A Jersey Sports Photographer
Recalled Decade Since Passing

 It's been a full decade since the passing of my good friend and sports (writing/photographing) colleague W.L Bill Allen Jr., Director of NJ Sport Action. Much has changed since then, understandably so. If Bill were alive today and experienced the emergence of AI, he would scoff and just shake his head endlessly about how this uncontrolled application interrogates and compromises his original work.

Yet, some things go unchanged in the shutterbug life of photojournalism when thousands of images are recorded, stacked and archived but only few are revealed to the public eye.  What have I learned since his unfortunate death? It is the understood obligation of a photojournalist and his due diligence to retrieve and reproduce those taken photos of known individuals with proper historical comments attached when someone has come to our attention years later in either noteworthy success or remembrance. Bill left millions of photos behind we will never see and it haunts me. When I use the lens Bill left behind for me, I get to see my friend again in a different light and create powerful art in his spirit he would be proud of and I will show them to everyone.

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(973)-783-4458

One of two numbers I know by heart.

It’s hard to believe I will never dial that number again.

It would love to know how many times I pressed that sequence over the last 13 years?

Other than the man himself, I suppose more than anything, I will miss our phone calls.

They were epic: informative, odd, comical, controversial and sometimes heated.  It would usually start with local sports in Essex County and shift any direction at any given moment and we would ramble about anything under the sun.  They would range anywhere from 5 to 50 minutes; sometimes 2-4 times a day.  We were filters for one another and would often finish each other’s sentences.  If one of us needed to rant, the other became the bounce board and provided calculated instructional feedback.

He was a real stickler for proper English grammar in written or spoken word.  He constantly liked to slip new rarely used words and terms into his articles to keep readers guessing, prompting them to go find the dictionary.  This was also his way of letting the readership know he was highly intelligent and was indeed a 1979 Princeton University graduate.  His alliteration could be corny at times, but it did roll of the tongue and his words managed to relay the message to the reader about who did what, where, how, and what was next.

I met Bill Allen in early September of 2003 behind Glenfield Middle School in Montclair while covering a Mountie girls soccer game when Fortunato Field was still under litigation and construction.  I had just taken over the sports desk at The Montclair Times.  I noticed this man with a camera lens larger than a megaphone hoisted over his shoulder while other camera bodies were swinging off his other shoulder as he walked around wiping himself down with towels while carrying a small cooler of refreshments.  It looked as if he was covering a war rather than a Montclair High girls’ soccer match. He began taking pictures of me as he approached on the sideline, but of course, he already knew who I was:

“Lemme guess, you must be the new sports aficionado at The Montclair Times,” he said. 

From that day forward our relationship blossomed from colleagues, to friends, to good friends, to best friends.  We traded information, photos and laughs.  He was an intriguing, captivating character I enjoyed absorbing knowledge from.  Being a photographer myself, I was fascinated with the incredible quality of sports imagery he provided for The Caldwell Progress, Verona-Cedar Grove Observer, sidelinechatter.com and many other outlets over the years while covering varsity high school sports.  It’s rare to see that kind of quality in a local weekly sports section.  For years, he provided professional high resolution photography for amateur athletes which you don’t see often.  His work could stand up in any high-level publication or magazine and it has.

In 2009, he recommended me for the sports position at The Progress to layout his pages for him and bring his work to life before it hit the street. He preferred to write all his stories on the morning of deadline so he had the freshest news which is not exactly protocol for any journalist.  It was always a mad scramble on Wednesday mornings.  I would call him and he would be out of breath behind the keyboard pounding away. It was controlled chaos. And the editors waited for his submissions past deadline because they understood his stuff was the best.

Ladies and Gentleman we lost one of the greatest photographers the State of New Jersey has ever produced.  Winner of numerous New Jersey State Press Association awards, if you look up the term “photojournalism” there should be a mugshot of Bill Allen somewhere not far behind.  He would do things like take pictures of scoreboards at the end of each quarter so he could track the game accurately when he later went back report on it. I’ve never seen anyone attack a sporting event with camera equipment like Bill.  It was a show, a very fascinating barnstorming show. And I never seen someone lug so many bags of camera accessories around to a simple photoshoot right up the road:

I would drive him around quite a bit, and I would ask him: “Bill, why are we loading up my truck with all this stuff for a couple innings of girls’ softball at the Mount?

He replied: “What happens if a UFO falls out of the sky and lands on the field, you just never know – I have to be prepared for anything and everything Mr. Corbo.”

 Bill was a classic shutterbug and did it in paparazzi fashion.  If you were a spectator, he was almost more interesting to watch than the actual event itself.  He would take pictures of everything at that event besides game action.  Coaches, cheerleaders, fans, mascots, scorekeepers, athletic directors, animals – basically anything that got in the way of his lens.  The camera was his gun and you were under fire whether you knew it or not.

Yes, he had all the equipment, but also had the eye.  He wanted to spend the least amount of time possible at each event to maximize his coverage -- get in -- get what he needed -- and get out so he could go back to njsportaction headquarters and begin the process of downloading files.  He would rip off over or up to 1,000 frames in any one quarter of any varsity game and proceed to another contest across town and do the same thing.  On any given day, he would cover two to four contests in a two-hour span. I called it “The Bill Allen Sports Trail.”  Up the hill and down into Cedar Grove and stop in at Cedar Grove High – from there maybe make a pit-stop at Verona High – and then work his way over to West Essex and Caldwell high schools.  And on the way back to Upper Montclair, sprinkle in Mt. St. Dominic Academy where he served as the sports information director for many years.  He was that “Camera Guy” everyone had seen before in the greater North Jersey mecca.

To try and comprehend how many photos he’s taken over the years is astronomical.  It’s millions upon millions, and guess what, they are all over the place.  Just back in February I spotted one his black and whites appearing on espn.com next to a Princeton basketball story. He had no clue, but then said “O, yeah” when I sent him the link.  I know of no one else that has taken more film and digital photography in the state of New Jersey than W.L. Bill Allen Jr.

And this is what comforts me greatly.  Bill’s spirit and legacy has been cemented through his artistry.  Whether his photos are in a frame on a wall somewhere in New Jersey or Ohio, or in an athletes’ keepsake scrap book somewhere out on the West Coast -- next to his work are his photo credits and bylines -- By W.L. Bill Allen Jr. – and they will always be beside them.   Bill touched the lives of high school athletes, gave them confidence and made them feel important through his empowering work. 

(973)-783-4458
I’m gonna’ miss my buddy…

Editor's Note; Greg Corbo, a former sports editor at The Montclair Times and The Caldwell Progress, is a professional caddie who works at a number of top golf clubs both in New Jersey and Florida. This retrospective, on the 10th anniversary of Bill’s passing, recalls Greg’s friendship with a unique individual who had a very colorful personality, and could rattle the cages of some coaches and also individuals in the high school sports media, but loved covering the high school sports beat and was consistently one of the top photographers in the state.