Tennis Now and Then

It has become self-evident how much photography has changed in the face of the digital revolution. And this shift is probably nowhere more apparent than on the wire service battle ground. I met with a few of the Getty Images veterans at the U.S. Open on Friday (in between women's semifinals) to talk about how the industry has changed and the end of the Agassi era.

When Senior Photo Editor Rebecca Butala began working for AllSport, which Getty bought out in 1998, they were using black bags to develop film on sight. Even with online distribution of photos, the time from shutter click to live photos was about 30 minutes. With digital cameras, that time has shrunk to five to ten minutes. Now when the full-time runners are off, Butala's job includes crouching in the photographers pit, waiting to grab a card from their guys, run it back to the media center, grab the first few quality images, and get them up online.

At certain venues wireless networks make cardless transfer possible, and for others laptops in the  pit clean out the cards and send the images to editors by Ethernet. The facilities at the U.S. Open still make runners necessary, though, which Butala says actually has its advantages. For one thing, Getty's top photographers such as Al Bello will cut photos in camera so editors have a smaller, cleaner card to go through. And Getty photographer Clive Brunskill, who has seen wireless transfer work well for relatively small files, says he got burned once trying to transfer his large-size JPEGs by WiFi.

But it was hard to keep the conversation on cameras for long, when Andre Agassi's harrowing, touching final game was still hanging in the air. Brunskill, who has covered more than 50 Grand Slam tennis tournaments, has met with and taken several portraits of the 36-year-old tennis star, who lost to Benjamin Becker, in his last professional competition, on Sept. 4.

Bello, whose specialty is boxing but who has also covered the Super Bowl, World Serie, Stanley Cup, six Olympic Games, World Cup Soccer and ever major tennis championship, took the shots of Agassi's last game that ended up in sports sections across America. In some cruel twist of fate, though, Bello has never gotten to meet the tennis legend. Like most who witnessed Agassi's goodbye, he admitted to a tearful moment last Monday when he and his editor were going over the photos of Agassi's emotional end. "We hugged it out," he said.

Butala was also up close to the action, crouching in the pit, watching Agassi through the photographer's legs. She only had a minute to process the momentous event, though, before she was off and running again to get the photos live. She said the editor's job has gotten less exciting in some ways, since they are no longer the first ones to see developed pictures, but more exciting because they have to stay alongside the photographers. Thus she was also crouching ringside when Mike Tyson chowed down on Evander Holyfield's ear.

And by putting in her time on site, Butala says she's finally gained the trust of Getty's big name photographers. She knows who doesn't mind her cropping what and who will want her to "just get it out there." And for that memory and her more than 12 years with AllSport/Getty, Bello rewards her with this praise: "I trust her with everything; she's like my sister."

--Miki Johnson

(Photos, from top: Andre Agassi serving on opening night of the 2006 U.S. Open, © Al Bello/Getty Images; Clive Brunskill, © Getty Images; Agassi's tearful goodbye, © Al Bello/Getty Images; Al Bello, © Getty Images)