Riedel said he spent much of the assignment watching supporters rather than the match itself. The useful image, in his view, was not another photograph of a large screen or cheering faces, but a moment that captured the crowd’s physical energy.
When supporters began throwing people into the air, the challenge changed. Riedel needed the airborne fan, the height of the throw and the scale of the gathering in one frame. The account says he moved quickly, searching for an angle that would make the subject stand clear against the crowd.
Positioned between the spectators and the stage, Riedel was working with very little room. He climbed onto part of the metal structure supporting a retaining wall, then raised his camera above his head to gain still more height.
That meant he could not properly see the frame. His extreme wide-angle lens helped include the nearby supporters and the wider scene, but composition became a matter of instinct and timing.
The settings left little margin for error: 14mm, an aperture of f4.5, a shutter speed of 1/1600sec and ISO 10,000. Changing light also required auto exposure and auto white balance.
Riedel photographed several people being thrown, but not every attempt produced a clean image. In the successful frame, the supporter rises high enough to separate from the crowd, while her posture, expression and red cowboy boots give the picture its personality.
The ball is absent, yet the football atmosphere is unmistakable. The image works because it records what happens around the match-the collective release, noise and optimism that turn a watch party into its own sporting event.
The next major United States fixture may again bring a crowd into celebration, but Riedel’s photograph is a reminder that the defining picture can appear away from the pitch, in the split second when preparation meets chance.