Super Bowl Bumper Photos Had been Taken by SNL Photographer

If this 12 months’s Super Bowl bumpers had you pondering it was late on a Saturday evening, it’s for a great motive.

Mary Ellen Matthews, who has been Saturday Night Live’s resident photographer since 1993, was recruited by NBC Sports to snap portraits of gamers from each Super Bowl groups for use as “bumpers” for this 12 months’s huge recreation.

At least based mostly on their first utilization halfway by means of the primary quarter, the bumpers served as an anchor for model sponsor logos.

As reported by Sports Business Journal, Matthews took the portraits of Patriots QB Drake Maye and different New England and Seattle gamers, together with each groups’ head coaches, throughout a particular photograph session on the San Jose Convention Center (the place this 12 months’s Super Bowl Opening Night was held). NBC Sports director Charlie Vanacore labored with Matthews on the shoot.

Mathews since 1999 has photographed SNL‘s iconic “bumper” images, aka these eccentric portraits of hosts and musical company that seem earlier than and after business breaks. 

Last March, Matthews launched The Art of the SNL Portrait, the first-ever printed assortment of her bumper images. It options greater than 200 coloration portraits and behind-the-scenes images, together with Andy Samberg in an enormous martini glass, Billie Eilish peeking out of a pile of snow, Kevin Hart writing his personal cue playing cards, Paul Rudd as Paul McCartney, Sarah Silverman dusting the NBC marquee, Alec Baldwin because the Godfather, and lots of extra.

The assortment, co-written by Matthews and Alison Castle (who was the editor of Saturday Night Live: The Book) and designed by Emily Oberman, arrived two weeks after the long-lasting NBC sketch comedy collection’ three-hour fiftieth anniversary particular. Fittingly, it features a ahead by SNL boss Lorne Michaels. 

“Shooting for SNL is the most fun job in the world,” Matthews stated of The Art of the SNL Portrait‘s launch. “This book is an homage [to] the incredible hosts and musical guests as well as the whole team I have the honor of working with at the show.”