Photos: Spotlight provides new view of Spartan wrestlers

Referee Steve Antzcak, right, holds up the hand of Superior’s Dominic Lyons after he pinned Spooner’s Vincent Mykkanen during their match at 195 pounds at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

By Jed Carlson

January 27, 2023 at 7:00 AM

SUPERIOR — “I wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight,” I laughed to myself as I looked at my first few shots on the back of my camera.

“How do yours look?” I leaned over and asked fellow photographer Missy Siers.

“Dark,” she responded.

Superior’s Jason Thomas lifts Spooner’s Pierce Schroeder during their match at 145 pounds at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

It was Jan. 19. I was supposed to be out in Maple to shoot the Tiger wrestling team as they battled Hayward, but — stop me if you’ve heard this before — Mother Nature had other ideas. School was canceled in Hayward, so the match was postponed. Luckily the Spartan wrestling team was hosting Spooner, so I just swapped Tigers for Spartans.

I walked into the auxiliary gymnasium at Superior High School and saw the spotlight hanging over the mat. All the main lights were on in the gym so I asked around to find out if they were going to use the spotlight. They were. I’ve been to multiple matches in the gym this season, but they’ve all been triangulars or quads where either other schools were wrestling on a second mat, or JV matches have been taking place at the same time, so this would be my first experience with the spotlight.

That’s kind of a rarity for me nowadays, getting a first. Next month will be 22 years for me at the Telegram, so I don’t get many firsts when it comes to high school sports. I was kind of excited.

After recognizing the seniors and their parents, off went all the lights in the gym and on came the spotlight. It was dark — really dark. Not dark if you were there to watch high school wrestling, but dark if your goal was to photograph the action of the wrestlers.

Light looks different to a camera than it does to the human eye. Stopping action at 1/640 of a second shows how light that looks continuous is actually flickering, and the light that illuminates the mat will look vastly different from one frame to the next.

I’ll spare you any more of the nerdy photo-speak, but I had to figure out how I wanted to shoot the match. I decided to go full into the lack of light and let that tell a story that we don’t often see. I think it gave the photos a moody feel for the Spartan wrestlers' last home match of the season.

As a photographer I’m always looking for good light, but that night, I wasn’t.

Superior’s Wyatt Mitchell gains control of Spooner’s Conner Burke during their match at 170 pounds at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

Spooner’s Michael Skodowski shakes hands with Superior’s Fjeordi Johnson before their match at 120 pounds at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

Referee Steve Antzcak, left, awards Superior’s Logan Jennings three points during his 132 pound match with Spooner’s Bryson Scheffel at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

Spooner’s AJ Anderson shakes hands with Superior’s Connor Krueger after Krueger’s win at 138 pounds at Superior High School on Thursday evening, Jan. 19.

By Jed Carlson

Jed Carlson joined the Superior Telegram in February 2001 as a photographer. He grew up in Willmar, Minnesota. He graduated from Ridgewater Community College in Willmar, then from Minnesota State Moorhead with a major in mass communications with an emphasis in photojournalism.

Photos: Spotlight provides new view of Spartan wrestlers

Dramatic lighting at recent wrestling match forced photographer Jed Carlson to get creative.