Nicholas Demille | Sept. 23, 2011
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| Photo by Nicholas Demille |
| Darron Cummings of The Associated Press talked about editing Super Bowl photos at rapid-fire pace during a talk Wednesday evening. He and the Indianapolis Star's Charlie Nye were on campus to judge the Inland Press Association's new photo contest. |
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The two came to the Ernie Pyle Hall to judge photos for the Inland Press Association’s news photography contest, and to talk about and show their work at a session for students and faculty after the judging.
Cummings, a long-time photo editor for The Associated Press, is behind many of the action-packed AP photos for events such as the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500 and the U.S. Open. He travels to major sporting events with a team of photojournalists whose expertise and gear help them create the images they make available on a global scale in minutes.
For example, at this year’s Super Bowl, Cummings spent a week with his team building a wireless network to transfer images from the field to the editing desk and then to the international wire. The network was so effective in fact, that it was uncrashable with an entire team of photographers and remote cameras firing continuously for several minutes.
“We crashed the system in New Orleans,” Cummings said of their experience during the 2010 Super Bowl. “But we got smarter and we built a better system. That’s how it works with these types of projects. There’s no blueprint. This is new territory that we’re covering. As the technology gets faster, we adapt and get faster, too.”
For Cummings, covering the Super Bowl means hours in a media trailer or on a cement slab office under the stadium. With three screens, he watches the action live, watches a play-by-play prompter and edits photos for publication — all at the same time.
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| Photo by Nicholas Demille |
| Charlie Nye of the Indianapolis Star told student about his first photo he sold to Newsweek for $37. He advised them to "get out there and take pictures." |
He got his start as a photojournalist while in high school, then went to Ohio University to pursue journalism. While there, he won National Press Photographers Association’s college photojournalist of the year honors and even made $37 selling a photo in Newsweek.
“I wrote them a letter and said I had a good picture of John Glenn, who at that time was running for office. They wrote back and told me to send it along, which I did,” Nye said. “But you see, in those days ‘sending a picture’ meant that you developed the image in your bathroom, rolled it up in a tube and drove it out to the nearest airport. They bag it up for you and put it on a plane to New York, and a couple of weeks later, there it is with your name next to it in Newsweek. Pretty cool.”
Nye also talked about his work for The Indianapolis Star. He showed high school basketball portraits from the ‘60s alongside college basketball photos he shot this year.
His advice to aspiring photojournalists in the audience?
“Get out there and take pictures,” he said. “If you’re doing something you love, it’ll be worthwhile however things turn out.”
The judging process:
By Dalton Main
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| Photo by Nicholas Demille |
| Charlie Nye turns to talk with Darron Cummings as the two judge photos for Inland Press Association's news photo category. |
The two sat in front of a television while the photos displayed. They pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each photo for a small group observing the process. They moved quickly through the photos submitted by photojournalists from IPA's 1,200 member newspapers around the nation.
The photos were judged by categories: sports, spot news, feature. The judges whittled each category down to a few finalists, which were then were assigned places, first through third and honorable mention.
Amelia Chong, a senior journalism major and aspiring photojournalist, said watching the process helped her learn a little about what is expected of a great photo.
“You learn how to part with your work,” she said, “how to choose only the really great ones.”
Download Quicktime
Hear an audio clip of the judges explaining the process by Web reporter Dalton Main.
Questions? Comments? Email the Web editor.
