To Beantown and Back

Chicago Tribune photographer leaves Chicago early Saturday, flies to Boston to cover the Bulls-Celtics playoff game, flies back to Chicago, then covers the Hawks-Flames playoff game.

From the final photo caption:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-090418-bulls-blackhawks-playoff-pg,0,6250386.photogallery

I thought it was a cool piece, and would like to know who came up with the idea and some background behind it. I like how there are small bits of audio throughout the slideshow.

 

I'm sure management is quite happy that the photog didn't need to spend money on a hotel room.

 

7600+ photos? What did he do, sit on his shutter?

 

That's a photo every 16 seconds for four hours per game (including pre and post-game time).

Who has time to filter through all those and see which ones are good?

 

Baron, you took the words right out of my mouth. Call me a cynic during these trying times but all I got out of this piece was, "Look, Mr. Zell. We thought of a way to fuck over the worker bees even more and put their health and sanity at risk by packaging a 20-hour work day into a neat online story. Woo hoo!"

And you can't tell me the photographer's quality of work didn't suffer thanks to this insane assignment. Go back and compare the shots from the Bulls-Celtics game to the Hawks-Flames game. I give Scott plenty of kudos for going all out, but common sense will tell you that the human body and mind can only take so much.

Oh, and in spite of his valiant effort, would anybody here be even a bit surprised if we found out that Scott got dressed down by management for upgrading his return seat to first class?

 

I love using the web for extra photography. This is something that the web can give you that the print cannot.

But I just looked at this for free and I never even glanced at the ads. This type of content should have a subscription fee.

The digital camera is a wonderful thing.

 

Andy, call me a cynic too, but if said worker is hospitalized due to exhaustion on Monday (or even worse, a heart attack or something like that), then is this a good idea?

What was the photog's age? If he's in his 20s or 30s, I mean obviously it doesn't bring health considerations into it.

I don't wanna crap on what was obviously an innovative way to shoot two games, but at what point does "more with less" translate into more hare-brained stuff like this?

 

Head of the nail, meet hammer.

And even someone in his 20s or 30s could be at risk, especially on the drive from the airport to the United Center, or more likely the drive home after the game.

It happened to me once during a "more with less" weekend that began with a high school football game on Friday night, then a 7-hour drive the next day to cover a college football game, followed by a full NFL Sunday and then the 2.5-hour drive back home. I nodded off at the wheel and drove full speed into the back of a semi. Luckily, the semi was moving and not stationary, but my car was pretty much totaled. The impact is what woke me up.

 

I thought it was an interesting feature.

I'm sure his work did suffer a little bit at the hockey game, but he likely wasn't the primary photographer for that game. I thought he had some good action shots.

 

Most businesses would have the good sense to try to hide it when they have workers do something like this.

 

One more cynic weighs in:

I wonder how many hours he'll record for that day.

 

I think he probably offered to do it.