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Photographer Richard Mackson has always been at the leading edge (some might say “bleeding edge”) of photography and digital imaging. He is an award-winning sports photographer, inventor/entrepreneur whose photos have appeared on the cover of dozens of issues of Sports Illustrated. He has photographed World Cup Soccer, America’s Cup Yachting, multiple Olympics, Rose Bowls, the Oscars, Kentucky Derbies, NCAA Final Fours, BCS Championships, NBA Championships, Super Bowls, Stanley Cups, and countless other national and international sporting events. One of his pictures from the 1991 World Series was named one of the “sports shots of the century.” Richard is a contract photographer for US PRESSWIRE (www.uspresswire.com). Recently, Richard was challenged to stretch his gift for innovation to the ultimate at the Vancouver games.

As US PRESSWIRE prepared to photograph the 2010 Winter games, Richard introduced the idea of employing a new, advanced workflow process—enabled by software and technology innovations, plus broadband mobile service—as a way to shoot and edit photos in near real-time. This would allow US PRESSWIRE photographers to deliver images faster and with greater flexibility than if they relied solely on the infrastructure in place for all press members at the Vancouver games. With not much time before the start of the games, Richard knew he needed to act fast.

Richard and his colleagues quickly established a standard set up: “We had a Nikon D3S camera with Remote Frame Capture shooting at up to 9 frames per second. The camera connected via USB to a Netbook and images would be fed into the Netbooks for editing. The Netbook was plugged by Ethernet cable into the CradlePoint router. Using the CradlePoint’s 3G connection, the editor back in Atlanta would remotely access the Netbook to select and edit photos. It was pretty slick.”

The CradlePoint routers were powered by CradlePoint and Tekkeon extended life batteries, which allowed the photographers maximum freedom. “We could use AC when available, or run off Tekkeon batteries if necessary. When we were up on the ski hill, that was really valuable. The batteries lasted long enough that we could get to an event an hour beforehand, do our prep work, move around the event for 3-4 hours shooting and then do up to an hour of post-event work...all the while running off battery power.”

Says Richard: “One time, the venue staff asked photographers to clear out of the ice dancing arena while they changed set ups. I just switched my MBR1200 to Tekkeon battery power and started wirelessly uploading images as I walked through the bowels of the arena. I kept transmitting as I got on the bus, without once dropping the connection. When my photo editor back in Atlanta phoned to tell me he had downloaded all the photos, he was kind of shocked that I done it all while on the move.”

Read more about the Olympics set up....

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