If there are milestones in a sports photographer’s career, I’m pretty sure covering your first World Series would be one of them. I was positively giddy when I got two simple words in an e-mail from Sports Illustrated picture editor Nate Gordon the day after the Rangers won the American League pennant: “You’re in.” After covering countless Rangers games in Arlington over the years, the league championship series both this year and last (and missing out on last year’s World Series because of a scheduling conflict), I was finally on my way to the Fall Classic.

There were four of us in Arlington for the magazine, each with our assigned duties. Mine was to stay in the outfield, between the foul poles, and work on feature and loose compositions for possible opening spreads and covers. I also had an assigned position out in center field from which to shoot straight action; thanks to the ingenuity of Rangers’ PR man John Blake and the perseverance of MLB Photos photo boss Rich Pilling, a new position was created for a couple of photographers with a much lower angle than the regular-season spot at the top of the hill in center. It was a great place to shoot from and yielded some interesting angles on plays in the infield.

I don’t cover a lot of night baseball–during the regular season, unless there’s some overbearing necessity to the game like a feature story on a starting pitcher or something, it’s pretty pointless. It was kind of nice to be able to wander about the ballpark during pre-game, whether it was shooting pictures of the Cardinals’ pitchers throwing long-toss in the outfield as I set up a remote down the left field line, or Rangers’ manager Ron Washington throwing batting practice, and take advantage of the golden afternoon light peeking through the nooks and crannies of Rangers Ballpark that doesn’t normally coincide with game times in Arlington, and it was a real challenge and testament to the high-ISO capabilities of today’s DSLRs (in my case, the Canon Mark IV) to be able to shoot with the necessary long glass (a 600mm f4, with a big assist to the Wimberley tripod head) out in the center field position as that gorgeous light turned to darkness and, as is the case with just about any baseball game where Tony LaRussa is involved, we all settled in for a bunch of very late nights.

Nate and I discussed the picture he was looking for–low angle, wide, yet still a bit from the front if at all possible. Of course, you can’t be out on the field shooting when the players are running on to it, so I suggested mounting the camera on a ballhead, and then on a monopod, and using the monopd as a boom. Just before the Rangers took the field, I extended the monopod and shoved the camera out on to the warning track, firing it with a release cord. The previous day’s rainout had afforded me the chance to go to the park and set my angles, focus, and mark the position where I needed to be to make it happen, so it wasn’t a wasted day. Before the game, Nate told me they were holding the space open for that picture to open the story. No pressure, right? In the middle of the 4th inning I got a text from him telling me the shot was a success and that it was indeed running as the opener. That was a load off of my mind, and it allowed me to relax a bit and get into the rhythm of the rest of the game.

The rest of the game lasted another 3 hours, with the Rangers eventually winning on the walk-off by Cruz. Nate and I had discussed the importance of giving the pictures from the ALCS a sense of place, so I decided to pull back and shoot the potential winning hit loose, using a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV (with a special thanks to Jerry Ward and Bob Malash at Canon USA in Dallas for the loaner!) and a 70-200mm f4 lens. It was way too late to make it in the magazine, but it did get into the iPad edition, which isn’t a bad thing, either.

So sometimes it’s really refreshing to be on the way out the door to, say, Jake’s flag football practice, and, just for grins, grab a 5D and a 300/4 off the shelf. No expectations, no reason. Just toss it in the front seat and hope for some nice light. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in doing this for a living that it’s really easy to forget about doing it because you love to.

I don’t think I was prepared for the heart-pounding electricity that enveloped the ballpark as Neftali Feliz faced Alex Rodriguez (how fitting!) with two outs in the ninth. I try not to get caught up in stuff like that but sometimes it’s so all-encompassing as to be unavoidable. Staying focused and on-point is difficult, as the myriad thoughts of what’s going to happen in the next few crucial seconds–do I stay with the pitcher? Go to the dugout? Are my remotes going to work?–compete with space in your brain otherwise occupied by something so simple as trying to keep that 200 1.8 you’ve got in your hands steady when the moment arrives. So with that in mind, I’ll leave you with this thought as I offer my favorite image from the game: Everything you’ve heard about Canon autofocus is absolutely true.

And yes, sometimes it’s even serendipitous…

…and if you’re curious:

• Yes, I like to move around. Arlington has some great angles from up in the concourses and mezzanines, and there are little, if any restrictions on where we can go. And the people are friendly. It’s a great place to work.

• The portraits of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki were shot in the dugout during the game.

• The image of Ichiro at the plate was shot with an old Nikkor 500mm f8 mirror lens with a Nikon F to Canon EF mount adapter available here.

• Yes, there is a certain amount of luck involved in getting a bat-on-ball picture. But at the same time, let’s not forget what Louis Pasteur once said: “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

• The last two images, of Casey Kotchman being tagged out at home plate by Matt Treanor, were made with remote cameras: one with a 70-200mm lens (at about 135mm) in the inside-first base well, and the other with a 300mm lens in the outside-third base well. If you look carefully, you can see the latter camera in the shot from the first base angle.

* Not-so-subtle reference to “Bull Durham,” for those not familiar with the greatest baseball movie ever made.

Favorite images from the 2009 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

A lot has changed in twelve years, and I’m not just talking about the skyline of the Strip–although it never ceases to amaze me how things change, and how quickly the concrete and glass jungle foliage can spread in that city over the course of a year–let alone a dozen of them. Professionally, in the way I and Sports Illustrated cover the event, things have come a long way as well.

I made my first trip to the Thomas and Mack Center in 1998. At the time, I was one of the S.I’s traveling lighting technicians, and former S.I. staffer Layne Stewart invited me to come along. From the second I set foot in the arena, and took in the sights and, just as noticeably, the smells, of the NFR, I was hooked. This was something different. The people were engaging, the athletes were accommodating, and the organization was happy to have us there. In short, it was everything you’d hope any major sporting event could be, but never thought you’d see. Over the next three years, I spent two long December days hauling more than a dozen Speedotrons up into the catwalk in an annual ritual of the hardest, most meticulous arena lighting job I’d ever have to do during my tenure as a lighting assistant for the magazine’s photographers.

I can’t remember how, or why exactly, it happened but after a few years of lighting and assisting, I began to contribute regularly as a photographer to Sports Illustrated, and the NFR shooting assignment fell to me in 2000. Ever since then, S.I. Picture Editor Jimmy Colton has had the confidence in me to send me out to Las Vegas year after year without a specific assignment, the only instruction being to come back with a two-page spread image to run in the magazine’s “Leading Off” section.

I don’t want to give the impression that that’s an easy thing to do by any means. But at the same time I always want to give my clients a little more than they’ve asked for. So at the Rodeo I’ll try to do something other than just straight action–maybe I’ll try a few portraits; maybe a remote camera in a unique position. Sometimes those things run; more often than not they don’t; the limitations and expense of magazine real estate tend to create distinct boundaries; despite Jimmy’s love for the NFR and his tireless advocacy for including its images in the magazine, if one picture is all we’ve planned on, that’s usually all the space we’re going to be given.

Behind the scenes with 2009 World Champion Bareback Rider Bobby Mote.

The advent of a viable online component, however, has given us the opportunity to expand our coverage a bit. This year I proposed the idea of a portrait series of the winning cowboys, tied in with my ongoing “Manual Labor” portrait series, and, with the help of my friend Ann Bleiker (who has worked in so many capacities with the NFR and its participants over the years I’ve lost count), arranged to spend some time going behind the scenes with Bobby Mote, the 2009 World Champion Bareback Rider. SI.com provides an outlet for projects like these that was previously unavailable.

We don’t light the building anymore; with digital imaging technology being what it is these days strobes have become almost obsolete. And the week-long assignment has turned into a weekend. But that won’t ever keep me from heading to Vegas if the magazine will send me, and from always trying to get as much out of the trip as possible.

Images from the 2009 Texas-Texas A&M game, shot on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

I grew up in suburban New York City, and I went to school at a university that barely had a football team, so I never “got” the whole college football thing–let alone the whole Texas college football thing–to begin with. It was only upon moving to Austin in the mid-90s that I began to grasp (by necessity, if I wanted to make a living at this) the importance of football. I was, admittedly, an athletic snob; a fan of sports of solitude and self-reliance like tennis or golf or, when I ventured into team sports, games like baseball which I considered cerebral and therefore, worthy of my intellectual consideration. Football was, to my uninitiated and now, in retrospect, simple, mind, eleven very large men on either side of a ball, wearing school colors and beating the crap out of each other on a weekly basis.

And then one day, shortly after moving to Austin, I threw my cameras in the car and made the lonely 90-mile drive from Austin to College Station and wound up at a Texas A&M football game. Talk about a baptism by fire. From the second I saw the giant press box and light towers of Kyle Field rising up into the flat, desolate middle of nowhere as I rolled toward town on Highway 60, I got this inkling that I was in for something special. Then the Corps of Cadets marched in, the (“Nationally Famous”) Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band started playing, and for the first time in my life, I heard the Aggie War Hymn-and, when I wasn’t feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, felt myself getting seasick as I watched the alternating rows of spectators lock arms and sway to and fro in opposite directions, giving way to a sense of panic that the grandstands were about to topple over. It occurred to me that this football thing might be serious business down in these parts.

And then the game started.

I can’t remember who the Aggies played that day in 1994. I can’t remember who won. And I don’t care. Sorry, Horns fans, but it was the Aggies who got me hooked on college football. And perhaps because I am now an adopted (or is it adapted?) Texan, I can’t think of a better example of what football is all about than the annual Texas-Texas A&M grudge match. It doesn’t matter where it’s played, doesn’t matter what the point spread is, doesn’t matter who’s better, doesn’t matter who’s ranked where in the latest polls or who has the Coach of the Year or the Heisman trophy candidate. Throw it all out the window. This is when it all gets serious. And this year, the game, or the teams, didn’t disappoint. Sure, Texas won. But not without a scare, and not because the Aggies rolled over and let them. They never do. Neither team ever does in this one.

I still maintain to this day that there is nowhere better to see a football game than at Kyle Field, and there’s no better game to see at Kyle Field than this one. I can’t tell you anymore than that. No, I didn’t go there, so I can’t fully understand it. And as for explaining it? That’s about the best I can do.

Gigapan panoramic image of Kyle Field during the 2009 Texas-Texas A&M game, shot on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

After last weekend’s Texas-Kansas game, I can honestly say that Texas wide receiver Malcolm Williams is the largest man I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. (You Texas fans thought I was going to say someone else, didn’t you?)

Yes, for the first time in fifteen years of covering pro and college football, I almost bought the farm–on a fourth quarter Colt McCoy to Malcolm WIlliams corner route into the end zone. I must have executed the drop-duck-tuck-and-roll (and ignore whatever that was that hit your forehead) routine flawlessly, because I’m not any worse for wear. Note to Miguel and Dee back at Sports Illustrated, though: there’s a 50mm lens headed your way that needs to go back to Canon for repair…

Other than that, it was a game that went exactly as expected. Well, as long as you expected Colt McCoy to punt (let’s see Tim Tebow or Mark Ingram do that…), or Earl Thomas to be one defender away from returning a punt for a touchdown, or to see McCoy and the seniors take a jubilant victory lap around DKR following the game. My favorites are below. Enjoy.

Limited-edition prints of this image are available; e-mail me at darren(at)darrencarroll.com for more information.

And now to the other pictures from the game…

For a New Yorker, even one who’s been mellowed slightly by fifteen years in Texas, a trip to Oklahoma is rife with opportunities for culture shock. I prepared myself mentally for it by listening to James McMurtry’s “Choctaw Bingo” in a continuous loop for five straight days (which, if you’ve never heard it before, is definitely worth listening to in a continuous loop for five straight days, whether you’re headed to Oklahoma or not). Stillwater, which I’ve taken to calling Lubbock-By-The-Sea due to its comparative proximity to all things aquatic (including indoor plumbing), shares many a characteristic with its windblown counterpart in the Texas panhandle, which noted Texan philosopher Robert Earl Keen once described as being “so flat that on a clear day, you can see the back of your head.”

Gray, dusty, remote, and generally inhospitable to aerobic life, both places make you wonder who in their right mind would drop a perfectly good, not to mention architecturally beautiful, university smack-dab in the middle of it. But the similarities end there. First, Stillwater is within driving distance of civilization whereas Lubbock is within driving distance of…Amarillo. Next, Oklahoma State has a brand, spanking new (and gorgeous) football facility thanks to the personal largesse of T. Boone Pickens, while Texas Tech has a dank, dark pit of a stadium funded by some company named AT&T. And finally, OSU has a pretty decent football team this year. This time last year, Texas headed into that dank, dark pit in the other middle of nowhere and lost to a pretty decent team; if you’re a Longhorns fan, just be happy that the result of this year’s Halloween weekend game wasn’t quite as frightening.