Don't worry, this isn't another post about bad song titles from the '70's and '80's.

I received a number of comments on the photo of Neil Racker's field goal in the fourth quarter of Sunday's Seahawks vs. Cardinals game in Arizona.

Here's the photo in question:

(Canon EOS 1d Mark IIn, EF 70-200 mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 800, 1/250 sec., f5.6)

At the point of the game when this field goal happened (fourth quarter, Arizona trying to extend their lead to six points), I wasn't sure where I wanted to position myself.

What was going through my mind was this:

— Is this field goal going to CHANGE the outcome of the game? That answer was "not likely". If good, the field goal would extend the lead to 27-21 and the score would remain 24-21 if Rackers didn't make it. At that point, a block by the Seahawks that they would return for a touchdown would be the biggest possible play, and the one that would change the game.

As such, my instinct was to get behind the field goal — that is, to be behind the line of scrimmage with the Seahawks facing me so that if they blocked it and returned it they would be running right towards me.

But as I was evaluating the situation between plays, the sun caught my eye, and momentarily shone directly on me. I had remembered seeing beams of sunlight highlight players during an earlier touchdown, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from in the vast stadium.

I'd like to be able to tell you that I remembered the shafts of light and PLANNED to use them later in the game (see Shooting the Light, but it being my first time in the stadium, I had no idea where the sun would be later in the game.

(Heck, I had no idea where my rental car was even parked.)

With the light on my face, I reasoned that it might make an interesting photo, even if my angle on the field goal itself was less-than-ideal.

So, I sized up the scene using a 70-200mm zoom, and saw just that — the light was possibly going to be nice, but the moment of the field goal was going to be VERY so-so.

But hey, I've shot a LOT of important field goals this year, so I figured I'd take the interesting angle over the storytelling angle just this once.

Plus, our Director of Photography, Barry Fitzsimmons is always encouraging me to take risks, so I thought this was a good opportunity to experiment.

The problem was, I only had a few moments to figure out the exposure. Was I to "open-up" (i.e., overexpose) the photo to give the sun the most impact? Or was I to slow down the shutter speed? I took two "test frames" during the time out and decided to shoot slower.

Shooting at 1/250th of a second was risky because if the Seahawks did block the field goal and there was a scrum to recover it, the players might possibly appear blurry due to the shutter speed.

The photo turned out pretty much the way I envisioned it, but the sun looked best after the ball had been kicked, so I transmitted that one. At that point, I figured it was becoming an "artsy-fartsy" (can I say that?) photograph, so to hell (can I say THAT?) with the peak action.

As it turned out, the editors and designers liked it, and ran the photo unusually large on our weekly photo page, by turning the photo "on its' side".

Any comments or questions are, as always, greatly appreciated.