Justin Tafoya: Okay. Yeah. Justin Tafoya, staff photographer, but also help kind of manage, our coverage. And as far I work with our editors. I work with photographers throughout the month.
And not just for March Madness, but this is year long with all the NCAA championships that we cover. That’s probably my my main role role here.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Alright. Jamie?

Jamie Schwaberow: I’m the owner of Clarkson Creative and the director of NCAA Photos.
I, my my job is to basically run NCAA photos, from a, whatever large scale thing. I’m working on contracts. I’m I’m assigning our photographers, and I’m, our internal staff, and then I’m doing a lot of hiring.

Jeremy Berkowitz: I think I lost your audio, Jamie. Hold on a sec. Say hi for me, Jamie.

Jamie Schwaberow: Hey.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Okay. I could hear you now.

Jamie Schwaberow: Okay.

Jeremy Berkowitz: You cut out at the last at the last part of that sentence.

Jamie Schwaberow: Oh, okay. But yeah. And, and then I hire a heck of a lot of freelancers to help us because covering March Madness and all of the NCAA championships is such a huge endeavor that, we need help across the country.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Right. I bet. I bet. And you’re both in the same office now, right, in Colorado?

Justin Tafoya: Yes.

Jeremy Berkowitz: That is home base for you guys, and then you travel for all of these these games and conferences and such?

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. We cover, as far as March Madness goes, we we cover the entire men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. There are, they each have a first four, which is kind of the play in to get to the round of sixty four. We cover those.
Then there are eight different locations for the men’s tournament and sixteen different locations for the women’s tournament.
Yeah, we kind of assign our internal staff pretty early on just to, help with travel costs and and things that. And we we know where we internally are going months and months in advance. But, the women’s tournament, for example, they don’t determine where and when the first and second round games are until selection Sunday on March This year is March fifteenth.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Oh, wow.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah, then we need to have photographers and editors across the country starting on March eighteenth, I believe it is, to cover all of these games. It’s a it’s a whirlwind, and Justin and I work a lot of hours that, March fourteenth through sixteenth period, especially, to get all of the photographers set up and editors set up ready to roll to make sure that they are working within our, specifications. And luckily for me, Justin has stepped up the last couple years.
I hired them, and he is kind of the brains behind the operation and works on getting them all the actual information they need, which he can touch on.

Justin Tafoya: No. It’s a it’s it’s a lot. Lot of lot of lot of paperwork, lot of packets, a lot of upload methods, created a lot of galleries on PhotoShelter, because we are sending live. We have these instant transmit galleries that photographers and editors are sending to right away.
And then we have kind of the selects galleries that we we post to kinda throughout the game. We’re also sending to Getty Images, our licensing partner, who’s getting things out too.
And it’s a lot of coordination, yeah, working with both photographers and editors.
We our system’s not too difficult, but, there are some if you’re new, it’s it’s it can be a lot. Sure. Making sure everybody’s kinda trained up on on what’s expected and what they need to do.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah. You began talking about this a little bit, but I’m curious, for a massive moment this, what goes into the prep? You’re you you began talking about how you’re kind of talking about schedules and getting things situated there. But I guess if you can go into more detail about how you prep for these, the traveling and the coverage. What goes into that?

Jamie Schwaberow: I’ll start, Justin, and then you.
Because my role kinda comes first. Sure.
For the men’s basketball tournament, I I honestly was thinking about it yesterday. I’m, where are the where are the locations for next year? Because I could actually kind of get started already Right. And and start getting all those assigned.
There are some exceptions, obviously. I’m not going to do that, but I could get things assigned. On the on the women’s side, because there are sixteen different locations, but it’s not predetermined, I’m actually kind of focused on the top twenty four or locations. And constantly from December until that March fifteenth date, I’m communicating with different photographers and editors saying, I think we want you on these dates. I apologize that it’s up in the air. I know we will want you to photograph a first two games in the first round, one game in the second round.
And then and it’ll be on either Friday, Sunday, or Saturday, Monday. And please please work with us and have an open schedule. And, I’m working on that. I’m kind of negotiating rates. I’m also trying to find the editors, Talking with especially for the men’s tournament, talking with IT and even electricians, people that at all the venues to make sure that we have power run to the back of the stanchions we can plug our remote cameras in. Also, make sure that there’s Ethernet that we can plug remote cameras if we wanna tether those in, or at at the very least, we have Ethernet run to our photo positions that we can be live transmitting throughout the throughout the games.
Applying for credentials. What else? We have a we we try to do we try to set up as many remotes as as we can then we have a sign up sheet for that as well.
I’m working with all of our photographers to see where they’ll be able to set up remotes and then also working with CBS and TNT to, all the all of their videography teams to see where they are planning on setting things up to hopefully either, share space or figure out, hey. I don’t know. Can we use this space? Can you use this space? It’s just a lot of collaborating and and organizing all in advance.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah. Much much that goes into it that nobody thinks of if you’re not, in the weeds with you guys.

Justin Tafoya: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then I take all of that that Jamie just talked about and and put that into an info packet.
Plus, also have, the client, the NCAA, who, has their shot list. We’re talking with them, coordinating with them, just making sure that, timing of everything is good and making sure we don’t miss anything. I mean, it is a long month, but there’s so much that goes into these days.
They’re long days and just a lot to cover, in a short amount of time.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Once the action starts, how are you collaborating? Talk to me about, maybe the methods of communication or kind of the step by step of of making things making sure things move to where they need to be? What does that collaboration process look like?

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it starts kinda just with with this kind of packet of information that I send out. Everybody knows the upload methods, where they’re FTP ing and what they’re FTP ing to certain galleries.
And that takes that’s a that’s a lot of upfront work.
I’m basically the help desk. I don’t I don’t travel the last couple years. I’ve stayed home during March, and I think that’s been a it’s been something that we needed.
Photographers are texting me. I’m getting emails, not just from managers and photographers, but also from the NCAA, anything that that they need short short notice. And just, yeah, just being there and and answering answering questions.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. It’s been such a great, change because we all wanted to shoot, and we would do all of this prep work and, honestly, just hope that there weren’t any questions. But the reality is Justin and I would be photographing games in the past and be getting calls. That was such a headache, and I’m glad that, Justin has changed his role a bit and is the help desk so that there’s someone who is attentive to all the photographers and editors’ needs as well as the NCAA. If they have any needs on the spot, they know they can go to Justin, and he can communicate with all of the people on the ground.

Jeremy Berkowitz: That makes a lot of sense to me. Right, a a man on the ground that’s kind of administration administrative tasks kind of managing the ins and outs when when y’all are on the sidelines and can’t be doing that sort of thing.

Justin Tafoya: Yep. Yep. Yeah. They’re they’re long days. I mean, they women’s games start at ten AM, eleven AM, and they ended, after midnight in some some some locations. I miss I miss shooting for sure, but, this role has been much needed, and and it’s definitely a different challenge.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Do you guys, have a way that you’re, talking to each other from diff across the country?
Or what’s your way of communicating with each other to make sure things are going going smoothly or that type of

Justin Tafoya: I I think, honestly, old school text message, group messages Sure.
Slack is a is a great resource. It’s a great app for certain people.
I think some of the people that we hired just, don’t use Slack as regularly. We don’t have this ginormous, Slack channel that that we can post to. But, yeah. To text messages have been the the quickest and and easiest for everyone, we’ve kinda gone with that.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure. Fair enough.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Okay. You started to mention how you’re getting things up and and running photo wise. And let’s talk about how PhotoShelter plays a role in the workflow.
What’s your process for, I guess, setting things up and then making sure things are running through PhotoShelter and out to the partners and people who who need the photos.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, it starts with just setting up galleries, right, for every location that we’re, we’re live transmitting from. On the men’s side, it’s eight locations. On the women’s side, and that’s just first and second rounds.
Different upload methods for each of those, they’re hitting the right spot.
And that’s, I mean, that that’s probably the majority of of of how we kind of organize things.
And then, again, we have we have another kind of collection set up for all the game select. Once the game’s over, we have fully toned captioned, cropped images that go and hit this, kinda game selects collection, and, we have, Duke versus North Carolina. The NCAA can easily go through and and pick out the specific game, the specific matchup that they’re looking for. That’s just kind of the overview. Yeah. And that’s I don’t know.

Jamie Schwaberow: The photo shelter, initial part, what we decided because we want the NCAA to have as quick as access as possible to every every photo that we choose to send up. These initial galleries that we were talking about are, site specific, and a lot more content is flowing into that constantly. We are not doing any cropping, color correcting, anything on that. That is just spewing quality photos out, that they can use it for social media purposes, in venue purposes, real whatever they want. And then continually, as we are feeding that beast, we our editors are also, taking from that selection, whittling it down, doing all the color corrections, crops, captioning, getting that to our licensing partner, Getty. And then, ultimately, Justin said, putting them into very specific galleries naming the two teams. There is a, much tighter selects gallery from every single game.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure. How important is it to have both of those kind of operations running at this at the same time? Or is it all happening kind of I guess you you mentioned, some of it’s happening post, once you have all the photos in there, but, to get all the to get all the images out there, but then to get all the selects out there, there’s a lot happening at once. Right? Who’s kind of involved there? And, Jamie, I know I you can get the I see you can get the light.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. I’m, come on, light. Come back on.

Jeremy Berkowitz: I’ve been I’ve been there. I’ve been there.

Justin Tafoya: Automatic lights.
I I think I think to your question, the selects galleries are a great way for the NCAs to search specifically for players. Right? Doing keyword searches, for specific players that they’re looking for. All through this, the the NCAs pulling images that they’re using for for decor at the next venue site. At regional sites, they’re pulling stuff from the first and second round galleries, to make prints, to do kind of, yeah, wall decor and locker room spaces.
And it’s it’s super helpful for them to be able to do a search for a specific player, a specific team and and get and find the images right away that they need.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Really cool.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. There’s a there’s a partner, another partner of the NCAA section one twenty seven is the name of the company.
They’re looking through all of our content throughout the tournament, and it it’s gotta be frustrating because, they are trying to pick basically the the top seven or so, players from every single team to do these cutouts. When the teams arrive at the final four, there are basically, these fat heads of every player along the wall, huge. And they’re printing it out the day after the regionals, which is the day before the teams get to the men’s and women’s final four. It’s a really cool graphic look that they walk through the the hallway for the first time and get to see themselves, from one of the previous games. But, obviously, section one twenty seven is whittling it down, and then all of a sudden, they’re, oh, we did cutouts for, I don’t know, this team, and now they’re out and this team, and now they’re out. It, eventually, they just have four teams to, do the cutouts for.

Jamie Schwaberow: And then they they also take, a huge or a group photo from the teams that advanced from the regionals to the final four that goes in their locker rooms, along a huge wall.
It’s just it’s a really cool element that the NCAA has started to include, which just makes the student athlete experience that much more special once they arrive at the final fours.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure. They’re preparing ahead of time for x, y, and z to happen. And if it doesn’t, they’re removing they’re moving certain elements, but they’re making sure they’re ready to go no matter what.

Jamie Schwaberow: Right. Yeah. They’re not printing anything, but they are cutting things out so they can print things as soon as, basically, the games end. On men’s side, it’s, whatever, Sunday afternoon. On the women’s side, it’s on a Monday, and and they are going to print hours after the games end.

Justin Tafoya: Sure. Yeah.

Jeremy Berkowitz: And is that review and approval process happening within PhotoShelter?

Justin Tafoya: No.
That’s the I I

Jamie Schwaberow: wish it was.
I no. I think they are they’re viewing all the content through PhotoShelter. They’re downloading everything through PhotoShelter, it it is still the avenue for where they are viewing all the photos. But the actual approval parts, I think they’re doing offline. Yeah.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Okay. Shout out to Workspaces for those who review and approve Yes. In the tool. Yes.

Jamie Schwaberow: I do know that they use it a ton. They do use workspaces. I think for this very specific reason, they don’t. But that’s something we should talk about because maybe they should moving forward.

Jeremy Berkowitz: There you go. There you go. Let’s continue talking about gear. PhotoShelter, powers a lot of this photo workflow for you guys, and that’s exciting. But people love to hear about camera gear and stuff that as well. What’s in your bag, and, what’s being used on the sidelines? Talk to me a bit about that.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Go ahead, Jamie.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. I’ll go for it. As far as what is my handheld setup typically at this point, we’re using r ones and some r threes, Canon r ones and r threes. We all usually use a one hundred to three hundred two eight, a seventy to two hundred two eight, and a fifteen to thirty five as my three primary lenses. I’m switching them out sometimes. I use the seven to fourteen millimeter from Canon, some just for some funky different things mostly during pregame.
This year, I didn’t do it, but every once in a while, incorporated tilt shift, things that. But because I’m one of the people who are in one of the primary spots, I kinda stick to the nuts and bolts of what I know is going to constantly provide, provide our client with quality photos. At the men’s and women’s final four, we luckily have enough staff that we have people who are roaming and can try different things, and we have kind of a checklist of gotta have these couple things. Otherwise, get creative.
Go crazy. Canon is an amazing partner for us. They not only outfit us with a ton of gear that we can utilize for remote cameras throughout the entire tournament, but at the men’s and women’s final fours, they have, they come and support those, not only for us, but all photographers on-site. But if if one of our roaming photographers is, hey.
I wanna I wanna check out a,

Justin Tafoya: I don’t

Jamie Schwaberow: know, Some different lens that they’ve never used before.
It’s an option. And, it’s kind of fun. They can get their creative juices flowing.
Yeah. Canon ends up sending us enough stuff that usually for first and second rounds, we’re setting up around four remotes because we just have one photographer, one editor.
The regional rounds, we have two photographers, we’re probably usually setting up around eight remotes, along with all of our handhelds. And then during the men’s and women’s final fours, we kinda go crazy and have fourteen to sixteen remotes at each location, that we that we pool with, the schools, with other, entities, if they want them, like AP USA Today, stuff that. Yeah, it’s a lot of gear.
I know you guys luckily had a early game, Justin. Our game didn’t start till nine PM. I think we left the arena around four thirty AM after we packed up everything, but but it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have all kinds of, different angles on on huge events this.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m gonna I’m gonna mix it up a little bit, Jeremy.
Yeah. This was one of instead of gear specific, some technology that we used, we used Canon’s new EMR, application. And, I don’t know if you know much about it, but it’s basically a way for us to have all of our cameras connected. We can see them on on our screen. We know, if a camera turned off, we know if cards are getting full. We can refocus. We can push new IP addresses, new FTP methods.
We we tested out a little bit at the division one women’s volleyball championship, and it worked really well. There’s some technology issues, with the venue that kinda gave us a little hiccup. But at at the women’s final four, we used it and had, I think, fourteen cameras connected to it, and we’re able to see live view.
Real I mean, it’s just it it’s a it was a pretty amazing, piece of technology that, was invaluable for us.
That’s my that’s my my gear reference.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure. Yeah. That sounds pretty cool. Like a production studio behind the scenes of, a, television program you’d think of or, camera one, camera two type of thing. That’s how I’m envisioning it at least.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll we’ll get some pictures up here in the in the coming weeks of just kind of the the BTS of of our editing. Yeah.
That would be

Jeremy Berkowitz: really cool.
I would love to do that. Is there anything that comes to mind, gear wise where it’s, little things that, you would you always make sure you have, little things that maybe people don’t think about when they think of photographers and photographing sports. But maybe there’s, a little thing that’s always very useful or that you never leave home without, anything like that?

Jamie Schwaberow: I mean, I would say, especially during March madness, because of, there’s a little cutout at the bottom of the basket we refer to as a mouse hole. We have a variety of different floor plates, and, that proved invaluable to actually have different models in different versions.
We purchased some new ones. I’ll give a guy named AJ Mast a shout out. He created some some new ones this year that we purchased through Roberts, and they were great. Once we got to the men’s final four, CBS and broadcast had a much bigger camera than they had earlier rounds in that floor plate.
It simply didn’t work for that. We went back to this old school thing that we’ve used for years, this little door hinge type of thing, and it worked perfectly. And I would have rather by earlier rounds, I used the thing that AJ came up with. And, just having that versatility, I guess.
Yeah. I mean, it costs obviously costs more. But through the years, we’ve collected more and more. And, honestly, just bringing it all with you you have options, is really, really valuable because, ultimately, there are a lot of these places that we need to share space and to have the versatility to be able to, downsize your your setup or or use as much space as you want, is is really helpful.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. No. I I I think for me, just making sure and I know it sounds kinda silly, but just hard drive space, making sure you have backup card readers, all the cords that you need, just kinda controlling the things that you can control, because you get into these events, it’s just they it’s a zero to a hundred real quick. And, just making sure that you’re prepared and have kind of all the all the necessary things, is really important.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure. Because much is happening. Right? how how many I think you gave me the number a while back, but, how many games how many some of the metrics you might have. How many games are you covering? How many photos are you pushing out, from different cameras into PhotoShelter even? Do you do you know those those numbers?

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. It it kind of varies, but I I would say I mean, we’re in the instant transmit galleries for, three games. We’re we’re over a thousand images for sure. And and that’s called through. Right? The photographers on the baseline are actually picking and choosing which ones, that’s such a small amount to the how much they actually shoot. I mean, thousands.

Jamie Schwaberow: Ten to thousands of images. And also, I was gonna say we we do utilize PhotoShelter in in so many different ways because, yes, the photographers are pushing out specifically what they think is useful or needed for the NCAA. We also, on the back end, set up a bunch of other upload systems for our remotes. We’re tethering all of those or some of us are.
And tens of thousands of those images are going on to photo PhotoShelter as well, and then our editors have access to pull from that. We make sure to not cross the streams as far as that goes. Every once in a while, that has happened, and it’s a nightmare because we don’t want the NCAA to have to go through all of those remote cameras. We want to push the very best content to them, but, but still utilizing PhotoShelter to, get all of those images in the hands of editors right away as opposed to old school going and pulling cards has been super, super helpful.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah.
That’s awesome. I know you guys have a deep history with PhotoShelter, I appreciate the support and, the years and years of coverage and all the, creatives that you’ve worked with that are kind of using the the platform, from far and wide, all all happening in, in real time over the weeks when you’re covering this. Whenever I think of you guys, I always think of I know you there’s a ton of creatives that you work with and freelancers and stuff, but my old friend Ben Solomon comes to mind because I’m I’m I used to be friends with his little sister, and I know his family. And it’s kind of a weird, funny small small world type of thing when I found out that he often works with you guys.
Yeah.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. He’s the he’s the only person who photographed both the women’s and men’s final four championships. There you go. Shout out to Ben.
Good job,

Justin Tafoya: buddy.
Yeah.
Ben’s Ben’s been on my team at the women’s final four for, gosh, probably a decade now. Yeah, I know him well. He does a good job for us.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah. Isn’t it isn’t it funny that I knew him probably when I was, a a young young toddler before you guys even met, and you guys even have deep history.
Right.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Full circle. Yeah.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Alright. I I I know we are running out of time here, but I want to talk about some standout moments from the the course of the tournaments.
Jamie, I don’t know if you had planned to talk about this, but I remember seeing your your face in a pile of in a pile of folks on the ground smiling, and it kind of blew up as a as a fun moment from the one of the tournaments. But any standout moments that you wanna share the stories from or, describe?

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah.
I’m happy to describe that one. Yeah. I mean, that definitely was the most unique thing. I think, photographers are probably asked all the time, oh, have you gotten run over?
Have you gotten hit? Blah blah blah blah. And I’ve been super lucky. I I’ve done this a long time, and I’ve I’ve never oh, there goes the lights again.
Oh. It’s just a different look. Anyway, I’ve never really gotten trampled or anything like that. But this year, the Saint John’s, Kansas game, I was out in San Diego photographing it.
And, one of their players, Dylan Darling is his name. He he was o for four, having a pretty terrible game. Score was tied sixty five all. And, during the time out, he suggested to his coach, Rick Pitino, hey.
This is the play we should run. I got this.
And I remember hearing Pettino in the press conference afterwards being, who is this kid? who has this confidence to be, hey. Sorry. I’ve been terrible all game, but I’m gonna win I’m gonna win this game right now.
And sure enough, he did. He drove right to the hoop, put up a right handed layup, scored right at at the buzzer. I was shooting it from the far outside position, on the non bench side, and I’m shooting it with my seventy to two hundred. That’s the, I would say, best lens to shoot that type of action with.
He throws his arms into the air in celebration, I don’t wanna switch lenses. I wanna keep on it.
And then his team starts kinda hugging him, And, honestly, they seem to just run out of space, at the media table, and they were all kinda tackling each other. And I had no place to go. And sure enough, as I’m pulling up my wide angle, the whole team basically just lands on me in dog piles right on top of me. And, yeah, luckily for me, I have a lot of mementos now from the photographers who were to my left who didn’t get dog piled on who got great coverage of me at the bottom of that pile.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah.
You seem

Jeremy Berkowitz: to you seem to be in good spirits.
What was what were your thoughts while that was happening?

Jamie Schwaberow: I think I was just thinking this is so ridiculous, honestly. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t upset, and I wasn’t I mean, yes, there was a lot of weight on me, but I wasn’t standing up. I think that was the key.
I was already sitting down, when they fell, I just kinda fell backwards. I I didn’t I didn’t get hurt. I had one pocket wizard that the hot shoe snapped off of.
Not bad. I also could not find my seventy to two hundred for a good five minutes after that all of that, that freaked me out for a little while. But in general, I think I was just kinda laughing. Yeah, that one photo that sort of went viral of me smiling, I Yeah.
I think in my head, I was just, wow. I’m just kinda stuck here.
Why why be mad about it? And it’s kinda cool that they’re having such a great time. And and one of the guys even helped me up, and he was, oh, I’m sorry, man. And I have a pretty good photo, before he helped me up of him just, leaning over me.
I think the better photos were, Casey, Casey from the San Diego Union Tribune. He he dominated. He got lots of great shots. And the next morning, I someone was, oh, pick up the newspaper.
You’re on the front of the sports page. And, yeah, CVS and ESPN did a bunch of stuff on Instagram. It was, yeah, it was pretty funny.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Fun. And now, yeah, now it’s memorialized forever.

Jamie Schwaberow: That’s right.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. For me, I I I think, I mean, the the the standout game, even though it was on the scoreboard, it wasn’t it was so, lopsided, but the Yukon, South Carolina game, I mean, South Carolina just came out ready to play. Yukon was undefeated. They’ve been dominating all year long.
And just to see just South Carolina come in and just win that that big and dominate every every,

Jamie Schwaberow: every part of

Justin Tafoya: the game was just it was really interesting to see, and and it made for, I think, a a a good championship game.
Seeing UCLA win for the first time was was really special.
We’ve worked with them for the past couple of years. They’ve they’ve made the final four. Getting to know their coach and and some of their players was was really cool. Really cool to see them them win and, really happy for them.

Jeremy Berkowitz: I love that. Jamie, is there any other moments that stick out to you?
I know I I kind of led you a certain way, but I wanted to

Jamie Schwaberow: leave Right.
Right. I mean, as someone who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, this is so difficult to say, But I photographed Michigan, in the sweet sixteen elite eights and then the final four, I’d I’d photographed four of their games.
And they were just dominant. They were so, so good. And they have a player, Yaxle, number twenty three, who also, photographically, was wonderful. He he’s great.
He’s going to be a lottery pick, but he also he just smiled the whole time, had great reactions. He signed autographs. He just hammed it up with the crowd. He was everything that you kind of want, honestly, as you’re photographing the team.
That guy into, he’s he’s talk out. And then I would also say Dan Hurley, the coach for Yukon, there are a lot of people who have strong opinions on him. But as a photographer, I love him. He he’s so animated.
He gives you so much. Yukon is also great about giving us locker room access afterwards.
And, I can understand he could rub some people the wrong way, but I personally am a huge fan.

Jeremy Berkowitz: That that brings me that brings up a good question. What is it when when those when you document those behind the scenes sort of moments? Is that is that special? Is that a fun time for you? Not the on the court stuff that everyone gets to see, but the the more behind the scenes stuff. Is that a big part of your process as well?

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. Definitely is. We we basically are tied at the hip with broadcast.
Every single every team has the right to say, no. We don’t want photographers in there besides our our team content people. But I would say, I don’t know, a good eighty percent are, yeah. Yeah. We want we wanna be on national TV and, on and save photos. It is something that we really, really appreciate the access. It makes for just, yeah, unique content that not a lot of people get.
I don’t know why this year, the water, it went out of style, unfortunately, or at least every locker room I was in. Maybe the teams just went one by too much. There weren’t a lot of, the Gatorade baths or or water sprays, but, Michigan did do finally after they won the whole thing to their head coach. We got some good content of that for sure.
What do you think, Justin?

Justin Tafoya: Yes. No. I mean, we gotta love the locker room stuff. I mean, we’re we’re very lucky to to get in there and and definitely take our role seriously once we are in there because, we don’t wanna distract from celebration or any any intimate moments that the team’s having. always super lucky and thankful that we can we can get in the locker rooms and and and take fans, behind the scenes. I think just it’s a different side of things that you don’t see, on the court.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Sure.
Yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Having that access is really cool, and then being able to provide it to folks who would never get that access is is so special. Right?

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Let’s wrap up with, some advice. I love I love wrapping up with some inspiration for the folks who are maybe tuning in or who follow you guys.
What’s one piece of advice you’d share to, for people who currently photograph or who are hoping to photograph college sports? And I’ll start with you, Justin.

Justin Tafoya: Okay. It’s still it’s still my number one is, never stop learning. But I think one of the underlying themes, that we had at our our women’s photography workshop was, managing and taking care of the things that you can control. I I kind of alluded to it earlier, showing up with hard drives that actually have space on them or, a backup card reader.
I mean, there’s just a lot of things that are out of your control once you arrive, to these venues and and sports in general. Covering sports is is just unpredictable sometimes. Making sure that your your gear, your batteries are charged, everything that you can control is taken care of. I think, that’s a good place good place to start.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah. Definitely. That makes sense to me. Right? You gotta be prepared, and then you can work your magic. Right?

Justin Tafoya: Exactly.
Upload methods are in your computer, XMP files, just all the all the stuff that you can do before you actually get there, making sure that that’s taken care of, I think is a put you on the right step once you do arrive and you’re not playing catch up because

Jamie Schwaberow: you’re Right.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Right? Cool. What about you, Jamie?

Jamie Schwaberow: I would say, this is something that I’ve I feel I’ve learned more and more over the last, really, even just five years, is getting along with broadcast. Broadcast, they pay a lot of money. And and that’s that’s where, a great bulk of people are are viewing this stuff.
If you are arguing with them, if you are getting in their way, it’s not gonna go well for you. It’s just not. And truly making friends with them, earning their respect, It can go so far this year. For example, at the men’s final four, we, they usually have, the first line for the trophy presentation or the first inner circle is broadcast.
Myself and the team photographers get to be in the second circle. The rest of the media are back behind us. And, this guy Chuck with CBS, they’re, lead videographer for the whole thing. He’s, Jamie, come, come up with me, along with, a woman on the NCAA men’s basketball staff, or broadcast staff.
KJ is her name. But, they wouldn’t have done that if Chuck didn’t know that he could trust that I won’t jump in the way. Right. And I think you just you need to work you need to learn to work around them and to respect what they’re trying to do.
And if they see that you are showing that respect, they’re gonna respect you and give you a little longer leash to be able to work with. I think that’s key. And and just even respecting all of the other photographers who are there. I tried my I guess, during a photo meeting, I wasn’t even there.
They said, just you know, Jamie may be on, a six foot ladder to photograph the trophy presentation, prepare. And I had probably twenty photographers come up and be, I know you’re trying to do your job, but really? You’re gonna do that? I’m, I’m not doing that.
I don’t wanna block. I wanna do everything I can to do my job without hurting any other photographer. That’s that’s one of my big goals.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I hear all the time from the community, just it’s about respect and being kind to one another, and that that’ll, trickle down to working being a good person to work with and being, opening up opportunities, and, that resonates for sure.

Jamie Schwaberow: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Cool. Is there anything else that you wanna share or end off with before we wrap up our conversation for today?

Jamie Schwaberow: I don’t know how many people, watching this are younger, are students, but, we do do a NCAA men’s and women’s final four photography workshops.
We had twelve students at each. That’s kind of the camp that we do just it they don’t overrun and, get in the way of working professionals, during it, but it’s an amazing experience. I think we had over six hundred applicants this past year. And, really, I mean, shoot.
During the men’s final four workshop, we one panelist I had on there had been a workshop student just four years ago, and he was running the editing for for Getty at the men’s final four. There was another person that we talked to who has gone on to great things. I’m just saying it to say if you’re a young photographer out there, be looking for that. We usually put the applications out in, I don’t know.
When do we do that? December? Some something that, Justin. It’s a great experience.
Apply. Take advantage if you can.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Love it. Yeah. Any opportunity to learn and, get some mentorship and all of that, I think that’s really cool. I saw a lot of the the footage of of your, your programs this year with a lot of young folks, that looked a really cool time.

Justin Tafoya: Yeah. That’s awesome. It’s a great I think it’s a great experience for for younger photographers to just literally get to talk and ask as many questions as they can to to working professionals, in that environment. It’s pretty pretty special.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Alright. Cool. Thank you both for joining me today. This has been really fun, to get, a behind the scenes of what happens during March Madness. always appreciate you two chatting with me.
Yeah. And we’ll do this again sometime. I know you got a busy year ahead. I know that the madness has just ended, hopefully, you got some time to breathe, you said, Justin. But thank you guys again for joining today.

Jamie Schwaberow: Absolutely. Appreciate you having us. Thanks having us.

Jeremy Berkowitz: Alright. Take care, everyone. We’ll see you next time.

Jamie Schwaberow: Alright. Thanks, Jeremy.