeks trying to get everything all lined up, only to have the light be bad, the player not cooperate, stadium security get in the way, or the star player you are shooting go into a slump. There are other times when things work out way too easily with last-minute planning and a nice idea from a photo editor. One game. Four at bats. And $30.00 to park.
The San Francisco Giants put together a surprisingly good season in 2009 and Sports Illustrated decided to do a feature on their best hitter Pablo Sandoval. Pablo is a switch hitter who will swing at any pitch from his head to his toes. This makes if difficult sometime to get a real nice batting picture of him. This story was closing pretty quick and the magazine did not have an opener yet (a photograph to be printed across two pages to open the story with). Due to the tight deadline my baseball picture editor Nate Gordon needed me to shoot Pablo in action on a Friday night against the Phillies at AT&T Park. Nate told me the editors back in New York were looking for a wide horizontal shot with the batter on the left and the pitcher on the right with losts of sky to drop in type. “It would be great if you could get the ball in the sky,” said Nate.
The big problem for me was that I was already assigned to shoot Oakland Raider training camp that day in Napa and I would not be done till after 5pm. We figured I could rush to San Francisco in bad commute traffic and just barely get to the park for the first pitch. Just like we thought I rolled near the ballpark at 7:05pm for a 7:15pm first pitch. It could never get into the media lot this late, so I parked in the super expensive underground lot right across the street from the park for $30.00. Man was that convenient!
This is what Sandoval’s first at bat looked like with the white sky. This would not have worked out too well as the ball would not have shown up in the sky. (Photo by Brad Mangin)
The perfect spot to shoot this picture from- and the ONLY spot was in the Lexus Field Club section just to the first base side of home plate in the front row, shooting through the backstop netting. Luckily the ushers and fans were super cool and I went back to the same spot for each at bat. Going into the game in Late July I knew that the first at bat would have a white sky, the second at bat would have a dark blue sky and the final two at bats would have a black sky. I really needed a good swing with the ball in the sky when it was not white. Luckily Pablo hit a fly ball to center field in his second at bat with the pretty dark blue sky and the editors did a real nice job of making the image work as the opener for the story. Sometimes shooting wide is really the way to go- especially when you have a chance to work with great editors!
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