AP Process

We had a fair amount of photojournalism students call my boss John Filo, asking to drive in to KC and shoot a couple of baseball or football games to boost their portfolios. Columbia, MO, and Topeka, KS were the epicenters of j-school back then, and many were just as eager as I was to see as much variety as possible.

One of the KC Star’s summer photo interns snapped this after the game while I wasn’t looking, otherwise occupied and fuming. It was easy to stress out while typing, and correcting a photo summary paragraph the hard way with prehistoric tools like a typewriter, sticky caption paper, an eraser, and Wite-Out. That was the last step in prepping a Royals baseball action photo to be scheduled and then transmitted over the AP wire from our stadium darkroom.

We typically shot the first 3 or 4 innings before going up to process the film and blow dry a quick print to send while the game was still being played. If everything went really well in the darkroom, but the first photo wasn’t all that wonderful, theoretically we would have time to go back down to the field in hopes of shooting another photo to process and transmit out.

This night, though, I was by myself for the start of the game and something happened out of the normal routine, making me late, angry, frustrated. I was late just getting the first photo transmitted, let alone a second shot. Those usually were sent after the game, to be picked up by the afternoon papers the following day.