MORGANTOWN — (Editor’s note: Sports photographer Dale Sparks will be joined by former West Virginia University basketball star Da’Sean Butler for an exhibition and sale of autographed photos of Butler from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown.)
They say the hardest thing in sports to do is hit a baseball.
Pardon me if I disagree.
The hardest thing is to take a good sports picture, which why I have so much admiration for what Dale Sparks has accomplished over 32 years of looking through a lens.
Most of his time was spent working for newspapers in Beckley and Morgantown, and today he is earning a living as a freelance photographer and shooting sports for West Virginia University’s athletic department.
You’ve seen his work.
The picture of Major Harris at the end of “The Run,” that magical mystery tour through the Penn State defense that has become West Virginia sports legend; the one with the Maj staring straight into the camera lens, holding the ball aloft, that was Dale Sparks’ piece de resistance.
It took every bit as much skill as hitting a baseball does, but it took something else, too.
“Luck,” he admits.
Luck?
“If that play goes as planned, he runs into the end zone on the other side,” Sparks notes. “I get nothing. But he came running right at me.”
Sparks knows that luck is a sometimes thing.
“When Patrick White ran into the end zone and pointed back at the Louisville defender, what a great picture … but I couldn’t get it. He was on the left hash mark; I was on the right,” Sparks said.
But here’s the thing, as Branch Rickey, the great baseball general manager, once noted, “Luck is the residue of design.”
True, to get “A” good — even great – sports photograph you have to be lucky.
To constantly get good – even great – sports photographs takes a whole lot more than luck.
“You have to have the skill to operate the camera and follow someone moving very fast,” Sparks said. “It takes a lot of preparation. You have to know how to do it. After 32 years, Lord, if I don’t get it right now I never will.”
Sparks enters an event much as coach does. He has a game plan. He knows who’s hot, what they do best, when they are most likely to do it.
With a team down by three points in the closing seconds, don’t be focusing in on the basket. The game is going to be decided by a 3-point try, probably by the best 3-point shooter. If it was WVU this past year and Butler was on the court in the closing seconds of a close game, it didn’t figure to focus on Joe Mazzulla. Butler was taking the shot.
And it isn’t just getting the action. It’s framing a picture.
Sparks is displaying one shot from Butler’s 43-point performance against Villanova that has him between two defenders, each in a similar pose on each side of him, Butler rising high above them for a jump shot.
It could be painting, so perfectly framed is Butler by the two defenders, the story being told of how Butler soared above Villanova that day.
“That’s pretty much the whole frame, too,” said Sparks, meaning he didn’t have to crop it to center the action.
The ability to shoot sports is a gift. Some people can shoot portraits best, others wildlife, still others accident scenes.
But when you can get a great sports action or a great sports portrait, a picture of Mike Gansey after canning a game-winning basket rushing down the sideline pulling on the front of his shirt, that’s a gift.
There are a lot of opportunities, of course, in a game to get that great photo. The problem is to be in the right place at the right time … with the right lens.
“Back in ’83, (Jeff) Hostetler made a fake and ran into the end zone for a touchdown, then got down on one knee and prayed. It was right in front of me, but I didn’t expect it. I had a long lens, too long for that shot, and I didn’t get it,” Sparks said.
“But it’s like a fisherman. You can’t catch all the fish. You can’t get all the photos.
The thing is, when you get one, one that came about because you were expecting it, because you had showed the patience of a fisherman in waiting for it occur, then you have something special.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a great one you can’t do justice with in words.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
