Photographing the Kansas City Chiefs’ home games throughout the season, if they make it to the Super Bowl, of course I wish them the best. However, there’s a downside to that. If they win the championship, it means I’ll have to cover the parade. A big party? Yes. A lot of work? Oh my, yes!

The night the Chiefs won the AFC Championship, the Associated Press asked if I was available to work the parade if they won the Super Bowl two weeks later. After the first half of the big game, it looked like I’d have Wednesday free. By the end, that was no longer the case.

Three years ago, when the Chiefs beat San Francisco for the trophy, I was part of a four-person team covering the parade for the AP (two staffers and two freelancers). One at the beginning of the parade, me in the middle and two at the end (one near the stage, the other far back in a tower overlooking the scene). This year, with one staffer retired and the other staying in Phoenix for baseball’s spring training, it was just me and another freelancer. How do you cover all of that with just two people? Not easily, but here’s how.

On Monday we worked out the coverage plan. Colin Braley would start near the end of the parade route, allowing him to shoot the buses and players passing by. After that happened, he’d head up to the National World War I Museum and Memorial on the hill above, where he’d have access to an overall view as well as reliable internet to transmit pictures. I’d be credentialed to access the media platform with a view of the stage in front of Union Station. That would allow me to photograph the buses arriving, then the festivities on the stage. There were two big challenges with all of this. The first was that we’d need to be on location at least seven hours ahead of time (I arrived at 6:30am for a 1:45pm event), or risk not finding parking or even be able to get to our spots. The second was being able to send photos.

Working for a wire service like the Associated Press means you need to be able to get photos to them ASAP. The days of evening deadlines for newspapers are long gone. Now it’s shoot, send photos immediately, then keep shooting and sending, as often as possible. We knew from our experience at the last Super Bowl parade that once you pack over a half-million people into an area, cell phones would only be good for texting, if you’re lucky. Not enough bandwidth to transmit photos. For Colin, that meant he’d shoot pictures of fans gathering hours before the parade, then hike back up to the Museum to send (they had WiFi for the press to use), then walk back down to cover the actual parade. For me, because of the crowds packed in around the stage area, if I couldn’t get a good enough signal on my phone, I’d not be able to send until it all ended. As expected, the signal strength wasn’t there. But I got lucky in a different way.

An old friend who’s a photographer at the Kansas City Star knew someone at a TV station also on the media platform. They let her connect an ethernet cable to the router they’d installed, so she could get photos out (but no other photographers, so their connection would stay fast enough). And since I was working next to Tammy, bless her heart, she let me use it too. That meant I could download to my laptop, edit, caption, then plug the cable in and send a few photos every hour or two. That kept the editors happy, and helped fill those many hours of waiting in the cold. But I also had another camera in use that day, that I wouldn’t need to send any photos from until much later.

The day before the parade I visited the National World War 1 Museum and Memorial to see about setting up a remote camera. The staff there has always been super helpful, so I called and made an appointment. As mentioned, it’s on a hillside overlooking Union Station and downtown, and THE place for an overall photo.  The tower is the usual spot to take that picture, but there was nothing I could clamp a camera on up top, and a tripod was sure to get bumped by other media there. When I explained that, my guide asked if I was comfortable with old metal ladders. Now I was intrigued. If I could make it up those two ladders, through a narrow hole in the ceiling and out a small window with my gear, I could set up on the roof of one of their other buildings. And that’s what I did. The next morning, while still dark, I scrambled up there to set up my Nikon and tripod. Using the camera’s built-in intervalometer, I set it to start shooting at 10am, one frame every 20-seconds. The goal was to get that overall shot, yes, but also create a timelapse video. The camera’s battery probably wouldn’t last that long (especially in the cold weather), so I replaced it with a Tether Tools ONsite Relay C Coupler, powered by their 100W 26,800 mAh PD Battery Pack.

Now it was just a matter of getting back to the stage area and waiting a few hours. Actually, more than a few. For most football players, a Super Bowl win is a rare or non-existent event. So they were going to make the most of the day, hopping off the buses regularly to party with their fans. It wasn’t until 2:15pm that the first players made it onto the stage. There were a few speeches, lasting about ten minutes, then just a big celebration. After the speeches I started downloading one card from each camera and kept shooting on the other card (my cameras can each hold two separate cards). By 2:45pm it was pretty much over and I could start transmitting photos again. By 3:30pm I’d packed up and was lugging my gear up to the Museum (too many steps!) to retrieve the remote camera and send more pictures. The museum closed at 5pm, so from there I headed to another location nearby (thanks, Kansas City Star!) to continue sending photos before loading the car and driving home, arriving around 7pm. After sending more photos, I finally took a long, hot shower and then bed. Whew!

Details

Cameras: Two Nikon Z 9 bodies, with white balance set to “Natural Auto” and frame rate at 6 frames/second (to avoid shooting too many images). Never needed to change the  battery on either camera, at the end they still showed about 50% power remaining.

Lenses: Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 TC, Nikkor 24-200mm f/4-6.3 and Nikkor 14-30mm f/4.

Cards: SanDisk Extreme Pro CFexpress cards, 128GB in slot 1, 64GB in slot 2.

Remote: Nikon Z 6 II with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 lens.

Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch.

Images: About 2000 frames taken (not including remote), about 100 sent.

And now a few more photos from the day:

Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt brings out the Chiefs’ new Super Bowl trophy to join the first two. Nikon Z 9, ISO250, 1/1000 at f/4, Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 TC lens with teleconverter engaged to give me 560mm.[/caption]

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