FOTOBALL: Brick By Brick

When 2008 High School football preview time rolled around the new preps editor Jeff Cochran and I talked ideas. I offered up a construction theme idea thinking along the lines of what it takes to build a team, etc. and we went with it. I spent an entire afternoon driving around looking at construction sites and playing phone tag with construction companies. I couldn't get permission to use the fenced in site I wanted to so decided to just use an easily accessible site at night without getting permission. Luckily my subject DeDe Lattimore of Cedar Shoals High School was cool with the late night adventure. Fellow photographer Tricia Spaulding was a lifesaver who helped me haul all the lighting equipment and set up. I learned the value of having a modeling light as the sun faded leaving us in the middle of a pitch black construction site.
The Terrific 10 was a whole other story. I found a really great construction company that was willing to lend me whatever tools I wanted for several days. I shot all 10 of the guys at different times in the studio and did a composite. I'm no stranger to cutouts in photoshop because at my first paper I had to do one every single day for a front page teaser. This project was much more complicated however. It turned into a jigsaw puzzle of athletes that all had to fit perfectly on a 10.5 x 21 inch page. It was a lot of fun to work on.