One Extraordinary Photo: A stadium lit up by smartphones

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Reed Hoffmann has been a freelance photographer for The Associated Press for more than a quarter of a century. Before moving to the Kansas City area, he was a newspaper photographer for more than 20 years. He covers breaking news in addition to various sporting events for the AP.

As we enter the final rounds of the World Cup, The Associated Press has five photographers covering every match. Four are in different spots around the pitch at field level and one in an overhead position, called the “tribune.” That was me for Friday night’s game between Colombia and Ghana. During halftime an announcement was made for fans to scan a QR code shown on the stadium screens to take part in a light show. Since I also cover the Kansas City Chiefs there, and they do that occasionally, I knew what was coming. The stadium lights would flash on and off with music playing, and fans’ smartphones would also turn on and off.

I’m normally shooting a telephoto lens at either 400mm or 560mm for action, but have a second camera with a wide-angle lens for overall photos. Once they made that announcement, I grabbed the second camera, changed the settings for less light and waited for the right moment. With action I’m always shooting at over 1/1000 second to stop action, but for this I dropped the shutter speed to 1/80 second and braced the camera on the railing in front of me.

It’s rare for the lights to be off in a stadium during a night game, so that, paired with the tens of thousands of smartphone lights, created a scene few people ever see. For most of the light show, though, the stadium lights were just changing in brightness. There were only two brief moments the lights were completely off, and I waited for those. In photography, different is good, so I try to keep that in mind with every assignment I do. And this was very different.

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here