On Sunday morning, like so many others in Chicago, I headed to Solider Field excited for the home opener football game between the Bears and Buffalo Bills. Several hours later, like so many others, I left Soldier Field still trying to make sense of what I had just seen.
The game was supposed to be a relatively easy win for the Bears. However, time and time again, they were unable to develop plays and the Bills capitalized on their shortcomings to win in overtime.
Here at the Tribune, two or three photographers are normally assigned to cover any given Bears game. For Sunday’s game we had four photographers working together, each with a slightly different role. John Kim, Nuccio Dinuzzo and myself covered the pre-game activities, on and off the field, then game action and Chris Walker’s sole role was to create an amazing gigapan photo of the stadium (HERE).
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The four of us arrived at Solider Field around 9am, relatively early, but not early enough to beat the most dedicated tailgaters. Once at the stadium Chris headed to the upper reaches of Soldier Field to set up his gigapan, Nuccio went to the field and looked for features of players warming up before the game, John set up a portable video editing station in the photo workroom then went to the tailgating area for a pre game video (HERE), and I wandered the tailgating area looking for still photographs and experimented with the recently released hyperlapse app (HERE).
Telling the story of game day is something we try to do very much in real-time. To do this, we photographers constantly transmitted pictures back to Tribune Tower where photo editors Katie Manker and Erin Mystkowski sorted though what we sent and updated the image galleries at www.chicagotribune.com.
We took to the field about 20 minutes before the players did to get in position. With three photographers covering a game it allows us to always have one person on each side of the field and one in the end zone. This system assures that no matter where the play happens on the field, we have it covered.
Heading into overtime we knew that if the Bears were to score, that would be the most important images of the game. Keeping that in mind, I stayed near the Bear’s end zone even as the Bills had possession on the off chance the Bears made an interception or recovered a fumble and were able to run the ball in.
Unfortunately for Chicago fans, that wasn’t the case.