John McDonnell: Washington Post Photographer

On a breezy yet sunny Saturday afternoon, the Ulah Bistro right by the U-Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo metro station was lively with people chatting while waiting on their brunch. The place was not loud enough to derail the conversation between me and John McDonnell, who, I’m sure, is very used to being in sonorous places. A full-time sports photographer for the Washington Post since 1989, he has worked at any Washington-area sports events that he could attend – from a DeMatha vs Gonzaga high school football game to the Washington Nationals playoff series.

I didn’t have much idea what he looked like before I met him but I wasn’t all that worried. Because I was told that he was going to shoot a high school football game after the interview, I knew that he would be carrying a sort of professional camera bag – my prediction was correct.

Besides a paragraph or two I read of him from online, I did not know much about Mr. McDonnell’s career. So, I decided to start by asking him a simple question: “how did you get your career as a photographer started?”

The Washington Capitals host the New York Rangers in game 7 of the NHL eastern quarter finals.– Caps Mike Green gets slammed into the wall. By John McDonnell ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR U OF MARYLAND

And, soon I learned, that his first big break came with the Loudoun Times-Mirror, which is the local newspaper of the area McDonnell grew up – Leesburg, Va. of Loudoun County, a town that he describes to be quite rural. “There was nothing but dairy farms. It goes right up to the mountains so it’s very beautiful as well.”

“I was able to create a body of work at a very young age.” He first sold some of his high school event pictures to the paper and later, Times-Mirror hired him as a part-time photographer. McDonnell says a lot of things that happened in his career are “accidents” and this may well be the first of the series. “Everything is luck that you fall into.”

As he started to recall the first picture of his ever published, we were each served a mug hot coffee – both of them dark. Because both of us had not eaten anything before walking into the restaurant, we decided to order little things in the menu – he took some “wheat toast with jelly” and I went with sausage links. As soon as the waitress walked away, McDonnell did not miss a beat, and said that it was a picture from a Loudoun Valley High football game – a school he attended at the time he was first published. “In a small community like (Leesburg), everybody loves following high school sports.”

By 1978, he had enough clips to be noticed by other publications – one of them being the Washington Post. The spot was open for him to replace another staff photographer who took a leave of absence. “I was able to prove to them that I was good and two other photographers retired,” McDonnell recalled, attributing to luck on landing a staff photographer gig. “Everybody has a different story on how lucky they are on getting something. This is what life is like: right place, right time.”

Photo by John McDonnell

McDonnell started out as a general assignment photog, photographing at places like The White House, Capitol Hill, Style Section, WMATA, and doing some spontaneous feature art. “Sometimes you walk around the city with your camera and you think it’s beautiful day – so you take a picture.” He came in while Ben Bradlee was the editor-in-chief of the Washington Post. “There will never be anyone like him, ever again. He was one-of-a-kind person and I’m glad that I got to work with him for all these years.” McDonnell then showed me a photo of the autographed copy of “A Good Life”, a book written by Bradlee.

Before he became a full-time sports photographer, McDonnell learned from another staffer Richard Darcey.  “He taught me a lot,” he recalled, “he retired in 1984 and by then I was doing the Sunday Magazine work.” He specialized in shooting “a lot of architecture” including buildings, restaurants and portraits of “scientists, book authors, politicians” but nothing to do with sports. Just like other things that happened in life, becoming a full-time sports photographer was “an accident.” Two of the sports photographers got into a fight one day, “I was walking by my boss’s office one day and I heard all the screaming and yelling … they hated each other. My boss was like “What am I going to do now?”” Then McDonnell stepped up and volunteered to shoot the upcoming Dec. 17, 1988 Redskins vs. Bengals game – a match that Cincinnati won 20-17. “The next Monday, my boss was jumping up on his desk screaming at me over a hundred feet away saying “You never told me you could shoot sports!”” From then, he became a full-time sports photographer. “All by accident and luck,” he reiterated.

He then took out his MacBook, logged into the desktop and waited for his Photoshop organization application to open up. When it seemed like it was taking awhile to start up, I pitched a question: “were you there when the Washington Nationals started out in 2005?”

“Well, yes, but first of all,” McDonnell muttered, “before the Nationals came to town, the Baltimore Orioles were the “hometown baseball team” since we lost the Senators. I covered the O’s all those years also, driving up to Baltimore.” When the Nationals established in Washington D.C., the photographer opined that he can’t watch the American League game much anymore because he finds pitchers batting in National League games more interesting. “Can’t stand it,” McDonnell said in regards to the Orioles games, “that designated hitter totally ruins the game.”

Even if he doesn’t think highly of Baltimore’s baseball team, he still cherishes fond memories of photographing them, mainly the game on Sept. 6, 1995: the game in which Cal Ripken Jr. broke the consecutive games played record.

“It was almost like putting a man on the moon… the anticipation leading up to it, like, can he do it?” he recalled, “and now you look at it, you realize that this is absolutely impossible.” “It will never happen again.”

By then, the photo-organizing application had fully opened up. In a full-screen window, there were nothing but minimized thumbnails of hundreds of photos that McDonnell took. “I have some of the stuff here,” he remarked. And then I noticed a certain picture – two golfers in mid-swing, pointing their clubs to the sky, about to fire down to deliver a blow to the ball. What stood out was not the action, however – it was the composition.

WASHINGTON DC – JANUARY 16: Washington power forward Nene (42) launches himself above the crowd for a 1st half score as the Washington Wizards defeat the Chicago Bulls 96 – 93 at the Verizon Center in Washington DC, January16, 2014. ( Photo by John McDonnell/The Washington Post) ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR U OF MARYLAND

“This is Phil Mickelson,” McDonnell pointed at the left-handed swinger, “and this is Nick Faldo,” pointing at the right-handed swinger with his place set perfectly as if these two golfers fixed each other’s positions to make a perfect mirroring image. “They both were side-by-side during the practice before tournament. My best golf picture is made on a practice range, not during a tournament. It was three days before the  1996 Kemper Open.”

Then I asked a question that I always beg to ask to other sports photographers with iconic works: “How long did you wait to take that picture?”

“You shoot it after you see it happen. Then you shoot it several times more.”

It was in his eyes and instincts. He saw a good picture and took one. It’s as simple as that. Then McDonnell showed a different picture. It was a picture of a wide receiver going for the first down as the defenders tackle him. The unusual thing about the picture was that, first, I did not recognize what team they were in and the field condition looked abysmal due to heavy rain – however, it enhanced the theatrical element of the picture in spades.

“I’ve shot a lot of NFL games,” McDonnell said, “but my favorite football picture is from a high school game.” The picture was from a game at the Oxon Hill High School in a tropical thunderstorm.  “They were the only ones playing that night. Everybody else cancelled the game.” One can only imagine his delight as he ran around the sidelines of the field with equipment protections from the rain.

A veteran in his field, McDonnell adapted well to changes that every photojournalists needed to conform to. He relies on Nikon and Canon DSLR products. “They’re the only gears that you shoot sports with,” he says, showing a portrait shot of QB Robert Griffin III and coach Jay Gruden from the Redskins summer camp taken with his Nikon D4s – a model that currently costs $6,499.99 in Best Buy online. With a state-of-the-art shutter speed that Nikon and Canon products offer, he is able to shoot “around 3,000 pictures” per game. “With film cameras, I used to be able to shoot maybe 700 per game.”

A typical day as a sports photographer is not too complicated. It starts with showing up to the field early. “Then you start to look for something interesting.” For a professional or college game, it is “basically an eight-hour day” because he gets there as early as he can and leaves late after covering as much as he could from the event. After taking 3,000 or so photos, only one of them makes it as the representative of the four quarters, four periods, nine innings, three periods, or what-have-yous. “Whenever you are brought into the venue, you just shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.” Technological advancements has allowed McDonnell to be able to upload his pictures on a laptop during the halftime and after the game. However, it also may contribute to the demise of his field – photojournalism.

As much as he loves the perks of being a photojournalist, he believes that what he does is “dying.” “Where I have the full-time job (as a newspaper photographer)… I think I’ll be one of the last people to do that and I don’t know how much longer I have.” It could be a year, or it could be eight years – who knows? But the point is clear: they may move on to something besides professional DSLR photography in the future. “As the print newspaper goes away – who knows how long that’s gonna be – and once you go full-internet, pictures are out there easily to pull and put in,” he said. McDonnell then pulled out his iPhone and took a picture of what was behind our table – a bar seating area in the Ulah Bistro. “Alright, this picture, “ he said as he pointed the screen towards me, “back in 1985, to take a picture like this, required me to bring a lot of lights and equipments and a lot of skill to get that on print. But this right here can go right on the web right now.”

PG-Foot- 10/07/2005 – -Fort Washington MD- Photo by John McDonnell- Friendly defeats Potomac 6 -0 in a down pour. Friendly’s Joe Haden recovers a fumble by Potomac’s Antonial Coles in the first half. ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR U OF MARYLAND

The difference between iPhone and DSLR photo products is like comparing ground to sky – an iPhone 5S camera has 8 megapixels for resolution. Canon 70D, an intermediate-level DSLR model unveiled in summer 2013, has 20.20, producing much more sharper image overall. But that difference does not seem to matter to many, according to McDonnell. “Some people will want quality, but the majority won’t.” Then what does it come down to? “There are still segments that need quality; how long that will be, I don’t know. For instance, a printed newspaper is going away. It’s still around but not as much.” Then, he held out his iPhone, “this is all about convenience. This is your printing press now.”

“I’m somewhat towards the end of my career,” he summarized, “I just feel that my job is a luxury item.”

It was getting close to time for Mr. McDonnell to leave. The plates and coffee mugs had been long-emptied and the bistro got louder for it was a peak lunch hour. “I owe my career to a lot of people,” he remarked, “a lot of people and a lot of luck.” “A lot of nice people who looked out for me and Ben Bradlee being one of them, no doubt.” At that point, I saw his eyes water a little. Mr. Bradlee had just passed away few days prior to this meeting. I tried not to read into it too much. “I think about how many people have been nice to me and looked out for me and how lucky I was. I didn’t do it myself. I was alone for a long time in my life. Now, I have a wife and a kid but I was alone for the majority of the time as a photographer.”

“It’s all these nice people and a lot of luck – a combination of all that,” he has made his point. A numerous times during the conversation, of course, but this time, with much more impact than ever. One of the many lucks is attributed to being married and having a family. McDonnell married “late in life” to his wife, Suzanne. Together, they have a 13-year old daughter Kiki, who was adopted as a baby from China. “We’re almost like grandparents raising a kid.”

In the end, the Washington Post photographer wants to be remembered as someone who had a lot of fun. McDonnell recalled a Ben Bradlee interview prior to his passing. “He goes “I had nothing but fun. I’ve had so much fun in my life.” I feel the same way.”