Every two years since the summer of 2008, San Francisco Bay area-photographer Jeff Cable has set off on an intrepid adventure to photograph the world’s top athletes representing their respective countries in competition during the famous cold- and hot-weather international sporting events in the global cities of Beijing, Vancouver, London, Sochi, Rio de Janeiro, and currently, Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Photographs © Jeff Cable
While the trip itself is a huge commitment, with a grueling schedule of roughly 18-hour days during the three to four weeks Cable is away, an event of this magnitude also involves a preparation timeline of two years before the athletic events even start, from applying for credentials to housing arrangements to decisions about what gear to bring. “I’ve already got Tokyo and Beijing on my calendar for 2020 and 2022,” says Cable. “I have to block things out way in advance.”
Behind the Scenes
A passionate hockey fan, as well as a recreational player, Cable’s primary responsibility during the contests of athletic prowess is serving as contract photographer for the American men’s and women’s hockey teams.
When not shooting hockey or any of the other competitions, Cable is immersed in recapping his daily activities for the growing audience of his blog, which jumps from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands during his coverage of the sporting events.
“My goal on the blog is not only to talk about what I shot and how I shot it, and show pictures,” he explains. “I really want to show a lot of what’s behind the scenes and share my experiences with people. I want to talk about the challenges of being a photographer for this event, and what’s it like to be there.”
Since this is Cable’s sixth involvement, he is very familiar with the processes involved, as well as the logistical aspects of venues that vary based on geographic constraints. After securing his housing and getting some rest upon his arrival in Korea, Cable’s first task is “to learn the lay of the land.” His base of operations for this is the Main Press Center, where he picks up credentials, as well as tickets for certain high-demand events. Another important detail to take care of up front is to present his remotes for approval. “You can’t use a remote like my Pocket Wizard until it has an official sticker on it,” he says.
Evolving Technology
When it comes to gear, there have been some significant advancements since Cable’s first trip to Beijing, in 2008. At that time, his largest memory card was a 4GB CompactFlash card, and he would transfer image files to his laptop using an antiquated FireWire 800 port. “Every two years there are little incremental jumps, or sometimes big jumps, that help us do our job that much better,” he says.
This year he will be shooting almost exclusively with Canon 1D X Mark II cameras, outfitted with 3500x CFast memory cards, which allow his images to clear the buffer quickly, eliminating missed shots during the heat of the action.
When shooting hockey games, Cable has a 15-minute turnaround time for delivering his images to team officials before the next period starts, “So I need every bit of speed I can get,” he says. “With that kind of deadline pressure, having fast memory cards, a fast camera, and a solid-state drive in my MacBook Pro 15" laptop really helps.”
As a Canon shooter, Cable partners with Canon Professional Services (CPS) for loaner gear during the competitions. In Korea, they are supplying him with two Canon 1D X Mark IIs, and a Canon 200-400 mm lens. “That saves me from hauling the big stuff in my own bags,” he explains.
Located in the same building as the Press Center, Cable notes, “A visit to CPS is like being a kid in a candy store. They’ve got a ton of gear, and they’re all free loans, so you can literally go in, have them scan the bar code on your badge, and say, ‘Today I’d like to borrow a 600mm f/4 lens.’”
Shooting Constraints
For most sports, Cable will pack both cameras; however, for hockey he often adds a Canon 5D Mark IV to the mix for use as a remote camera. “There’s usually a pole behind the net where they allow 2 or 3 cameras to be mounted,” he explains. “I have to plead my case as to why I should be one of those three. If it’s a USA game, I should be OK to get that pole, so if I do, then I’ll mount my camera and fire it remotely using a Pocket Wizard.”
In addition to this selection process for remote camera placement, Cable describes some of the other challenges that photographers are up against. “Each venue has its shooting locations, and you just really hope that the Photo Manager has picked good spots,” he says. “Luckily, a lot of times the Photo Managers are photographers, and they know exactly what positions you need.”
All the same, he recalls a venue in Rio that had horrible shooting positions. “You have to live within those constraints,” he explains, “but some are just easier to navigate than others.”
Case in point: while most hockey venues allow photographers to shoot through holes in the plexiglass shield that surrounds the ice, there are no holes allowed at this event. “So, we’re shooting through the plexi, which makes it tough,” Cable says. “Your angle of view is very limited, and it’s a fast action sport. You could pick a position with clean plexiglass, then the game starts and suddenly a player gets smacked into the boards. Now I’ve got water and a stick mark on the glass. If it’s not busy, I can move to a different position, but if it’s packed, like during the finals, you’re stuck.”
Cable prefers working with zooms instead of fixed lenses for sports. Since he is fairly close to the action shooting up against the plexiglass, for hockey he uses Canon’s 70–200mm, fitted with a simple rubber lens hood. “These are very inexpensive and they really help to minimize glare and reflections from the glass,” he explains.
Another essential accessory are Tiffen filters, which recently saved him from an expensive replacement. “I was shooting a game and forgot there was a piece of metal in front of me,” he notes. “When I lifted my lens to shoot, it scratched the whole front. But it’s better to scratch a filter than the actual lens.”
Once he is situated next to the ice, Cable assesses the lighting to determine his exposure time. One advantage of an indoor venue is the fact that it is lit for television, “So the lighting should be quite good,” he points out. “A lot of times I’m trying to get a shutter speed of at least 1/1250 of a second to freeze the action. If I’m shooting hockey, I’ll be somewhere around ISO 1000, or maybe up to 1600, at 1/1250 of a second, and around f/3.5.”
Image Storage
Cable is a prolific shooter who has been known to blast out 5,000 images in a day. “I have a lot of natural energy, so I try to harness that, and shoot as much as I can,” he explains.
This kind of volume requires a robust plan for image storage. While he has portable solid-state drives for local image back up, Cable also runs nightly backups to a Drobo 810N server at his house in California. “I can literally hook into this server from anywhere in the world to back up my files,” he says.
What’s more, that Drobo replicates to another unit at a friend’s house, to give him redundant backup in multiple locations. He notes, “How long the transfer takes depends on how much I’m shooting. If I shoot a ton of images I won’t upload all of them. I’ll purge through and get rid of the duplicates, or the files I don’t like. So, the goal is to upload as much as I can here, but it just depends.”
Covering the Field
Although Cable’s top priority in Korea is hockey (or covering water polo during the summer events), when the American hockey teams are not on the ice he is free to photograph other sports. “I love shooting hockey, and it’s an honor to do it, but one of the great things for me is that I get to cover the other sports more for the love of photography,” he says. “This gives me freedom to go and try different things and experiment.”
Yet every sport brings with it new challenges and a different approach. “One of the reasons I love shooting hockey is that the conditions are very consistent and definable; this is one of the great things about indoor sports,” he says. “But if I’m outdoors, and shooting something like Bobsled, that’s way too fast to shoot at 1/1000 of a second. You have to be at like 1/4000 or 1/6000 of a second.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Cable notes, “A lot of times I want to do panning, so then I’m going to try and shoot at 1/25 of a second, so I can pan and get some motion blur. You want to be creative, and you want to be different, because you’re competing against thousands of other photographers.”
For most other sports, Cable relies on Canon’s EF 200-400mm f/4 L IS USM Lens. “It’s a game-changer lens because it’s got a built-in teleconverter,” he explains. “It gives me so much versatility in one lens. If I need to shoot long, I can just take that one lens to almost any event.”
And, while tripods are not permitted when shooting the competitions, Cable finds his Gitzo monopod to be an essential tool. “When you’re using those big lenses, you can’t handhold your gear for three weeks straight, you’ll break your back,” he says. “Having a good monopod that’s lightweight and folds down small is so important that I’m bringing two of them. I packed one in my suitcase, and one in my carry-on.”
To keep his gear secure in transit, Cable uses ThinkTank bags. “They are a godsend,” he says. “My main bag is the ThinkTank Airport Security 3, and in the past I’ve always used the StreetWalker Harddrive backpack.”
This year, however, he is doing something different. “I’m taking the new StreetWalker rolling bag; it’s a backpack that converts into a roller, so that when I can roll it I will but if I’m in snow, I’ll just backpack it. So, that will be a maiden voyage,” he points out.
Shooting Tips
When asked if he has any photo tips for general sports enthusiasts, Cable recommends his B&H Event Space videos on the B&H YouTube channel. “I always tell people to go to those, because I do them on how to shoot sports and I talk about what I strive for and all my camera settings, showing images as an example,” he says. “And, of course, my blog. I want people to go to the blog because I’ll be posting to it every day.”
And when asked if he would recommend attending this pinnacle of athletic competition to the public, Cable enthuses, “Just go. Everybody should go to at least one in their lifetime, because the vibe is awesome.”
He differentiates the atmosphere from other sporting events where fans are fully immersed in their allegiance to a single team. “It isn’t about ‘we’re going to kick your butt,’ it’s really about the pageantry of the sport,” he sums up. “I don’t even know how to explain it, but it’s an awesome place to be. I pinch myself every day to think how lucky I’ve been to go to six.”
Do you have any stories or tips to share from photographing this kind of sporting event? If so, please add your voice to the Comments section, below.
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