SBXLV Fan Feature

“SUPERFANS” – Faces of the fans entering Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas (Photos by Donald Miralle)

Super Bowl XLV was a different assignment this year for me. Outside of all the leadup events which I shoot for the NFL Players Association, I wasn’t going to be shooting on the field as in year’s past but up in an elevated position in the stands, contributing some photos to the New York Times. Because of this I really had a lot of creative time and space to do something different. I had a beer with Gary Bogdon the night before and I told him I wanted to do a fan feature and he mentioned a series would be a good idea. So I decided to set up a small step in and shoot photobooth for fans entering the game, using a 580EX flash of camera on a light stand synched to a pair of Pocket Wizard TT5‘s. Whenever an interesting Steeler or Cheesehead would walk by I would ask if they would like their photo taken. Keeping the lens, lighting, subject distance and pose fairly similar, I shot fans as they entered the stadium for about 2 hours and captured about 70+ portraits. My 50 favorite I made into the above collage, which I was very happy with. The New York Times ran five of these portraits in their monday sports section which was great, but I am still looking for someone to run the entire series as a whole. I had a blast doing this, meeting football fans as far as Scotland (i.e. the Steeler’s fans in kilts), to a Steelers fan preparing to have his 7th Lombardi Trophy tattooed on his arm on Monday, to fans from Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, and beyond. Below is a gallery of all the single shots, hope you enjoy!!!

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JAWS goes off on north shore of Maui

While I was in Hawaii during the Paula Finlay Cover Shoot for LAVA, I had one morning off so my wife and I went to go check out the infamous surf break “Jaws” on the north shore of Maui. The last time we were there was 8 years earlier before we were married and still dating to watch men braving 50 foot faces during the Tow-In World Cup. Conditions were primo with a large long period N swell producing waves in the 25′-30’range. We shot guys dropping in and some unfortunately wiping out for a couple hours before heading over to quaint town of Pa’ia for a nice lunch. I sent my favorite shot (above) of a man dropping into a monster from the nicest light early in the morning to ESPN the Magazine, and they are running it as a ZOOM double page spread in this weeks edition. Stoked!