BYU fans in LaVell Edwards Stadium, BYU vs. New Mexico, Saturday October 11, 2008.

I look through the fans in the photo above and instantly know which one would be me. It’s the guy in the tan jacket with his back to the game, staring at the snow falling in the mountains. I just can’t imagine sitting and watching sports. Without a camera my mind would be elsewhere. I’ll get to that at the bottom of the post.

If you came looking for photos of the BYU game, I apologize. I’m trapped inside this frame, looking for characters I can blow up into pixelized goodness. Like these:

So do you have to be a sports fan to be a great sports photographer? The answer to me is clearly, “No.”

When I’m photographing a game, I don’t care whether the blue team or the red team wins. This is to my advantage because when the game gets close and tight I’m not worried about my team scoring the winning touchdown, I’m focusing on my photography.

After the Jazz lost their second shot at the NBA Championship in 1998, Sports Illustrated ran a double-truck photograph of Michael Jordan’s championship-winning shot. It was a brilliant photo, full of detail. You could see every face in the crowd and along the baseline. We immediately scanned the photo for the photographers we knew and noticed that every newspaper photographer but one were watching, not shooting. Only one had his camera to his eye, shutting out the emotion of the game, to capture the shot. The others were all staring in awe at the play like sports fans, missing the shot.

For the record, it was the Tribune photographer code-named “Cobra” who was shooting.

Okay, one more fan photo. I just noticed that this fan needs to get his zipper fixed: