Known by the name DL Action, photographer Jim Halling spends many nights on Marshall’s sidelines capturing moments in time with his Nikon camera, ever since stumbling upon his passion eight years and 1.5 million photos ago.
Before photographing sports at Marshall, Halling first explored photography in college.
“I was the co-editor of my college newspaper, so I took a lot of photography,” he said. “We developed our own stuff in the black-and-white dark room.”
After college, Halling worked in television for 25 years, requiring him to move to various cities across the country, including Bakersfield, Phoenix, Dallas, Minneapolis, Knoxville, Charleston, and Jackson, before finally settling near Washington, DC.
“We came up here to DC in 1997 to relaunch a political cable news network,” he said. “At that point my wife said, ‘we’re done moving.’”
Halling said his photography story started back in 2016 when his twin sons attended Marshall and played for the JV baseball team.
“[My] roots go back a long time,” Halling said. “On JV baseball, I had always [operated the] scorekeeper [app] to help the coaches.”
The JV coach at the time, Aaron Tarr, had to do a coin flip to decide who would be the new scorekeeper when another parent volunteered for his role.
“I lost the coin flip, and so he said well you can take pictures. So that’s literally how [I] started taking pictures for Marshall back in 2016,” he said.
When first starting out, Halling said he had a lot to learn.
“I made every bad mistake ever,” he said. “The camera was on auto settings, and I was like, ‘how do I do this?’”
One interaction with another photographer inspired Halling to improve his knowledge of photography.
“A real photographer came in and started quizzing me. [He asked,] ‘what’s your settings, what’s your ISO, what’s your shutter speed?’” Halling said. “It was that moment when I said, ‘I better figure out what I’m doing out here.’”
Halling began with his Nikon camera setup, but he decided to make some changes as he delved further into research.
“As I started to get into it more, and did a lot of research online [about] ‘how are people shooting, and what are they using?’ I started to gradually improve,” he said.
According to Halling, having a faster, better lens is important when shooting in the poor lighting of a football field. He added that shutter speed is another important factor to getting the perfect photo.
“I shoot with a Nikon, 70 to 200 2.8 lens,” he said. “2.8 is a fast lens. It lets a lot of light in, so you can dial up the shutter speed, because you want to get that exact shot when Ethan [Lebkisher] is busting through the line, or when they’re dunking the basketball in the gymnasium or the batter is hitting the ball.”
Later, Halling decided to separate his event photography business, Jim Halling Photography, from his sports photography and needed to find a new name.
“I thought Jim Halling Photography was kind of a boring and pretentious name,” he said. “We live in Dunn Loring, so DL Action Sports stands for Dunn Loring.”
Halling has noticed that many people call him DL Action, but recognition is not his goal.
“It’s not about me, I’m just the person who goes out there and takes pictures,” he said.
Interacting with the Marshall mob is another aspect of Halling’s job. He said, this year he has noticed a dip in school spirit. Halling wanted to send a message to the students.
“Have fun, be excited,” he said. “There are games that [the mob] is just not into.”
Growing up outside of Chicago, Halling said his high school gym used to get packed with 4,100 people for every game.
“‘What do you mean you’re not going to a basketball game? Are you sick?’” he said. “It’s always been surprising here that seemingly, with 2,000 kids at the school, one would think you’d be able to pack that gymnasium every game and have a real home-court advantage. So, I’ve never quite understood that.”
Sports photography is important to Halling as it captures moments in games that technology couldn’t when he was younger.
“About 10 years ago, I was scanning all these hundreds and thousands of photos and there was [only] one shot ever [of me] playing sports,” he said.
Halling said that his main goal with his photography is to preserve the memory of athletes’ best moments.
“We want to be able to capture their shiny moment in the sun and in 20 years from now, they will come back and look at the picture,” Halling said. “It’s the living memory of what they’re doing and it’s really creating memories that are gonna last a lifetime.”
His favorite memory was when Marshall Varsity girls basketball beat rival Madison High School in the 2020 regional final right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“I’d never seen as many people here,” Halling said. “They were turning people away at the door and Avery Burke, who was the head of the Marshall mob, couldn’t even get into the gymnasium because the fire marshall said no.”
According to Halling, the crowd’s energy was exhilarating and he felt pressure to capture each moment.
“I didn’t want to screw it up, because it was such an electric atmosphere.” Halling said. “Zoe Soule comes up with the shot, time is running out in the fourth quarter. She makes the steal on the defensive end of the court against one of the Madison players, runs down, makes a circus behind the back, makes the basket and the place goes absolutely bonkers.”
Halling was able to capture the game excitement through the lens of his camera.
“The kids were jumping off the bench, and the crowd is going crazy, so at that point, you’re just shooting everything and capturing the raw emotion of what’s going on,” he said.
Halling described one photo with the shot clock in the background hitting zero and displaying 37-35 with Marshall winning.
“It’s one of my favorite shots,” he said. “There’s a great follow up shot where Coach Trivisonno was hugging Principal Litz, [signifying that] we did it, we actually beat them.”
Through all of the experiences he has had at Marshall sporting events, Halling said he is grateful for the administration allowing him to take creative reign during each game.
“For me, it started with sports, and it’s been fun, it’s been a good run,” Halling said. “I couldn’t do it without the support of the coaches, staff and administration, Principal Litz and Joe Swarm.”
Halling encourages students to explore their interests through photography.
“If somebody wants to be in photography, there’s lots of opportunities to do it,” he said. “It’s important to shoot something you’re passionate about because you’re going to be doing it a lot.”