"Kingdome Overhead" - Seattle, Washington

I made this photograph, an interior of the Kingdome in Seattle Washington, during a Seattle Seahawks vs. San Diego Chargers football game on December 12, 1999 while on assignment for Sports Illustrated magazine.

I used a Nikon 8mm fisheye lens, which has an angle of view of 180 degrees. The lens produces a circular image on film, resulting in unexposed or black corners, as no light strikes that part of the film. The inherent distortion of this fisheye lens can be most readily seen in the barreling effect of the grid lines on the field, which of course are rectilinear.

The camera was suspended from a catwalk in the ceiling structure of the Kingdome, almost 250 feet above the field. Since the 8mm lens has such an extremely wide angle of view, the camera had to be lowered to about ten feet beneath the catwalk in order to avoid having unwanted elements of the ceiling intrude upon the edges of the picture. I then used a radio remote control to trigger the camera from the field during the game.

The central portion of the picture shows the field, with a play in progress at about the 50 yard line. Surrounding the field are the lower and upper decks respectively, with approximately 58,000 fans in attendance. The scoreboard is visible at far left. Just above the scoreboard is the Kingdome’s artificial lighting system encircling the interior, and finally the outer most gray area is the ceiling itself.

A 30cc magenta filter was rear mounted on the lens to counteract the somewhat greenish hue of the Kingdome interior. Fujichrome Astia was exposed at approximately 1/30 at f4.

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