They say the devil in the details but then again, so is beauty.
And all too true when it comes to sports. Detail, detail ,detail.
We live in a highlight saturated world. Not only is every big play (or bad play, or plain crazy play) endlessly looped on SportsCenter – or off-brand equivalents – but now with the advent of social media, animiated GIF’s and Vines you can and will rarely ever have to say “I never saw that play.”
The one thing I was becoming more and more dismayed about, however, was that the availability of good sports PHOTOS on the web seemed to be in hopeless decline. I was searching more and more for those links that said “Photos” or “Gallery.”
And once I found these increasingly rare links, most websites only served up a lame collection of 6-12 pics, in a very small size (600 pixels wide) and embedded in a viewer that had disabled “right-clicking” these pics to save to your computer.
Oh sure, you could use the attached widgets to post to Facebook, or email a friend and what not. But what if you just wanted to save these pics to your hard drive? To essentially “curate” them for your own personal collection?
I get it that photogs in the field work hard, and don’t want their work to be spread digitally without compensation. But at the same time, can we just get some “saveable” sports photos in high resolution.
Well… well… well….. LOOKIE HERE!
(Note: I tried to find a direct link, but cannot. Please go to USA Today Sports online, and look for “galleries” on the left-hand column of the NFL and NCAA pages)
God bless the USA Today for putting these galleries out there, and for graciously allowing us to right-click-save them. Because they are some of the most DROP DEAD LOVELY, stunningly clear, jaw dropping action shots of the blood sport we all love – 11 on 11 tackle style football.
I tend to seek these pics out so I can present a visually attractive photo to sit atop these blog posts. But hell, just BROWSING through them gives me another level of appreciation for the sport.
To see a running back kicking up rubberized pellets of field turf while cutting on a dime to avoid a defender? Absolutely epic!
And not to advocate doing something anybody might deem inappropriate, but I’m gonna say it anyway…. when you get high-res pics like this, and can right-click-save them, and likely get these printed somewhere online for large size framing for your man cave.
While I have seen some places (like Costco) force you to agree to not print material that you don’t own the copyright to, I don’t think they actually enforce it. Now don’t go printing a bunch of these Melvin Gordon shots and trying to sell them for a profit – THAT WOULD BE WRONG!
But to have a few of these framed in your basement, for personal enjoyment? I mean, wow. Who wouldn’t want that?
Best of all, I noticed that USA Today even took the trouble to optimize these pics, so that despite the large dimensions and high quality, the file size is incredibly reasonable – most of them UNDER 1MB total!
So hey, if you are a PHOTO NERD like me, you definitely want to check out USA Today every week for their NFL and NCAA pics (plus other galleries).
And if you know of any other similar high-res sports pic sites out there, then please do pass them along!
