Football portraits pages from 40 2 w06 cjet

n ABOVE While kids swim by with curiosity, Alonso High School running back Kendrick Hopkins, Middleton linebacker and defensive end Derrell Williams and Gaither defensive back Robert Harvey stand in the Endless Surf, a 17,000 square foot wave pool at Adventure Island. Photo by Melissa Lyttle n 6-7 Robinson High School running back Jermaine Doster, a young man buried in the sand at Picnic Island Beach. Lyttle n 8-9 Berkeley Prep offensive lineman Colin Boss in a New Tampa suburban backyard. Cassella n 10-11 Chamberlain running back Nate Baxley, Riverview quarterback Dustin Gorenc, East Bay guard Travis Combs and Blake tight end Ryan Davis at Alafia Bait & Tackle, which includes The Good Grub, in Gibsonton. Cassella n 12-13 Hillsborough fullback and defensive end Kasheif Steen at the Florida Aquarium. Cassella n 14-15 Jefferson High School wide receiver Anthony MacKinnon selects a café con leche to enjoy with the regulars at La Ideal Cafeteria. Lyttle n 16-17 Plant City running back Jacari Bennett in the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex at Dinosaur World.

Cassella n 18-19 Wharton High School linebacker Josh Jones, lying among pink plastic flamingo lawn ornaments in a suburban New Tampa lawn. Lyttle 4 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

The importance of teamwork

Florida. Pink flamingos. Oranges. The beach. And football. Together, each adds to a popular county sports supplement.

PHOTOS BY MELISSA LYTTLE AND BRIAN CASSELLA, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES COMMENTARY BY MELISSA LYTTLE

T

he high-school football tab, an annual project in our county, is a huge undertaking — 28 high-school football players need to be photographed as well as a cover shot and a doubletruck — and it has previously been the feat of one photographer. When that photographer decided he did not want to do it for a fourth straight year, Brian Cassella and I jumped at the opportunity — to work together as well as to take it to the next level.

The teamwork was tremendous from the beginning.

After the sports department gave us the theme for this year’s tab (“Sunshine State,” soon transformed into “Sunshine County”), Brian and I brainstormed. Everything “Florida” came to mind. Pink flamingos. Oranges. The beach. Heat.

Ice cream.

Next we drove around the county to scout locations, to talk to people and to solidify ideas before shooting. We jotted down notes, figured out if electricity was available, sketched potential shots and took preliminary pictures so we could remember details such as where the light was going to be at certain times of day. Also, we asked ourselves whether we could come back with a football player, a lot of gear and make this work.

The actual photography took place over a two-week period. Everyone back at the office thought that convincing the players to give up the tough-guy persona and take part in a silly, light-hearted photo shoot would be tough. But that was actually the easy part.

When we asked Berkeley Prep’s 6-foot-4-inch 270-pound offensive lineman Colin Boss to put on a rubber duckie pool floatie and run through the sprinkler he did, no questions asked. When we asked Tampa Catholic’s Dickie deLama to eat ice cream after ice cream for his shoot, he smiled the whole time with ice cream melting down his hand and even stopped to wave at people honking their horns and cheering as they drove past.

When we asked Robert Marve, Plant’s quarterback who is headed to the University of Alabama next year, to wear a pirate hat, eye patch and sword while we threw beads at

him, he asked us if he could keep the sword after we were done.

The hardest part was coordinating schedules with the football players and coaches as well as matching the venues where we wanted to shoot. A few coaches did not return our calls so we cornered them face-to-face at their schools about a date and a time.

While each shooting 14 players, we made prints immediately to keep track of the “look.” We hung them up on a bulletin board to keep track of our progress. Coincidentally, the Tampa publisher walked past that same board every day on the way to his office. Early on, he paused, looked over the handful of photos hanging up and smiled, then kept walking. A few days later, when there were a dozen photos up, he stopped again and praised them. The next thing Brian and I knew, the marketing department was stopping by our desks to tell us how wonderful the photos were. That’s when things got fun.

Once marketing saw the potential for doing something spectacular with our photos, they made hundreds of scorecards for each high school, with the photo we took of that school’s player on the front and with the team’s schedule and a St. Petersburg Times logo on the back. They had hawkers, wearing specially printed St. Petersburg Times football jerseys, at the first home game of every school to pass out the scorecards as well as to distribute extra copies of the football tab.

Business sold a record number of ads so the result was the largest tab the paper has ever produced. In addition, the publication made history as the first all-color tab. Before it had included only a handful of color slots. Suffice to say, the tab went over pretty well in the newsroom.

Success happened because of our teamwork: collaborating on ideas, prodding one another on techniques, assisting on shoots, maintaining consistency. It was also incredibly rewarding for Brian and me to see other departments in the newspaper respond so positively as they took our initial idea and made it bigger and better than we had imagined. n

Click your way to teamwork projects and color your pages with graphic novel techniques.

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 5

6 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 7

8 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 9

10 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 11

12 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 13

14 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 15

16 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 17

18 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY

WINTER 2006

WINTER 2006

COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY • 19