More and more professional sports teams are adopting real-time social media workflows. They will continue to pick up the pace in
an effort to engage their fans while their stories are still trending.
And most importantly, they will use cutting-edge technology to
strike a balance between speed and quality.
Rob Tringali started shooting sports when he was 18. He chased sunlight across the country shooting football games. He would
come home with 30 or 40 rolls of film, develop them, and FedEx slides to clients, who would publish them everywhere from magazines to VCR boxes.
Now, Rob delivers photos to clients instantaneously. And while his workflow has changed dramatically, he says one thing will never change in sports photography: a good story is a good story.
Rob Tringali
ROB TRINGALI
Photo Credit: Rob Tringali
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Learn how top brands, including sports franchises like the Baltimore Ravens, are using Ceros to build rich, interactive content quickly.
Find out why the Ravens, Rockies, and many pro sports teams (including half of NFL and MLB teams) use the Libris by PhotoShelter digital asset management platform to power their visual storytelling.
Photo Credit: Phil Hoffmann
Photo Credit: Shawn Hubbard / Baltimore Ravens
Phil HoffmanN
There’s a whole team of
people waiting for the
pictures and waiting to
share them. It makes you feel
like someone appreciates
what you’re doing when
you’re down there.
The Ravens take a visual-first approach across all of their digital channels. After discovering posts without images don’t get shared, they updated their process to only create Facebook posts with images. They take a similar approach on Twitter, as well as their website. In 2016, the Ravens homepage was updated to put photos in the spotlight. This led to a 23% increase in time spent on the homepage, and a 2.4% uptick in users clicking to watch a video or view a photo gallery. And like the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings, and the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes, they are using Ceros to build rich, interactive content quickly.
Phil Hoffmann started shooting for the Ravens when they
moved to Baltimore in 1996, three years before Nikon
introduced its first professional DSLR camera. Back then,
he delivered a set of selects to the Ravens, and the world
saw only a handful of his photos.
Now, the Ravens use a real-time workflow like the Rockies.
Phil hands his photos off to the Ravens’ digital media team
to be shared on social media instantly. While he would
have liked to have maintained 100% control over his
photos (like any artist), he understands the catch-22 that
his photos will now be seen by countless fans through the
Ravens’ many storytelling platforms.
Baltimore Ravens
Instagram hits 700 million monthly active users, doubling its user base in two years
Facebook has 1.94 billion monthly active users
2017
Twitter stops including images in 140 character count, encouraging the use of images in posts
Instagram launches Stories, allowing users to share ephemeral snapshots of their days
2016
Facebook introduces live video and 360 video
Mirrorless cameras like the Sony a7S see an uptick in popularity, accounting for a rising percentage of all camera sales
2015
Facebook hits 1 billion
active mobile users per month
Instagram reaches 300 million active users
2014
Oreo tweets its infamous “dunk in the dark” photo during the Super Bowl blackout, sparking buzz about real-time social media content
Nikon releases the D5300, Nikon’s first DSLR with built-in wi-fi
2013
Canon releases the EOS 6D, the first DSLR with wi-fi as a standard built-in feature
2012
Apple announces the first generation iPhone, giving users the ability to snap and share photos
2007
Nikon announces the first wi-fi enabled cameras
2005
Facebook allows images for the first time
2004
Nikon announces the D1, the first professional DSLR camera
1999
Kodak creates the first digital camera
1973
Rollover the timeline for more information
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2007
2005
2004
1999
1973
STEP 03
STEP 02
STEP 01
First step
Assistant Director of Digital Media and Publications Julian Valentin chooses the best photos and posts them on social media.
Julian Valentin
We use photos or images in every single tweet when we’re covering the game. Being able to use the photos that actually just happened in seconds is a huge asset for us to be able to connect with our fans at a new level.
STEP 02
STEP 01
STEP 03
Matt sends the photos to his team’s cloud-based media library via FTP.
NEXT step
STEP 02
STEP 01
STEP 03
Every MLB stadium has the same wifi protocol, so Matt can walk into any stadium and transmit photos without having to change any settings.
Matt’s Nikon D5 is set up with the FTP information from Libris and Nikon’s proprietary wifi adapter. When he shoots a series of photos, he quickly reviews them and tags them for FTP.
Nikon D5
Nikon’s proprietary wifi adapter
Libris media library
PROCESS
GEAR
MATT DIRKSEN
We’re working in real time and stuff’s happening in the background for me. Once I tag stuff to go, I can get back to shooting.
Photo Credit: Matt Dirksen / The Colorado Rockies
Team photographer Matt Dirksen captures every frame.
STEP 03
STEP 02
NEXT step
STEP 01
Click to explore the different steps in the Rockies' workflow
JULIAN VALENTIN
Assistant Director of Digital
Media & Publications for the Rockies
Colorado Rockies
Colorado Rockies #27 Trevor Story swings, and hits it out of the park. He rounds the bases, circles home and high fives his teammates. Minutes later, fans in the stands and those watching at home have photos of every one of those moments in the palm of their hands. The Rockies use a lightning fast photo workflow to move photos from camera to social media in real time.
SPORTS STORYTELLING IN 2017:
Photo Credit: Matt Dirksen / Colorado Rockies
Photo Credit: Phil Hoffmann / Baltimore Ravens
The New York Times Sports
Sports photographers for The New York Times connect to a wireless network or to an ethernet connection so they can transmit photos from their cameras straight to their editors.
“Being able to do that - having that technology is critical so that our photographers can be in the field unencumbered, can be shooting freely without worrying about racing back to a laptop or getting into a workroom,” says Jeffrey Furticella, Sports Photo Editor for The New York Times. “They’re constantly in a high pressure situation, and especially on deadline, they’re always tethered to an ethernet connection or hooked up to wireless and submitting their images directly off the back of their camera to an editor who then takes it the rest of the way.”
Jeffrey says that in a time when brands are sharing massive amounts of content, it’s crucial to share the best content as quickly as possible.
SPEED
THE NEED FOR
SPORTS STORYTELLING IN 2017:
Sports storytellers are playing a game that moves as fast as the ones they cover. Fans expect to see high quality photos of a play on social media as soon as it happens.
At the same time, technology is changing to empower photographers and creative teams to keep up with our real-time demand for eye-catching content.
Jeffrey Furticella
Sports Photo Editor,
The New York Times
Photo credit: Matt Dirksen / Colorado Rockies
THEN & NOW
REAL-TIME SPORTS STORYTELLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
GAMEDAY
