I’ve enjoyed photographing the NFL since 1980, the first twenty years covering the Buffalo Bills and since 2000 the Kansas City Chiefs. But Tuesday was a new experience for me.

NFL teams have a three-day mandatory “minicamp,” early in the summer, which consists of on-field workouts and drills, with no contact. Credentialed media are invited to watch a small part of that, and allowed to photograph (or video) an even smaller part. Last week I was asked by the Associated Press to cover the first day, which was Tuesday. I was warned that much of what I’d see would be at the far end of the field, so take the longest lens I’ve got. Luckily, I have some long glass, so here’s what I brought:

Two Nikon Z 9 cameras

Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 lens

Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8 lens with Z 2X teleconverter for 140-400mm f/5.6

Spare battery, cards and Nikkor 24-200mm lens in a fanny pack (didn’t need any of that, but better safe than sorry)

The schedule had us being escorted onto the field at 10:55am, so I arrived around 10:30. I learned long ago that as a photographer, being early was rarely bad, being late was always bad. Right on time we were escorted to the end zone of one of the practice fields (opposite end from where most of the players were working out) and told we could start. My first frame taken was taken at 10:56:38, my last at 11:02:44, when we were told to put our cameras down. Six minutes. At that point I’d shot 319 frames. Twelve minutes later we were told we could shoot again, and I made another 360 frames over the following nine minutes, when we were again told to stop, then escorted off the field.

I’m sure that 679 frames in fifteen minutes was a new record for me. Granted, I’d been warned there would be very little time, and to shoot a lot, but still. Of course, shooting at fifteen frames per second meant each burst usually resulted in at least a half-dozen images, and I’d often shoot extras to make sure I could see a number on the jersey or name on the back. I was fortunate that some receiving drills took place not too far away, but I still almost exclusively used the 800mm (only 45 frames were shot with the “shorter” lens, all at 400mm). Most of what I could shoot was at the opposite end of the field, and included exciting stuff like stretching.

With such a short amount of time, there were only a few people I made a priority to find. That included Patrick Mahomes, big-name free agent signings and the top draft picks, as well as coach Reid. Once home, it took me an hour to download, caption, edit and transmit 27 photos. Later that day I’d upload another 52 for the AP archive.

The biggest challenge to an assignment like this is actually the captioning. At this time of year, the team has about a hundred players they’re looking at. Thankfully, they give us a roster, and I’d used one from last week’s OTAs (Optional Team Activities) to build out a text file the night before using Code Replacement that would help automate the process. That let me type “\k9\” and get “Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster” in the caption field. Features like that, plus experience, meant I could get back home at noon, prep and send all those photos, have lunch and still leave at 2pm for a commercial shoot that afternoon.

With minicamp over, now there’s just training camp and pre-season before the real games begin. I’m already looking forward to fall, and it’s not just because of our summer heat. Here are some of the images from Tuesday, a couple both as shot and  after cropping, as well as information about them. And, if you’d like to see everything I uploaded to the AP, click here.

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