In the world of sports photography, capturing the perfect moment often comes with its risks, as vividly illustrated during Sunday’s NFL game at MetLife Stadium. While the New York Jets and Washington Commanders battled it out on the field, a photographer, engrossed in capturing the intense action, experienced an unexpected hazard of the job.

As Jets quarterback Trevor Siemian threw a pass intended for tight end Tyler Conklin, the ball veered off course, striking the unnamed photographer right in the head. This incident highlights an occupational hazard that sports photographers face, especially when positioned close to the action, like behind the endzone in football games or in the photographers’ box just outside the field of play at baseball games.

Camera man took that hit like a pro 😅 pic.twitter.com/kyKD5eMnls

— NFL (@NFL) December 24, 2023

Photographers at sporting events are often in the thick of the action, seeking to capture those dynamic, split-second images that define the spirit of the game. However, this quest for the perfect shot means they are sometimes inadvertently caught in the line of play. Being struck by a misdirected ball is a rare but real risk, as is the arguably more serious risk of being crashed into by a player. Hopefully, the photographer walked away without any serious injury! 

In 2021, almost 200 days into Melbourne’s rolling lockdowns, the Rovenko family decided it was time to start a new project to pass the time.

“By the sixth lockdown, we’d done all the standard things like baking sourdough,” says Andrew Rovenko, a creative technologist and freelance photographer who moved to Australia from Ukraine in 2004.

Andrew’s daughter — Mia, then four-years-old — was obsessed with space at the time.

She’d bug her dad to read her books about the planets and pepper him with questions like ‘What temperature is the sun?’ and ‘How does fusion work?’

Andrew’s wife, Mariya — who has a background in theatre costume design — came up with the idea to make Mia a homemade astronaut costume.

Mariya whipped up Mia’s spacesuit on her sewing machine and helped her daughter create a papier-mâché helmet.

“That’s the part Mia enjoyed the most, sticking the newspaper offcuts on the inflated balloon,” Andrew says.

Mia was thrilled with the result. “As kids do, she put on the costume on our daily walk and didn’t want to take it off,” her dad says.

On their daily rambles, they roamed the five-kilometre radius around their home in the bayside suburb of Sandringham, satisfying Mia’s natural curiosity and Andrew’s urge to explore a city made strange by the absence of people.

An accidental project

After each walk, Andrew and Mia would discuss what they saw and make plans for the next day’s expedition.

Initially, Andrew had no plans to transform their perambulations into a photography project.

“The first few shots I took were snaps on my phone,” he says.

But Andrew soon began taking his Mamiya RZ67 “very old-school medium format film camera” on their outings to capture Mia in her homemade spacesuit against the backdrop of a deserted Melbourne.

Unable to have the film professionally developed due to the lockdown, Andrew ordered developing chemicals online and set up a makeshift darkroom in his laundry.

The resulting photographs — dubbed The Rocketgirl Chronicles — are timeless and otherworldly.

They cast Mia in her helmet and astronaut suit as an intrepid space traveller exploring an abandoned urban landscape.

In The Shuttle — a finalist in the 2022 National Portrait Prize — Mia sits with feet crossed aboard an empty bus, gazing out the window.

She’s pictured in front of a pink and blue-lit Ferris wheel in Behind the Wheel, while in Firekeeper, she crouches by a fire on the beach, with the city skyline beyond.

Rocketgirl goes viral

When Andrew posted the first images on Instagram, he received an enthusiastic response. “My friends said, ‘This is really special’,” he says.

Mia and her spacesuit soon went viral, attracting an audience of thousands.

Andrew says he could understand why the photographs appealed to a local audience, who found it fascinating to see familiar settings depicted in an unfamiliar way.

“A lot of people told me: ‘I know this place — I never thought that it could look so weird and strange and otherworldly’,” he says.

He was less prepared, however, for the international interest in the images.

“People from different continents all around the world wrote to me about how they were inspired by this project,” he says.

The Rocketgirl Chronicles appeared in exhibitions all over the world, from the Head On Photo Festival at Bondi Beach to New York’s city-wide open-air photography festival Photoville.

It even travelled as far as Brazil, where a primary school staged a play inspired by the photographs.

The project also attracted critical acclaim, with Andrew named Australian Photography’s 2021 Photographer of the Year.

But while Rocketgirl went global, Andrew and his family remained in Melbourne.

“I’ve never been to any of the exhibitions,” he says.

“[As a parent], it’s really hard to carve out the time and the budget to [travel], so I enjoyed all of these exhibitions just through the lenses of other people.”

The final step

In the weeks and months beyond the end of Melbourne’s lockdowns, Rocketgirl continued to explore beyond their five-kilometre limit, driven by Mia’s inquisitiveness and desire to explore the world around her.

“She’s really curious,” Andrew says of his daughter.

And after receiving many requests to publish his photographs in a book, Andrew launched a crowdfunding campaign in March 2023.

He reached his funding goal of $20,000 in a single day.

The result, published in October, is The Rocketgirl Chronicles – Backyard Space Travel, a 172-page hardcover coffee table book featuring more than 100 images.

“Every detail is part of the experience — the type of paper, the thickness, the texture, the print,” he says.

“I’m a little bit obsessive about it.”

Mia is now at school, and The Rocketgirl Chronicles is a souvenir of an extraordinary moment of her childhood.

As for Andrew, he says the project allowed him to see his neighbourhood with fresh eyes.

“It wasn’t just about going out and taking pictures,” he says.

REVIEW – Ever since my dad won a photography contest by taking a close-up photo of a dandelion when I was a kid, I’ve been interested in macro photography. A macro mode has been a must-have feature when upgrading/buying new phones because, for many years now, my phone has become my daily camera, even for Gadgeteer product shots. The only thing is that most smartphones can’t do super duper macro shots that well. So let’s throw some money at it, try the SANDMARC Microscope Lens, and see what we can see.

What is it?

The SANDMARC Microscope Lens is a 40x lens that has been designed for iPhone.

What’s in the box?

• SANDMARC Microscope Lens with front and back caps
• Zippered travel pouch
• Carabiner
• Lens clip mount
• Drawstring pouch
• USB-C charging cable

Specifications

Magnification: 40X
Height: 12.8mm
Diameter: 42mm
Focus Distance: 0mm
Field of View Angle(degree): 68°

Design and features

The SANDMARC Microscope lens isn’t a toy (junk) add-on lens like many that you see on Amazon. This lens features a multi-element lens and an aluminum housing. Included with the lens is a set of caps that protect both sides of the lens.

On one side of the SANDMARC Microscope lens is USB-C charging port. You’re probably wondering why a camera lens needs a charging port?

It needs a charging port to charge the internal battery that powers the built-in light. One the opposite side of the lens is the power button that turns the built-in light off and on.

It’s not obvious in the photo above, but the light around the lens is turned on. The light has two brightness levels that you can toggle between with multiple presses of the power button. Holding the button will power down the light.

The back of the SANDMARC Microscope lens has a threaded mount with a tiny hole in it.

To use the SANDMARC Microscope lens, you need to place it over the standard lens or telephoto of your iPhone.

You can use the included mounting clip. Or you can purchase SANDMARC’s iPhone case.

SANDMARC’s iPhone case

SANDMARC’s iPhone case is available for iPhone series X to current. I received their leather case for the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The advantage of using SANDMARC’s case, other than the fact that it’s a really nice case, is that it has a metal plate built-into the camera module area that has threaded sockets that the SANDMARC lenses screw into.

The Microscope lens screws into the standard lens or the telephoto lens so that it’s perfectly positioned and so that you don’t need to carry the clip mount.

Attaching the lens is easy as long as you do it slowly. Don’t try to do it fast because it feels like it might be easy to cross-thread it. I really would prefer a slot type of attachment system where you line up a peg on the lens with a slot in the case and turn to lock it in place.

The case is quite nice though and it has built-in clicky metal buttons for volume, action, and power.

Let’s get up close and personal

The problem with taking macro shots with an iPhone 15 Pro Max is that the closer you get to your subject, the worse the image becomes because you block all the light with the phone itself. For example, here are pictures of a dime using the iPhone 15 Pro Max standard lens in macro mode 1x and 2x. You can click for the full-sized unedited photo. Note the heavy shadow.

Now let’s see what the SANDMARC Microscope lens can do. The first two images below are with the lens attached to the standard lens (bottom left lens) and the right picture below is with the lens attached to the telephoto lens (center right) and with macro turned off. Note that in order to use the telephoto lens, you have to use a camera app like ProCamera.

You can click the images above to see the full-sized unedited photos. With the microscope’s built-in light turned on, it really makes a big difference in the images that you can capture. However, it is hard to compose the images, especially if your subject is not stationary. If you’re trying to take a macro picture outdoors of a flower and it’s not perfectly still, you won’t have a good experience.

Here’s another image using the iPhone 15 Pro Max standard lens, and again, you notice the heavy shadows.

Same pen tip but with the SANDMARC Microscope lens attached to the iPhone’s standard lens and the telephoto lens using the ProCamera app at 5x zoom. These images were really hard to capture because I was hand-holding the pen and although I felt like I was steady, every tiny shake caused the image to become blurry. You’ll also notice (especially in the right photo) that there is just a small section that is in focus.

What I like

• Super macro-y goodness
• Built-in light
• Use with the mounting clip or proprietary case

What I’d change

• I’d rather have a slot style attachment system instead of threaded
• For max magnification, you’ll need to use a 3rd party camera app like ProCamera

Final thoughts

The only issues come from needing a 3rd party camera app if you want to get the full magnification possible and that it’s tough to use this lens with moving objects. Having said that, the SANDMARC Microscope lens is the best macro lens that I’ve reviewed for my iPhone so far. I like the quality of the lens itself and the great pics that you can capture with it.

Price: $129.99
Where to buy: Sandmarc
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Sandmarc.