Access

While still at the beginning at of my career in photography, I'm starting to see that one factor that can directly relate to the quality of the pictures you produce is the quality of access you're granted.

To show an example of this, I'd like to link you to the work of a sports photographer for The Oregonian, Bruce Ely, who covers the Portland Trailblazers.

Ely's photos from the season

Here's his article on Sportsshooter.com that details his efforts to gain access.

To bring you up to speed on the 2009/2010 Portland Trailblazers, they were a team that suffered an incredible amount of injuries, most notably the knee injury of center Greg Oden.

Every photographer at the game of Oden's injury had the picture of him sitting helplessly on the court after suffering the injury. But perhaps the best photograph came moments later as Oden prayed with the team chaplain on his way to the locker room. It was only with access - acquired through gaining the trust of key people in the Trailblazers organization over a period of time - that Ely was able to make this 'behind-the-scenes' image.

Often times, the quality of the 'behind-the-scenes' picture is the result of it being a pictures that no one else has. Somewhere I read a quote from a photographer that said, "when you see a bunch of photographers in one place, go in the other direction." By this, I think he was illustrating that the rarity of a photo can increase its value tremendously.

This summer I'll strive to implement this power of 'access' by gaining the trust of the subjects in my pictures. My goal is that they become comfortable with me (maybe even to the point where they forget I have a camera). And with this trust, I plan to go behind-the-scenes to deliver more than a surface-level picture.

-Daniel