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Kyle Rivas

@kyle_rivas

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Live Event and Sports Marketing Photographer
🏈Team photographer @chiefs
📸 Stringer: @gettysport,
📸 Events: @rivas.media

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🏈Chiefs v Raiders- Full speed ahead…
Let’s clear up a myth real quick. Better gear ≠ better photographer. 👎

Yes, nice cameras and lenses can make your photos cleaner, faster, and help you catch moments you might miss otherwise. But they don’t make you see differently and they sure as heck don’t make you a better storyteller. That’s something that you have to learn and practice at day in and day out.

When I didn’t have all the gear I wanted, I had to get creative. I had to find new ways to make simple stuff look interesting — play with light, motion, reflections, tight angles — anything to make a story come alive. I also had to learn to work with what I have, not what I want.

That’s where real growth happens. Not with what’s necessarily in the camera bag — it’s the way you see and the way you challenge yourself that makes what’s in the bag shine.

When I shot weddings, we planned for everything… but the best moments were always the ones nobody saw coming. The random laugh. The tear. The light that hit just right. You can’t plan that — you just have to feel it. Same thing with sports or events. If your ever wondering when you get to the end of a shoot why you feel like something is missing, maybe you need to ask yourself, what was I focused on most the day, the gear or my intentions.

So if you’re out there grinding with a starter camera or even your phone — keep shooting. Keep experimenting.
Because one day you’ll realize your photos don’t look like anyone else’s.
They look like you.

#PhotographyTips #CreateDontCompare #StorytellerFirst #YoungPhotographers #PhotographyMyths #VisualStorytelling #ShootEveryday #PhotographyJourney taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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a year ago

🏈💪 Chiefs vs. Lions

Photographers won’t want to hear this… but getting it right in camera matters more than ever.

When I transitioned from shooting weddings and engagements back into sports and events, I tried sticking with RAW — but in a fast-paced world, RAW just isn’t built for speed. It can actually hurt your results when turnaround time is everything.

A wise man @chiefsphotog once taught me that when you execute an image properly in the moment, everything else gets easier. Especially when clients need photos fast. Whether it’s Getty, the KC Chamber, the Arthritis Foundation, or the Chiefs, the quicker I can deliver high-quality work, the better.

That’s why I focus on control — Kelvin, shutter speed, composition — I’m almost always running everything in manual mode. Yeah, especially Kelvin (I’m looking at you all my Auto WB folks) I shoot JPEG and aim to get my images as close to finished as possible in camera. Just small tweaks afterward.

And it’s not about limiting creativity — it’s about learning the rules, mastering them, and then breaking them with purpose. That’s when photography really starts getting fun.

#EventPhotography #SportsPhotography #KyleRivasMedia #KansasCityPhotographer #GettyImages #PhotographyTips #InCamera #ShootManual #PhotographerLife #KCPhotographer #BehindTheLens #OnAssignment #ProTips taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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a year ago

2024 MLB Season Opener: Royals V Twins for @mlbphotos

My tip: If you give the small moments and details the same amount of attention as you give the game action, there’ll never be a shortage of great images to capture.

Last year at this time I was a different photographer. It’s hard to explain but I did what a lot of photographers do at different points of their career. I focused on creating solid game images and peppering some other little moments here and there as I shot. Something bothered the heck out of me though. I couldn’t figure out why I was never fully satisfied with my take at the end of the day. It felt like I was watching a 3D game but capturing with a 2D mindset. I was suffering the same thing when I shot games at the Chiefs. I’d see a few moments here and there but I never put in enough effort to bring them to life. Sometime last May I decided to change my pregame routine. For years, I’d show up like 1 to 1 1/2 hours before game time. Get my gear set, grab a hot dog, BS with the photo group, and then head down for the start of the game. Occasionally while I roamed for a new location to shoot game action, I’d stop to shoot a few photos of people being people or something the light was hitting just right. I’d get to the end of the day and have some solid game action but that was about it. Can you tell how I got bored of that routine? Hell even writing that felt boring…

That’s when I decided to flip the script on myself and start showing up earlier. I chose to come in with a marketing and storytelling mindset for each game. I started to ask myself, “If I was going to the game to create a 6-page spread in a magazine that told the story of Kauffman, what would that look like? Or, “If I was working for a travel company marketing sports teams, how best can I convey what it feels like to attend this game?

For whatever reason, this changes the narrative in my head. It’s like stopping a spinning compass with a magnet that tells my brain where to go. Yesterday, when I went into Kauffman and shot for MLB Photos, I wanted to tell a few stories. Here’s a handful of them. More to come… taken in Kauffman Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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3 years ago

WEEK 2: CHIEFS vs. COLTS 🏈

The unspoken truth about making it.

When I was younger, nobody really told me what success would look like. You grow up with this glorified idea of what it’ll be. For me, it was photographing the biggest sporting events in the world. Being on the sidelines. In the middle of the action.

And don’t get me wrong, that part is still pretty damn cool. Sometimes I have to remind myself how wild this life is. How did I go from being the kid in the backseat, listening to Chiefs games on the radio, dreaming of being on that field, to the adult standing on that sideline, focused on a play coming straight at me?

But here’s what nobody talks about.

Those moments are a small percentage of what I do.

Most of my time is spent running a business. Managing clients, editing, planning, chasing opportunities, and keeping everything moving.

Somewhere in the middle of building something, it’s easy to forget you’re supposed to be living a life, too.

You start sacrificing things. Time with people you care about. Hobbies. Taking care of yourself. Giving your brain a chance to shut off.

Suddenly, the thing you worked so hard to build starts consuming the life you built it for.

And I struggle with that. A lot.

I’ve spent years feeling like I need to overachieve just to stay in the game. Like slowing down means falling behind. Like there’s always something else I should be doing.

But I’m learning something.

You don’t have to operate at 110% every day to be successful.

You can love what you do and still need a break. You can be grateful for where you are and still feel overwhelmed by what it takes to stay there. And you can chase big dreams without sacrificing everything that makes life worth living.

Whether you’re 22 and figuring out your future or 42 and realizing you’ve spent years running at full speed, here’s a reminder for myself, too:

Don’t get so caught up chasing the life you want that you forget to enjoy the life you have. The work will still be there tomorrow. Go ride your bike. Play some golf. Spend time with your people. You’ve earned that, too.
#SportsPhotography #WorkLifeBalance #CreativeLife #MentalHealthMatters #KansasCityChiefs taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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4 days ago

Chiefs vs. Broncos — Home Opener 🏈

Looking back at this game, I felt like I was all over the place. And after going through the images (and my watch telling me I walked 11 miles 😬), I realized… I was.

But that’s kind of the point.

Gameday didn’t start for me on gameday. It started the afternoon before, dropping off gear and photographing the stadium looking its best.

When you’re younger as a sports photographer, you spend so much time chasing that perfect peak-action shot. And you should. But eventually you realize that sometimes a few blades of grass can be the hero shot somebody on the marketing team needed.

I try to approach every assignment by looking beyond the key players. I want to tell the whole story and create the supporting images that help everything come together.

The grass through the viewfinder. The empty seats. The sky lighting up behind the stadium lights. The things happening around the action instead of just the action itself.

That’s where photography really starts becoming fun.

And seeing beyond the obvious goes further than details.

We’ll put remote cameras in unique positions and let them run on intervalometers, knowing one camera might produce 7,000 frames. Maybe only 5–10 matter. But one of those five could become an image the organization uses for years.

Of course, chase the iconic shot of the player everyone is watching. But keep an eye on everything happening around you, too.

Give the unexpected two seconds of your attention.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to make an image that shows you’re not just photographing what happened — you’re telling the story of it.

#ChiefsKingdom #SportsPhotography #NFLPhotography #KansasCityChiefs #BehindTheLens taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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a month ago

Chiefs 2026 Production Day — Experimental Set 🏹🔥

The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” felt like the only appropriate soundtrack for this set. This team is looking to sabotage a few seasons this year… and it starts tonight against Denver. 😤

Getting to these final images wasn’t easy — for the team or for me. This was honestly one of the more challenging sets I’ve been asked to create. Mentally, creatively, technically… all of it.

The concept sounded simple: add motion.

The execution? Not so simple.

Every image was created in a single exposure, while balancing motion, flash, two completely different lighting setups, live image transmission, a full creative crew watching the results come in, and some VERY short windows with the players.

With Patrick Mahomes, I had roughly 45 seconds. 😅

For the black set, I went with a more traditional shutter-drag technique — popping the flash at the beginning of the exposure and dragging the shutter anywhere from around 1/10 to 1/2 second to let the movement build around the player.

The white set was a completely different beast.

I used a continuous video light to expose the player’s movement while an assistant held a flash close to the player. I kept the trigger in my hand and manually fired the flash during the exposure to freeze the player exactly where I wanted them.

Funny enough, it’s a technique I’ve used on wedding dance floors for years.

Never thought I’d be doing it with NFL players. 😂

That’s one of my favorite things about photography: you never really know when something you learned years ago is going to become the solution to a completely different problem.

This set pushed me WAY outside my comfort zone, but that was the point.

Experiment. Make something different. Embrace a little chaos.

Now it’s time for football. 🏹🔥

#Chiefs #ChiefsKingdom #SportsPhotography #ProductionDay #BehindTheScenes taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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a month ago

Preseason: Kansas City Chiefs V Seattle Seahawks🏈

This was a messy game for me.

Not because anything went wrong. It was intentionally messy.

Why would you intentionally create a messy game? Simple: to learn.

You spend the first half of your photography life learning the rules. You perfect them, understand them inside and out, and maybe break them a time or two just to see what happens.

But every once in a while, you get the opportunity to shoot a game on a big stage with practically nothing on the line.

Low stakes create opportunity.

For this game, I wanted to focus on light and shadows. I wanted to force myself to photograph details, get in tight, and tell a different story.

I also wanted to take some of what I learned from watching photographers from around the world work in our stadium during the World Cup and challenge myself to see a place I’ve photographed hundreds of times a little differently.

The game on the field wasn’t the most important thing to me.

I focused on the fans. The stadium. The light. The details. And finding something different every chance I could.

I got messy at times.

But I could only get messy because I’ve spent years learning how to shoot a game the “right” way.

If you’re a younger photographer, celebrate learning to shoot a game the right way. That’s a really hard thing to do.

And if you’ve been doing this for a while?

Get out of your shell every once in a while.

Get weird. Get uncomfortable.

Get messy.

#SportsPhotography #Photography #KansasCity #CreativePhotography #BehindTheLens taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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a month ago

IRONMAN 70.3 Northern California 📸🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️

Photographing an IRONMAN is no easy feat. This one had a few extra curveballs because it was an inaugural race. Fortunately, we were surrounded by experienced people who know how these events should flow.

A few things I’ve learned that help me survive—and be successful—on a very long race day:

Scout the course. You may not have time to see every mile, but knowing where your best shots are likely to come from makes a HUGE difference when you’re making decisions on the fly.

Communication is everything. Especially with the people helping you move around the course. At 5 AM, we weren’t even sure we’d have moto drivers, so our marketing coordinator and Ryan, our video guy, had already made a backup plan.

The motos worked out…then 20 minutes later we nearly left Ryan on shore when our boat started motoring away while he was taking his shoes off. 😂 We got him. Eventually.

FOOD. I check the hotel for a fridge and microwave, then grab coffee and breakfast the night before that I can reheat at stupid-o’clock in the morning. Aid stations help, but when your next real meal might be 1 PM, preparation is king.

PACK LIGHT. I normally carry two cameras on a BlackRapid harness, but once I’m on the moto, almost everything comes off. Extra body, belt, drone, lenses, batteries—all stored away. Anything attached to you can become a hazard getting on and off a motorcycle.

My new Think Tank PressPass 10 was perfect for this race. Drone, controller, extra lens + a modular battery pouch without carrying a full backpack around all day.

And finally: relax and embrace the chaos.

No race day goes perfectly. You’re there to create marketing material—or, as I like to call it, glorified sporty vacation photos. 😂

Things will go wrong. Plans will change. Boats may leave without your video guy.

Roll with the punches, solve the problem in front of you, and have some fun with it.

That’s part of what makes these days so damn enjoyable. 📸

#IRONMAN #IRONMAN703 #IRONMANPhotography #Triathlon #TriathlonPhotography taken in Redding, California by @kyle_rivas

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2 months ago

Chiefs vs. Broncos — Sunday Night Football 🏈⚡️

Failure is only failure if you don’t learn from it.

A couple weeks ago, Steve and I decided to try something bold — firing strobes during the tunnel runout.
Something that, to our knowledge, hadn’t really been done before.

We floated the idea.
People were intrigued.
Some people were skeptical.
A few straight-up said, “That’s not gonna work.”

And honestly?
They won the first round. 😅

We tested the Westcott FJ800s and everything looked great… until game time.
50,000 fans.
50,000 phones.
One extremely crowded RF environment.

And when the moment came…
Nothing fired. 📵💀

Later we found out what happened — that many active devices in one place can absolutely destroy a wireless signal. Lesson learned the hard way.

But we didn’t scrap the idea.

Steve connected with the Westcott team, we found a cleaner channel, reworked the placement, dialed things back a bit, and tried again. Lower power. Better positioning. More margin for error.

This time… it worked. 🔥

And now, as far as we know, we’re the first crew to successfully strobe from an aerial position during an NFL game.

That’s the part I love most about this job.

Because the hardest part isn’t the gear —
It’s pushing creative boundaries while everything around you is chaos.

You’re thinking about:
• exposure
• composition
• timing
• player movement
• where officials are
• where you’re allowed to stand
• who’s about to run on or off the field

All at the same time.

You’re trying to anticipate moments before they happen… while also making sure you don’t screw up the ones happening right now.

Everyone wants to be on the field.
What most people don’t realize is how much controlled chaos lives there.

Creativity + pressure + zero margin for error.
That’s the job.

And honestly?
That’s exactly why I love it. 🏈📸🔥

#ChiefsKingdom #NFLPhotography #BehindTheLens #SportsPhotographer #CreativeProcess taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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10 months ago

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10 months ago

📸🏈A look behind the shot…

Remote cameras are one of those tools that let you be in two or three places at once — but the idea always has to come first. This is an idea I’ve been slowly building for a while now.

Last season, while we were running timelapse videos, I spent a lot of time mounting cameras on our lights. When I’d scrub through the footage later, I’d catch these tiny, unexpected moments — fireworks in the distance, the stadium lights dimming for the 3rd quarter — and that’s what really sparked my interest.

The problem?
I can’t dedicate an entire game to standing under one remote camera waiting for a single frame. I mean… I could… but @chiefsphotog probably wouldn’t love that. 😂 The other challenge was that the angle I wanted lived in a spot where mounting and accessing a camera just isn’t realistic once the game starts.

So instead of fighting physics, I leaned into math.

Digital is cheap.
Let’s use the intervolometer the same way we use a DJI Osmo for timelapse — but in still frames. I set the camera to capture one frame every 10 seconds for the entire game and just… let it run. No pressure. No babysitting. Just fingers crossed.

Out of roughly 1,600 images, I tagged 10 keepers while walking back to the photo workroom. Here are two of those frames.

And before someone asks — yes, I could have used a PocketWizard and triggered the camera manually. But when the stadium goes dark and the players run out, I need 110% focus on what’s happening in front of me, not what’s hanging above me. My hands are already full, my exposure is changing fast, and the last thing I want is to abandon a live moment because I’m fumbling with triggers.

I’ll take 10 minutes of scrolling after the game over missing a moment during it — every time.

Stress-free > stressed out. Always.

Settings:
Camera: Canon R5 Mark II
Intervolometer: 10 sec
Aperture Priority
f/8 • 1/400 • ISO 4000
WB: 5000K
Canon 8–16mm Fisheye

#sportsphotography #remotecamera #intervolometer #behindthescenes #photographylife #learnphotography #photographytips #stadiumlights #gamephotography #prophotographer #photographyeducation #creativeprocess #timelapseinspiration #equipmenttalk taken in Arrowhead Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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10 months ago

Thanksgiving Game: Chiefs vs Cowboys 🏈📸

For all the young photographers dreaming of shooting college sports—or maybe one day the NFL—learn everything you can right where you are.

I shot hundreds of high school and college games before I ever stepped onto an NFL field, and I’m glad I did. In this league, one mistake can be your last time inside a stadium. The margin for error is that small.

Most people don’t realize how fast an NFL gameday moves. “Pure chaos” is pretty accurate. Traveling games are a little less wild—no partnership activations or stadium obligations—but once you step off that bus, you rarely stop moving.

This game was no different.

One thing that helps? The giant hard-case trunk @chiefsphotog had built for us. Instead of flying with 7–8 Pelicans and hoping nothing gets lost, 90% of our gear travels in one massive trunk the team transports. Gear is packed 3 days before, moved 2 days out, then special ops loads it onto the plane and places it in the tunnel by the locker room.

We typically arrive 4 hours before kickoff. From there it’s:
• Unpacking & assembling gear
• Syncing camera clocks
• Assignments
• Stadium scenes & team arrivals

Once players arrive, it’s go time.
Arrivals → transmit→ pregame workouts →transmit→ repeat for bus #2

45 minutes before kickoff, players return for warmups. While we’re shooting, we’re transmitting images in real-time to our editors back home. There’s zero chance to edit while shooting—our workflow has to be seamless and fast.

Then it’s pregame intros, and from that moment on, it’s nonstop action. 📸🔥

And through all of it, you stay hyper-aware. Zones move. Boundaries change. Staff, media, and players are everywhere. Nobody wants to be the one who clips a coach or bumps Pat during warmups. Legit fear. Spotters help, but you never want to need them.

If you want to shoot at this level, master awareness, master your craft, and master your environment. Once the game starts, there’s no room for hesitation.

#ChiefsKingdom #NFLPhotography #BehindTheScenes #SportsPhotography #ChiefsVsCowboys #GamedayWorkflow #SonyAlpha #KCPhotographer #PhotographerLife #SportsShooter #NFLGameday #ProcessOverEverything taken in AT&T Stadium by @kyle_rivas

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10 months ago