The Blue Line: Treating A Photo

I am reminded about the famous caution to physicians “First, do no harm.” This is precisely what I am trying to accomplish in this basketball history book, Running With The Greyhounds.

Examining the photos and finding them well-below the quality I was looking (and hoping) for, I have selected certain pictures I am calling “the money shots.”

For example, for photos of Hurricane Sandy, the money shot would be the wild mouse roller coaster standing in the surf. I took that shot February 2, 90 days after the storm, ona beautiful, crisp day when police wouldn't let you on the beach and I had only limited access from side streets just off the boardwalk, actually where the boardwalk used to be.

The Shore post-Sandy money shot.

In this book, the money shot is the all-time scoring leader, Jim Lacy. In 1949, he lead the nation in scoring, 2,199 points. He was the first person to break 2,000 points and remember he did it in a time when there were no 3-point shots and freshmen were not allowed to play varsity basketball.

Original photo - cropped - annoying swirls

I have an excellent shot of him scoring against Seton Hall. That particular game was memorable because Loyola and Lacy snapped Seton Hall’s 28-game winning streak. Imagine—a national power gets wrecked by a school of about 600 students. Loyola had a habit in those days beating the big boys—Georgetown, Navy, Villanova, Maryland, La Salle, St. Joe’s, American U, and Yale, among others.

The money shot, in this case, was photographed through a cellophane covering and there are these light swirls running through it. The author went to the home of 88-year-old Lacy Friday and secured the original. Otherwise I’d be forced to run it. But I was about to pull a sleight-of-hand but running it smaller and using a posterized backdrop of the same photo only running it off-centered. It will be a full size picture, running opposite the chapter opening page. The book is 8-1/2 x 11.