Plans for capturing a different acceptance photo had been in motion for months, since a media walkthrough of Quicken Loans Arena in the spring. The execution on Thursday night required resourcefulness, teamwork and stealth.
“While we had left the exact positioning and lensing up to Mark Terrill, Senior Director of Global Technology Support Howard Gros and his team had to plan for it ahead of time to build a network ring around the catwalk, so we could get the picture on a timely basis for our members and subscribers,” said David Ake, assistant chief of bureau for photos in Washington.
Terrill was on the convention floor when he took the photo remotely via a Nikon D4S camera with a 200–400 lens that was previously positioned up in the catwalk.
He explained how he and a colleague had set up the shot days earlier:
After putting a wide-angle camera that showed the front of the stage in the catwalk with everyone else’s cameras, technician Mark Weisheimer and I walked around the catwalk looking for the reverse angle location that we had planned for and found that one.It was a very small area that wasn’t blocked by apparatus and I doubt anyone else could have mounted there even if they had found it.
Also this week, Terrill hosted a Facebook Live chat, in which he provided a behind-the-scenes look at the convention.