Big-League Ballparks Shot by Former Big-Leaguer Jerry Reuss

Former major league pitcher Jerry Reuss (Left) has seen more than his share of ballparks. His 22-year career touched four decades and eight teams—the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, California Angels, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Houston Astros, and Los Angeles Dodgers.
     After hanging up his cleats in 1990 at age 41, he moved to the broadcast booth as an announcer for the Anaheim Angels. On occasion he also suits up for Dodger fantasy camps. The 200-plus game-winner is also an avid photographer who has been documenting ballparks from dugouts and broadcast booths for more than a decade. Above,  Derek Jeter, bats at the old Yankee Stadium in 1996, above. (Gee, wasn't that the year the Yanks started winning all those World Series rings?)
      American Photo contributor Mark Edward Harris caught up with Reuss at spring training to talk a little baseball and a lot of photography. Surrounded by the likes of Dodger greats Tommy Davis, Maury Wills, Carl Erskine, and Steve Yeager, Reuss explained the technique of throwing four-seamed fastballs, then went to his MacBook Pro to prepare images for American Photo, which follow.

Back from the Grindstone

Photos © Tom Sperduto except where noted

What makes someone run an ultramarathon? Photographer Tom Sperduto says the eyes have it.

"I think when you meet an ultra runner you can see it in their eyes," says Sperduto, who has been shooting an ongoing photo project on these peculiar athletes. "At least I can, and it's one of the reasons why I began shooting portraits of them."

The Edison, New Jersey-based Sperduto recently completed a series of before-and-after pictures of competitors in the grueling Grindstone 100-miler in Swoope, Virginia, which he says is "the hardest 100-mile race east of the 100th meridian. (Above and below are a couple of examples.)

"These 'after' portraits were shot less than five minutes after the subjects completed 100 miles," he says. "In their eyes I see a sense of accomplishment and almost euphoria. I have heard many ultra runners talk about this."

Pulitzer Winner Don Ultang Dies at 91

Though he was noted as a pioneering aerial photographer, Don Ultang's most memorable photo was made at a football stadium in Oklahoma. In 1951, he photographed a lineman from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) deliver an uncalled-for blow to the star running back for Drake University. That running back, Johnny Bright, was black, and many suspect that the blow captured by Ultang was racially motivated. The picture earned Ultang a Pulitzer Prize, along with another photographer who captured the moment. Go here to read Ultang's obit in the New York Times.--David Schonauer

Time Inc. and Getty Revive Life Brand Again

Time Inc. announced today that it has partnered with Getty Images to jointly launch a new website called Life.com. The website will offer free, downloadable images from current and past photographers. It is scheduled to go live early in 2009.
         The images will be available only to consumers for non-commercial usage. In a press release, Time Inc. senior vice president Andy Blau promised that consumers would be able to "interact intimately" with the available imagery. Apparently that means printing photos for personal use, sharing photos with others, and "purchasing photo albums of user-made collections."
         The imagery will include Life's entire collection, including previously unseen images. That's cool. Getty will be contributing archived content as well as current imagery. The new site essentially represents Getty's effort to spread its business beyond  publishing and advertising and get into the consumer area. I'm not sure the Life reputation has much left to offer to the kinds of people who search the internet for imagery, but it probably won't hurt. --David Schonauer

Greatest Photos of Yankee Stadium

October will soon be upon us, but there will be no post-season baseball in Yankee Stadium this year--the Bronx Bombers will not be in the post season. Adding poignancy  to this mind-boggling state of affairs, of course, is the fact the Stadium itself will be gone after the season ends--torn down and replaced by a smaller facsimile ball park. To mark the end of what is called baseball's cathedral, Sports Illustrated has searched through its vast archive of images and put together a portfolio of great Stadium pictures. Enjoy, and have a Baby Ruth bar while you look at it. Speaking of the Bambino, there is one picture missing from the SI feature--the photo I consider to be the greatest Stadium photo of all. (Plenty of people consider it the best sports picture of all time.) I speak of Nat Fein's shot of the Babe saying farewell to his fans on June 13, 1948 , which also happened to be the silver anniversary of the house he built (above). Only one moment in the Stadium's history could rival it:

Bolts of Luck and Somethings out of Nothings from Rod Mar

Seattle Times staff photographer Rod Mar's selects from Jamaica's Usain "Lightning" Bolt's amazing 200 meter run show the work of an extremely talented sports photographer who has what it takes to capture the moment and aftermath of a world-record event.

Of course, you could say it's just the matter of being in the right place, with the right timing, and the right attitude of the athlete having a lot to do with it as well, upon reading Mar's most recent blog post for Best Seat in the House on the Seattle Times site.

Nailing strong shots when the big moments occur is simply par for the course for premiere-level sports shooters. Check out previous posts on Mar's blog and you'll see he does this day in and day out--while sharing the moment with his audience in a truly engaging and entertaining way with his narratives.

But one of his recent posts shows a much rarer talent--the ability to make something out of "nothing" and make it visually engaging and verbally entertaining at the same time.

His recent post: Seeing more than medals shows his great ability to recognize and make a photo essay of little moments, small details, and visual poems that show a completely realistic, utterly true, but totally different angle of these Olympics games.

Chimp and you'll miss these opportunities.

And don't forget to take time to smell the roses.

Seeing these photos put together in such a way reminds me of Jim Brandenburg's fantastic study, Chased by the Light.  And I wonder if Mar's visual poetry of tiny moments in Beijing isn't in some way inspired by this classic study in the woods of Minnesota.

Peek Action and Peak Action Pique our Interest

Despite the never-ending barrage of "peek action" shots from the Beijing Skin and Summer Sports Exposition, such as gallery upon gallery of volleyball "hand signals" and the deconstructions thereof, and water polo warddrobe malfunctions, and closeups of gymnast and hurdlers uniforms that seem to exist only for the "we-know-sex-and-skin-sells" clickthrough value there's also been some genuinely interesting sports images published in the past few weeks--both from Beijing and beyond.

This gallery from Germany's Stern actually covers the full range of Olympic imagery, -- from amazing, to inspiring, to sexy, to embarassing, to painful, to comical and more--offering a rounder perspective on the games than many galleries we've seen. Sure they've got a couple of gratuitous barely covered athletic glutes, and an accidentally bared breast in water polo action in the mix, but overall it presents a great sampling of the sights and scenes of the Summer Games.

But of all the sports images I've seen in the past two weeks, the one strikes me the most has nothing to do with the Summer games, or skin, or sweat or sweltering, or even sunshine.

SI Gives Phelps the Spitz Treatment

Sports Illustrated has Michael Phelps on its new cover, wearing all eight of his gold medals, in a shot that echoes the iconic 1972 portrait of Mark Spitz, who wore seven.  The picture is by Simon Bruty,  and we think its great.--David Schonauer

Beijing Packing Tips from a Pro

The Beijing Olympics, which begin August 8, are on many photographer's minds right now -- especially the ones who are into that whole "sports" thing. So it's no wonder SportsShooter.com put up a nice video with packing and transport tips from USA TODAY staff photographer Robert Hanashiro. If you are interested in hearing more from Hanashiro, check out this Q&A PopPhoto.com's Zach Honig did with him. And if you're looking for more information about making pictures during the Olympics, don't miss Zach's Beijing Blog. Zach has been in Beijing for weeks learning, and blogging, all those little things that will make the lives of visiting photographers a little easier.

~Miki Johnson

Getty Syndicates the Swimsuit Edition

It's a summer Friday, so what not take advantage of that to announce that Contour by Getty Images--the agency's celebrity photo archive--is now syndicating 30 years worth of photography from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. This is a very positive development, as the imagery has long been locked up by Time Warner, parent of SI. Now if you need to get you hands on pics of Christie Brinkley, Cindy Crawford, or Tyra Banks, you'll know where to go.  (I suppose we could have a discussion about which was the all-time best model...but would that be too low-brow? Above: Christie Brinkley, Cancun, 1975, by Walter Iooss; below: Elle Macpherson, Grenadines, 1990, by Robert Hunziger. Go here for a look at the gallery.)--David Schonauer