In my four years as a sportswriter, I’ve had the opportunity to learn the jobs of many people in the journalism world. I’ve been wowed by their abilities and humbled by their creations, but through it all I’ve never understood photographers.

These are the guys who crouch on the sidelines at football and basketball games with no protective padding, ready for that perfect moment when Terrence Roberts leaps into the frame and slams a dunk. They’re the guys who stumble backward in front of murderers and criminals outside a courthouse to capture a front-page image. They’re the ones who pose our profile subjects in just the right light just so it can run two columns wide on page 8.

Photographers in many ways are like goalies: They take all the shots and get little credit. You usually hear about them when they mess up.

On Saturday I traded my pen for a camera to shoot the Syracuse men’s lacrosse game at the Carrier Dome against Princeton. I hoped to see things from their perspective on the field and for some reason, I thought I’d be good at it. Point in the direction of the action and click a button; how hard could it be?

Before the game, I’d been warned of how dangerous it is on the sidelines. A lacrosse ball is dense and when it whizzes by you at 90 miles per hour, you don’t want to be staring through the lens with your right eye closed, focused on SU head coach John Desko. After a shot in warmups skidded by me and hit the wall, I made sure this didn’t happen.

Staff photographer Rachel Fus set my camera for me before the game. Among the things I didn’t know how to do was put the lens on and set my shutter speed. I still don’t know what aperture means.

The first thing you should know about shooting an athletic event is that it’s hard on your body. The camera weighs only a few pounds, but after several minutes of kneeling and repositioning yourself to follow the play, it hurts. Ten minutes into the game, my back and knees were sore enough to make me sit on the Dome’s FieldTurf. Speaking of which, the fake dirt gets all on you. By the time I left, I had a pocket full of plastic granules.

So there I was with a sore back, worried about self-preservation, trying to follow a tiny ball 50 yards away in a frame only about 20 feet wide. Between making sure the play was in focus and cursing the referees for stepping in front of me, I realized it was harder than it looks.

I started talking to myself, telling players to turn and look at me. Then I stopped watching the game through the camera and waited for what I thought might be a good photo. The players didn’t listen, and I found they move their sticks a lot faster than I operate a camera. I finally decided Plan C was my only option: follow the play as best I could and snap away. With hope, I’d get two or three usable shots.

Before Saturday, there was an average of 21.9 goals in SU’s games this season. But the Orange heard I was coming and kept it to 12 against Princeton. That meant I had 12 opportunities to shoot a goal, the most obvious photogenic event at a lacrosse game. Forget body checks, they happen infrequently and it’s impossible to predict a good one.

I’ll let you grade my performance. Here are my five best shots. But let me say despite the soreness on Sunday, it was the most fun I’ve had watching a lacrosse game. Multiple times, I was sure I snapped a photo at just the right time. I’d take the camera off my neck and look at the digital images on the screen. In gloating I missed three or four goals, but when I got a decent shot, it was worth it.

Still, I’ve decided that photography is not for me. Of the 267 photos I took at the game, I found only one I was truly proud of. Photography might be fun, but I’ll stick with writing. Press boxes are much safer.

Timothy Gorman is a design editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears weekly. E-mail him at tpgorman@gmail.com.

Published on April 9, 2006 at 12:00 pm