Bishop Books Projects

I've worked as a photography editor on a number of projects for Bishop Books since 1996. That year, I started with the annual Sports Illustrated Almanac, which I continue to do. Most of the photography in the almanac is in grayscale, so I do the research as well as the scanning and prepress of the final images.
 

Greatest Football Games

The Greatest Football Games book is a fun history of the greatest games ever played in the NFL. My role as a photo editor was somewhat hindered in that Sports Illustrated only covered a handful of the games chosen, so much of the material had to be gathered from outside sources. This, in my opinion, leaves something of a quality gap between the images from game to game -- but then again, I am biased. The best part of working on the book was the in-depth research that I had to do on the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the NY Giants and Baltimore Colts. Widely considered the greatest game ever, the Colts won it in overtime. SI's Hy Peskin covered the game and shot it in black & white, as was generally the rule in 1958.

Anyway, years of unscrupulous researchers rifling through the film had left it in an absolute mess, with each strip from various rolls mixed together in no coherent order. So, with little more than a game summary, I was able to piece together the images into game order and narrow down each team's scoring. The result was a clear pictorial history of the game, and a few gems that nobody had ever published. The best shot was of Pat Summerall's fourth quarter game-tying field goal, shot in very wide angle with the setting sun streaming through the roof gables of Yankee Stadium. Breathtaking picture. Want to see it? Buy the book.
 

  Greatest Teams

The companion book to Greatest Football Games was the Greatest Teams book, which was by far the most rewarding book project that I have worked on. The majority of the teams selected by writer Tim Crothers and editor Morin Bishop fell within the time frame of SI's existence (since 1954). The result is a beautiful book (designed by Barbara Chilenskas) full of classic & never-before published color pictures of the greatest names in sports. I find that working on a general project such as Greatest Teams produces a much better book (photographically speaking) than something such as Greatest Football Games -- where you are locked into researching a specific event regardless of variables such as light and location. With Greatest Teams I was able to comb through everything SI shot from the time period and select the best images regardless of the context.
 

  Images of Greatness

Not actually produced by Bishop Books, Images of Greatness was created in a partnership between Sports Illustrated and Total Sports. This was an enormous project, and one that changed direction more than once during production. It started as a review of the greatest sports moments in the 20th Century and evolved into the greatest pictures with a comprehensive history compiled decade by decade. The editors at Total Sports combined the resources of the Associated Press for the first half century and SI for the latter half to create a facinating pictorial history of 20th century sports.