There’s an old adage that’s appropriate throughout time and different lines of work: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
However, that precept does not apply to photography in the NFL, as Minnesota Vikings’ Archive Coordinator, Zach Tarrant (@TheZeeTee on Instagram), mentions to SportTechie.
From his experience, if a photographer isn’t looking for new solutions, then they’re going to be left behind. Every single week the Vikings’ photo department competes against all other photo departments across the NFL. It isn’t enough to simply identify and purchase new tech. Rather, photographers have to ingenuously manipulate those tools in the best, most creative way possible.
“For me, I can’t talk about processes without also including platforms and people. It’s the magic triangle that makes our weekly workflow run correctly,” says Tarrant.
“We can’t simply say, ‘this is the process,’ and then all of the problems will be solved. Each individual piece–hardware, software, and workflow–has to be on point. It’s all about working hard and smart. The difference is entire hours–and even days. That’s what at stake. That’s everything,” Tarrant added.
Now, the Vikings produce more visual information each week than they did the entire decade of the 1960s. Fast-forward to 2015, big data is king. They have to wrangle, manage, and leverage it all.
While there isn’t necessarily a “secret sauce,” so to speak, to how the Vikings’ photo team deploy technologies, it’s really about everyone being on the same page and utilizing the appropriate hardware and software that enables collaboration.
The Vikings work on the same body of work at the same time quite heavily from the first time it’s shot on Sunday, all the way until Tuesday or Wednesday. The photo team builds the strongest group of images possible, and then delivers those visual assets to the appropriate parties as soon as they can while they’re still relevant. Timeliness, of course, is the name of the photography game. Although the clock is ticking on every image, it’s a different clock for each photo depending on the subject matter.
The essence of time efficiency, though, is where Drobo, a Silicon Valley-based data storage company, comes into play with the Vikings’ photo department.
When it came to deciding whether to adopt Drobo, a lot of the Vikings photo team had already used this company’s products in other places previously. They knew it had a track record of being reliable. As photographers and creatives, they aren’t thinking about the hardware, itself, on a day to day basis; they just want it to work.
“The team had a strong sense that Drobo could be the right solution for us and it didn’t take too much due diligence to confirm that suspicion,” states Tarrant.
In Drobo’s case, their target market from the outset has been professional photographers. They have worked with photographers specializing in all types of photography; whether that’s portrait, sports (across high school, college, and pro ranks), products, landscape, architecture, and people using HDR and time-lapse work.
Still, Drobo’s Vice President of Products, Mark Fuccio, explains to SportTechie that commonalities exist between their products usage in the enterprise versus the Vikings’: “It may be surprising to learn, but there is no difference, in terms of user interface and simplicity of operation. Drobo’s higher-end arrays have more capacity and throughput, yet retain the essential elements of ease of use, ability to add drives at any time to increase capacity, and protecting data from drive failures.”
Drobo provides a solution for a specific combination of needs at a fair price point. With the volume of imagery the Vikings produce each week, Tarrant mentions that they needed something that is “fast, reliable, and collaborative.” Drobo allows the Vikings’ photo team to work on the same body of work that exists in one place before they send it out to its final destinations. There’s no duplication of workflow. They’re able to know exactly what has been completed in the process and what still needs to be done.
Drobo, thus, functions as a repository or failsafe.
The Drobo 5N was the the product model recommended. It’s a network storage device, which means that the Vikings’ photography team can all access files stored on the Drobo. Their system was configured with five 2TB drives–the largest drive on the market is 8TB, which means the Vikings have a lot of expansion available to them.
All it takes to start using Drobo is the following: unbox the Drobo, unbox the hard drives, insert them into the Drobo, plug in a Gigabit Ethernet cable, connect power, and then turn it on. Drobo automatically makes a public share available on Macs and PCs. And there’s the Drobo Dashboard as an optional tool that offers more control, like setting up individual user accounts and who has access to them.
The Vikings know all visual assets are going to be there every time, no matter what; so if something goes wrong further down the workflow, they can always return to that reliable point.
“We shoot a lot of raw files and came up against a significant shortage crunch, recently. Drobo fixed that issue; and it becomes something we just didn’t have to worry about anymore,” says Tarrant.
The very same day that the Vikings ran out of storage space is when they utilized Drobo. The user interface couldn’t be simpler for their needs. Everyone that needed access to it, had it almost immediately. The Vikings’ photo team was then able to consolidate all of their external hard drive data into one central hub, eliminating the concern about permanently losing data in the event of a hard drive malfunction. The redundancy of Drobo gave this team a quick, easy answer that enabled them to collaborate and back up their valuable visual assets.
“Professional sports photographers need a system that is simple to setup and use. Anything that requires IT help to setup or manage is unattractive because their environment is too busy,” says Fuccio.
As far as how Drobo’s products can be improved, though, Tarrant thinks thunderbolt ports would be great. The fact that Drobo’s solution is expandable, the Vikings’ photo team can simply replace the drives with larger ones, whenever they are low on space.
Whether sports teams photographers are taking photos in their home stadium, on the road, or back to their editing room, Drobo models cater to fit into all aspects of their workflow. Their product’s network storage capability intends to empower these teams to work together, better, and faster.
“Canon’s new flagship DSLR is getting close to releasing sometime in 2016, and that camera produces even larger files. The big data problem isn’t going away anytime soon,” Tarrant believes, looking ahead to what new technology can enhance their work.
The Minnesota Vikings will continue to use Drobo as their in-season repository. Drobo hopes that they explore DroboApps, so they can customize their Drobo 5N’s functionality. By doing so, it opens up the ability to sync specific folders onto each photo team member’s computer, or check out cloud-based backup solutions to make an offsite backup copy of their photos. After the season, storage and volume start to become less of an issue. By that point, the Vikings cull down the body of work for the permanent archive and get ready to roll before the next huge data jump.