For some, being asked to spend 16 hours working the day before (and into) one’s birthday would be cause for complaint. But if your assignment is to shoot Opening Day, and you are a huge baseball fan like I am, well, lets just say … best. assignment. ever. (sorry President Obama)

Going in to the assignment, my editor was hoping that I would just grab some scene shots and interview a bunch of fans in a manner similar to a piece I did with fans tailgating during last year’s World Series. I had plans to try something new, and luckily I am, for the most part, given the freedom to do pretty much as I please (in regards to trying new forms of storytelling).

At first, I thought I would do some form of timelapse … perhaps shoot fans going through turnstiles, players on the field, seats filling and emptying, etc. However, after hearing that one of our photographers AND a photographer from Cherry Hill (a neighboring Gannett paper) would be doing that same exact thing, I decided to go the opposite way and experiment with slowing down time instead of speeding it up.

While there are some definite issues in some of the shots (athletes were moving too fast and I tried to slow them down too much) I do hope to use the effect for future profiles on local athletes. And next time, I will avoid hand-holding a 300 …