Capturing You

Chapter 3: Catch and Release

The weather in Ohio was just as temperamental as in my home state of Louisiana, and I should have known that. At least I wore a cable sweater underneath my otherwise light jacket, I thought. The blades of green turf peeked out just so underneath a thin, melting coat of snow that would lose its shape and melt instantaneously as soon it hit the bed of your tongue. I squinted a bit to guard my eyes, but my visibility wasn't that impaired; the gently falling snow would be a great backdrop for the photos.

Burrow led me to his patch of the field, guiding me around and past the flying balls and skyscraper-like offensive linemen. They looked tough, and they were tough. Everyone thought the Bengals were writing their own Cinderella story this season, but anyone who looked close enough would see that each player had always had this in them: this grit and this warrior-like determination despite being viewed as the underdogs. I had never seen anyone exert themselves as much as these players did, and I knew now they were reinvigorated with the true will to win the title, this close to it. Even in the snow, they glided gracefully.

Burrow was no different, a serious expression on his face as he clutched the day's football and approached the quarterback's coach. I realized then that these are the exact moments I should be taking pictures of if I wanted to reach my quota for the day, but the field was a jungle and I couldn't help but want to see it for myself first. I thought of how my dad would coach his own QB and the things he would say. They chatted for a couple of minutes before splitting off. Burrow, likely media trained, already knew to begin doing his own thing. He didn't need any prompting from me. He was here to work and I was simply in his way.

I held up my camera and took pictures of him strategizing, zooming in through my lens to focus on the way his brows knitted together and jaw clenched, tough demeanor juxtaposed with his boyish appearance, singular curl falling from his gelled hair on his forehead like a cherub. I'd seen pictures of him when he first came on the scene as the new LSU quarterback, like a beacon of hope for the bayou. My dad certainly adored him and directed his own quarterback to play like Burrow, especially after his undefeated run his last year with the Tigers. I didn't have to know much about Burrow to know football had been his whole life; seeing him in such a close lens, however, reminded me he was still just a kid, even at 25. These were the most important moments of his life, just leading up to a championship that was so close he could touch it.

And I was capturing it all.

My finger intentionally pressed the shutter button. One thing Elena didn't like about me was that I wasn't the type of photographer who took many duplicates of the same scene, same position, in the interest of finding a diamond in the rough. Everything I did was calculated in some way, as if Burrow was this vast mountainous horizon and I needed to catch all of him at once: his sun, his reflection on the glittering river, and the hills and trees that silhouetted him. I wondered if Elena gave me the daunting task of capturing 200 great photos of him today as an exercise of quantity over quality, but that just wasn't the kind of photographer I was. My mom never did anything flippantly, either, when it came to her work.

I watched Burrow work on cardio for the next half hour, a circle of sweat having grown on his chest over his long sleeve. He had a pair of compression leggings underneath shorts, all in a mixture of black, gray, and orange. I likely looked like I was freezing, and he was breaking a sweat; I didn't think so much about how cold I was when I was taking pictures of him, gloved fingers pressing repeatedly on a tiny button. The way he moved was like he didn't have a season-ending injury at all last year. I had heard about how hard he worked to get back on the field, exerting himself beyond what his physical therapist advised. It was almost like a self-induced punishment for what happened to his leg, even if it could have happened to anyone. It was the kind of thing that couldn't happen to Burrow, not after how long he had worked.