Will Lamb “It was awesome,” said Lamb, who lives in Howell and is a lineman for Jersey Central Power & Light. “I was right there on the field with them.”
Lamb received his extraordinary opportunity by winning Canon’s Shoot Like a Pro Sweepstakes. During the season, Canon hooked up with the NFL and the Giants to offer fans the chance to be a professional photographer for a day. He was one of six winners for the Giants, and the game he was picked to shoot was the Nov. 22 contest between the Giants and the Atlanta Falcons.
Lamb learned about the contest while he was on the Giants Internet website. Even though photography is only a hobby for him and limited to family pictures, Lamb decided to enter his name in the contest, although he was not expecting anything to come of his entry.
New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs fights off an attempted tackle during the Giants’ victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Nov. 22. Will Lamb of Howell won a contest sponsored by Canon and spent the first half of the game on the field at Giants Stadium taking pictures alongside a host of professional photographers. Lamb submitted this photo as his entry in the second phase of the contest. WILL LAMB “You never think you’re going to win,” he said.
But this time he was wrong. He did win, and he got a bonus — a Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i camera to keep.
In addition to the camera, Lamb received four tickets to the Nov. 22 game and was on the field taking pictures for pregame activities and the first half. Lamb took his friend, Steven Prosser, as well his son, Matthew, 13, and Matthew’s friend, Josh Merrick, to the game with him.
Before taking his place on the sidelines with the other photographers who were covering the game, Lamb met with Giants officials. He met former Giants linebacker Harry Carson in a hospitality tent, and then it was on to the field where team photographer Jerry Pinkus met him.
Pinkus provided Lamb with a zoom lens to use for his shoot and gave him some pointers about where the best areas to shoot from were and what to expect. Lamb also received a red vest that signaled he was an official photographer.
During the pregame warm-ups, Lamb’s son, Matthew, was on the field with him, and the Giants players gave the young man high-fives.
“It was very cool,” said Lamb. “No words can describe it.”
Lamb admitted he was a little apprehensive at first because of everything that was going on along the sidelines. He was bumping shoulders throughout the first half with the other photographers.
“The one thing that struck me the most that you can’t see on television is how big it is down there [the sidelines],” he said. “There is a lot going on. There are 30 or 40 photographers and television cameramen. It’s crazy. You’ve got to pay attention.”
One thing that crossed his mind, he remarked, was the number of times photographers are struck during a game, often by players going out of bounds. Sometimes those collisions wind up on the evening news.
“I didn’t want to be that guy” who gets hit, Lamb said.
He said he was surprised by how many scenes there are to photograph during a game.
“There are a lot of options,” he said. “I tried to follow where the ball was going. It was hard with everything that is going on around you.”
There were times during the first-half action where the fan in him came out.
“Sometimes I’d be looking when I should have been taking pictures,” he said.
At one point, Lamb recalled, he was directly behind the Giants’ bench as quarterback Eli Manning was going over plays with the coaches, He was quickly told that area was off-limits to the photographers.
Lamb said he can now appreciate what sports photographers do. He said every time he took a photograph, there were at least three or four photographers around him. He said shooting the game was like positioning yourself for a rebound in basketball in traffic. The work could get physical, and so could lugging around a heavy zoom lens for the entire game.
Seeing professional football players up close gave Lamb a different perspective of the NFL as well.
“Those guys are huge,” he said. “I really didn’t expect it. It’s surreal, you’re right there. You hear all the hits.”
Lamb also garnered more respect for the players themselves.
“They’re professionals,” he remarked. “During calisthenics they were high-fiving everyone. It’s easy to root for these guys.”
Lamb said he took about 200 photographs by halftime and then joined his guests in their stadium seats.
But his foray into professional photography was not complete. During the following week, Lamb and his family looked over the pictures he had taken in order to decide which one he would send to the Giants for the second part of the contest.
Each of the six contest winners in the Shoot Like a Pro contest selected what they believed was their best picture and sent it to the Giants. From among the six photos, one winner will be chosen for the grand prize, a VIP pass to the Giants training camp next summer.
The photo Lamb selected as his entry was of Giants running back Brandon Jacobs barreling through the line of scrimmage. Jacobs was giving a straight-arm to a Falcons defender who was attempting to make a tackle.
That Sunday (Nov. 22) was a long but very good day for the Lamb family. Daughter Kylie is a member of the Howell Pop Warner Junior Pee Wee Large Advance cheerleading team that was in Trenton for the Eastern Regionals.
Lamb was out of the house by 6 a.m. to take Kylie and his wife, Maria, to Trenton for the competition.
He was able to watch the warm-ups and the early action until 9 a.m., when he left for home to pick up his son and their friends for the trip to Giants Stadium.
While he and his son were getting the thrill of a lifetime at Giants Stadium, Kylie’s Howell cheerleaders were winning the Eastern Regional championship and qualifying for the national championships. At the dinner afterward for the cheerleaders, Lamb was on hand with his new camera, snapping photos.
You might say the football gods owed Lamb his up-close and personal look at the Giants. Although Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms are his favorite Giants, it was the team’s Super Bowl win two years ago over the New England Patriots that Lamb said was the most memorable moment.
That is when the Patriots were 18-0 and trying to complete a perfect season. Lamb, however, did not get to see much of the Giants’ dramatic 17-14 Super Bowl win because he was called out on a work emergency.
He said getting to a game and being on the field with the Giants made up for the evening when he missed New York’s Super Bowl victory.