My journey through sports photography as been incredible. I started seriously about eight years ago with a goal of staying involved in sports. Previously, I was a coach. I coached pee wee football and Little League baseball, and then I also coached Middle School football. I love sports! I played football in high school and learned the love of sport from my dad many years ago. I stopped coaching primarily because I did not want to be that dad who could not let go of his own son. Besides, my son, James, already knew more about baseball than I did, so I knew he needed better coaches to help him advance when he was twelve. I still miss coaching to this day. However, I decided at that moment to pick up my camera and utilize my knowledge of the games to try and capture the games with my camera.
I was fortunate to have great training in my college days at Temple University. I even did a sports photography project as my final for our obligatory photo class. I believe the images I captured saved my grade. However, I would not re-discover this love of shooting sports until much later. Now, with coaching behind me, I became an amateur sports photographer. I started with our local high school baseball team, photographing their games, providing a slideshow of my action shots at their banquet, and creating photo collages for their seniors each year. This was a great learning experience for me and the head coach was very supportive. One of my photographs drew the attention of our local newspaper and they ran the image the next day along with the image their staff photographer submitted from the game. This was my first big breakthrough. Then a few weeks later, the newspaper’s photographer who was assigned to the high school championship baseball game was involved in a car accident when someone hit her. She could not cover the game, so they asked me. Amazingly, the underdog upset the favored team and my image took up over half the front page of the sports section the next day! This was another very fortunate break-through and now my endeavors into sports photography began to take off.
I began to cover many high school football games for the newspaper, which I enjoy immensely! Just standing by the sidelines or beyond the endzone takes me back to my high school days when I played football. There is just something mighty special about Friday nights! In my work with the newspaper, I was asked one season to cover several of the local Division II college football games. I was thrilled to do so and quickly realized how much faster these games are compared to what I covered before as a sports photographer. The day after each game, the paper ran an image or two and I kept slowly progressing.
The following year I received a call on my cell phone from the university’s Sports Information Director asking if I would be interested in photographing three of their football games as a freelance sports photographer. Interested? Wild horses could not keep me away from this exciting opportunity! Right after covering these three games, I was offered a contract by the university to work with them covering all their sports. Amazing!
Most recently, I approached a Women’s Golf publication to see if they might be interested in any of my work. As I said previously, I love sports. We worked out an agreement and now some of my golf photos are seeing the light of day, too. I learned a whole lot over the years and I am still learning something new every day. So, what is the next step in the wonderful world of sports photography for me? Well, I know I need to keep improving and learn more about how to consistently capture stunning and breath-taking photographs during each game. I also know I need to learn much more about the sports photography industry. So, I decided to sign up for the Summit Sports Photography Workshop in Denver, Colorado. I heard about this workshop before but a recent connection with Dave Black helped me bite the bullet and sign up. I am very excited to be taking this next step and it seems like the next logical step for me. As an added bonus, I decided to visit Yellowstone for the first time in my life for a week-and-a-half after the workshop. I am blessed to be doing what I am doing in sports photography. I am staying involved in sports and having the time of my life! One of the unexpected benefits of all this is meeting so many wonderful and interesting people. I can honestly say that my life is much richer and more fulfilling through these connections. Editors, coaches, players, athletic directors, media personnel, fellow photographers and so many more have blessed me. I have no idea where the next opportunity or twist will take me in sports photography, but I cannot wait to find out!
