Known by the name of DL Action, photographer Jim Halling spends many nights on the Marshall sidelines capturing moments with his Nikon camera ever since stumbling upon his passion 8 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, like Bakersfield, Phoenix, Dallas, Minneapolis, Knoxville, Charleston, and Jackson, before finally settling near Washington, DC.
“We came up here to DC in 1997 to relaunch our 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 boys attended Marshall and played for the JV baseball team. Similarly, his job started as a parent volunteer.
“[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,” he said, “so that’s literally how we started taking pictures for Marshall back in 2016.”
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.
“A real photographer came in and started quizzing me, [and asked] ‘what’s your settings, what’s your ISO, what’s your shutter speed?’” he said. “It was that moment when I said I better figure out what I’m doing out here.”
Halling said he began with a modest setup with his Nikon camera and began to take his job more seriously.
“As I started to get into it more and did a lot of research online: ‘how are, how are people shooting, and what are they using?’” he said. “That’s when I started to gradually improve.”
According to Halling, having a faster, better lens is important when shooting in the poor lighting of a football field. He said 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 is busting through the line, or when they’re dunking the basketball in the gymnasium, or the batter is hitting the ball.”
While many students know Halling by DL Action, the name originated when he 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 noticed many people call him DL Action, but recognition is not his goal.
“It’s not about me, it’s really 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, but this year he notices a dip in school spirit with people leaving games early or not showing up. 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 was 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.”
With improved technology from when he was younger, Halling said sports photography is important to him because it captures moments in games that technology couldn’t before.
“About 10 years ago, I was scanning all of our old family photos, and back in the day, you know, you’d get a four by six print or a three by five print down there stuck in a shoe box somewhere in a closet never seen again,” Halling said. “I was scanning all these 100s and 1000s of photos and there was one shot ever playing sports.”
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 Girls Varsity 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 the high 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 part two, time is running out in the fourth quarter, she makes the steal on the defensive end of the court against one of the all state Madison players, runs down, makes a circus behind the back, makes the basket and the place goes absolutely bonkers.”
He captured the gametime 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, “and there’s a great follow up shot where coach Trivisonno was hugging principal Litz, [signifying] we did it, we actually beat them.”
He is grateful for the administration allowing him to take creative rein during the 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 said he hopes to encourage 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.”