A Life Through the Lens
Sports
Photos Courtesy Mark Wallheiser, tallahasseestock.com
LEFT Before he left Alabama to come to Tallahassee in 1981, Wallheiser was photographing renowned coach Bear Bryant. “When I got here, I was like ‘Aw, this is so bad.’ …. People were still playing Florida State for their homecoming,” he says. But as the years passed, he would find himself chronicling the career of another coaching legend. Although it looks like the product of much planning and special lighting, this portrait of Florida State University Head Coach Bobby Bowden at the 2009 Garnet and Gold game was one of Wallheiser’s “lucky” shots. At 6-feet, 6-inches tall, Wallheiser often had a unique high perspective when he was taking photographs, but he also spent a lot of time on his knees looking for a lower angle. “(Bowden) is lit only by camera flash. I dropped to my knees as he was walking past. At that moment he is hollering at another photographer.”
ABOVE Wallheiser now lives in Shell Point and many of his post-Democrat photos are taken there. In this one, he happened across a group of beach volleyball players as he was tooling around in his golf cart. “I go to the beach every day we have a good sunset. This is one that is retouched. If you look at the original, the ball is black. I got a volleyball, photographed it in my living room and put it where this ball was, so I’d have a little bit of light on it. This is not a journalism photo, this was in an art show at the airport. (But) very, very, very few pictures on my site aren’t as I found them because of my journalism background. I had to take a Photoshop course at TCC … because we couldn’t use (Photoshop at the Democrat). Nowadays I have to do it to compete.” Tallahassee
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