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#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Jabin Botsford, 23, is a freelance photojournalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Getty Images. Originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Botsford is studying photography and sociology at Western Kentucky University and is a staff photographer at the student newspaper, The College Heights Herald. He completed an internship with The Washington Post in 2012 and is now a photo intern at The New York Times.
His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.
What’s happening in this image?
I go to Western Kentucky University, and our basketball team tends to be very hit-or-miss. We hadn’t done well in several years, and this was the Sun Belt Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark. At the time, we were ranked seventh out of 10 teams. I went for my student newspaper as a last-minute thing, so me and my friend went during spring break to photograph it. We thought we were going home in two days, but our team just kept winning. There was all of this buildup that we were not supposed to win, with a lot of close calls. We won the last game, barely, by like two points.
The woman’s final was just before that, and I went out early to watch how it ended. I wanted to see what they would do if they won, just to get a better idea of what would happen. When they won, they immediately ran to the center of the court, and I figured the guys’ game would end the same way. I was standing by the bench with my wide-angle lens ready. As soon as they won, I ran right to the center. The guy in my image was a senior, and it was his last game before graduation. He was the player to capture. I sprinted to the center and literally dove to the floor. I am inches away from him. It was an amazing moment for me.
How did capturing this image affect your work?
I had a friend that was working at ZUMA Press. After the event, he told me he was interested in the images from the game if my photos were O.K. That night I signed a contract with ZUMA and my photo was on the wire. It got picked up on The Wall Street Journal. It ran small on their blog, but that was the first time I was in front of a larger audience. At that time, I had only been published in a smaller newspaper internship and for my school newspaper.
What was the response at school to the picture?
We posted the image straight to the Web right after the game, just the photo because the reporters were still writing. A lot of people praised it. It kind of got my name out in school. People started recognizing me as Jabin, that photographer, or that guy who carries his camera around. My classmates are very supportive of each other; it was a lot of support from friends and family.
Sam Abell Inspiration: Sam Abell
Image: Ken Rosman Ranch in Utica, Mont.
We recently featured this image in another Turning Point interview with Jared Soares. Why do you think it’s such an inspiring image for budding journalists?
In my first photojournalism class we had to pull the names of famous photojournalists out of the hat and we had to study them. I picked Sam Abell. I found this photo and it always stuck in my mind. I really hadn’t gone far enough in my career to understand why it was good; I just knew that I liked it. That was until last year, when I heard Sam Abell speak. He spoke about this photo, and it completely changed the way I thought about what goes into a photo. He explained, yes, it is a layered photo, and it is what we all try to do as storytellers.
But then he said, “This photo is really more about the red bucket.â€
When he said that, my head kind of exploded. He said that the red bucket was swinging back and forth in the frame, and he spoke about wanting this red bucket because it not only added color to the photo, but it also told something more. It makes me think more about what I have in my photos and more waiting for that thing to happen. Sam Abell is the master of layers, and that is still something that I try to understand and incorporate into my own work.
What would you say is the difference between what you saw in the image before you heard him speak and after?
Before I heard him speak, to me, it was just this really beautiful image with all of these layers happening. After I heard him speak, it was still that, but he spoke about microcomposing, which is where you compose frames from the back forward. You then fit your subjects together in the frame. In this photo, the guy in the frame is perfectly placed between the guys with the cattle and the two guys in the front are getting ready to brand the cow. Everything leads to the back. Just that whole idea of microcomposing is a really small detail that I realized after I heard him speak. It made me rethink how I composed my frames and how shapes can fit together to better tell a story.
Follow @jabinbotsford, @Whitney_Rich and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
