Friday, November 3, 2017

Visualize and be Ready Before the Moment

Thursday night I had the honor of being inducted in the Immaculata La Salle High School
Sports Hall of Fame. I was the special teams captain with football players mostly bigger than me.

After a 1975 LaSalle vs. Belen football game, a Miami News sports story quoted our team's quarterback, Bill StPierre, as saying “visualizing changes reactions into reflexes and helps to do things quicker and better.”

Visualizing is a technique I use every day as a photojournalist. Just like I would anticipate the ball carriers movements for a tackle back in the 70’s. Today, visualizing helps me prepare and be ready before the moment. I visualize and place myself in a position to capture the light, the emotion, the movement and composition all colliding in a split second for the decisive moment to tell a compelling story in a single photograph.

In the article Bill describes this technique and what is happening in my head for the last 40 + years, "like a moving picture in slow motion.”

We learned to visualize from our football coaches Carmen Grosso, Denise Hackett and Van Parsons at practice everyday,

I’m forever grateful for what I learned on the football field and how ILS prepared me for success in life.