A photograph can be powerful. It possesses the ability to capture the raw emotion of a singular moment and preserve an otherwise fleeting snippet of time, telling a story in the process.
Over the next several weeks, we're going to take a look back at 10 of the best photos from the 2024-25 season along with commentary from Chiefs' Director of Photography Steve Sanders.
Here's what we've covered so far:
We'll continue with No. 8:
"Travis is a Blur"
Setting: Week 9 vs. Tampa Bay
The Subject: Tight end Travis Kelce runs out of the tunnel during pre-game introductions.
Taken By: Kyle Rivas
Camera Model: SONY ILCE-9
Focal Length: 12 mm
Exposure Time: 1.3
Aperture: f/16
Steve Sanders' Thoughts:
Q: What was going on here, and why did you include this photo in the collection?
Sanders: "This photo was technically taken by Kyle, but it was actually a remote camera that he set up in the tunnel," Sanders said. "This was a timelapse of the tunnel during pre-game introductions. It was the first time that we had the new LED lights on inside the stadium, and this is one of the things we thought might look cool. We wanted a player running out of the tunnel to look like a blur, and we got a little bit of that here. The exposure was really long – it was something like 20 seconds. We have several frames of this, but this was by far the best one."
Q: How do you manage the light when capturing a photo like this?
Sanders: "You have to let the genius of the camera work for you a little bit. It will help you out when you're using a remote setup like this," Sanders said. "We used a long shutter speed on this to get the blur on the smoke, so there are no hard edges. It's just a constant flow. The exposure compensation will read the scene, so if you're doing a 20-second exposure, it averages that out – which helps a lot – but you also have to plan it all out the best you can. You have to know where the camera is, where the lens is pointing and what will be in that view."
Q: Why did you decide to go with a timelapse rather than a standard frame?
Sanders: "I was kind of inspired by something I had seen. I thought we could do something really cool with the new lighting we were using in the stadium for the night games," Sanders said. "I wanted to try something new, and it worked."
