KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Charlie Riedel has been a staff photographer for The Associated Press for 25 years after working 17 years for small newspapers in rural Kansas. He is based in Kansas City and covers the Chiefs, Royals and college sports. Riedel has also covered the Super Bowl, the Olympic and major golf tournaments. When not shooting sports, he has covered major news events including hurricanes, oil spills, tornados and wildfires.
Why this photo?
I was covering a watch party for Wednesday’s United States-Bosnia-Herzegovina match. My assignment was pretty straightforward so with the game being shown on a big screen behind me, I spent most of my time just watching the crowd. I was looking for reactions to what was happening on the screen and other moments that illustrated the joy and enthusiasm shown by the mostly U.S. fans. This photo was less of a reaction to the on-field action, but a spontaneous moment when the crowd started tossing people in the air to celebrate. I knew I had the opportunity to document this event with a photo that differs from the typical photos of fans just screaming with excitement.
How I made this photo
I shot the watch party mostly with a 12-24 mm extreme wide angle lens as I was stationed in a buffer between the crowd and the stage. Because of this, my subjects were often only a couple feet away from me so I needed to be able to shoot as wide as possible. When the crowd started tossing people in the air, I decided I needed to show the person airborne with the sea of people watching and would need to get higher to do that. I was able to gain a couple feet of height by standing on part of the metal structure that supports the retaining wall holding the crowd back from the buffer. That was not high enough, so while standing on that structure, I shot the scene with my camera held high above my head and and guessing at the focus. This technique to get a higher angle is commonly referred among photojournalists as a “Hail Mary” photo because you are shooting somewhat blindly and “hope and pray” you get photos that are in focus, exposed properly and composed well. This photo was shot with a 12-24 mm lens at 14 mm and an aperture of 4.5 to get a little extra depth of field. The shutter speed was 1/1600 of a second which was as slow as I thought I could go to stop the action. The camera was set on auto exposure and auto white balance as the light was constantly changing in intensity and color. ISO was 10,000.
Why it works
I shot a handful of people getting tossed airborne — most of them didn’t go very high or flailed awkwardly. With this photo, it all came together. The framing of the photo puts the scene in perspective and is loose enough to show how high she flew, as well as the vast crowd watching and cheering her on. Then there is the young lady being thrown —everything fell into place with her expression and body language and those red cowboy boots were the icing on the cake. This photo illustrated the joy and excitement that came over the crowd as it became apparent Team USA would likely win this match and advance to the next round in the World Cup.
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