The evolution of a team & a photographer

I'm finally, FINALLY getting around to writing/finishing/posting this blog post. It's been a very long week, even though classes were cancelled for Interregnum this week. Anyhow, here goes...

During the fall semester of my freshman year, one of my new friends and I were lamenting the fact that the college our class had just infiltrated (for better or worse) didn't have a baseball team. He, like me was (and still is) an avid sports fan. The fact that the College didn't have a baseball team greatly distressed us, so after some time, he began to poll the interest the students had in forming a men's baseball team. By the spring semester, the baseball team was reborn. Almost. There weren't enough players to form a full team, but it was a start.

Now where do I come in?


All along on his journey to making the baseball team, this friend knew that I was interesting in (1) sports, (2) photography and (3) sports photography. Once he had a team formed, he wanted to make it as legitimate as possible as quickly as possible. With my knowledge of sports, photography & sports photography, he asked me to photograph some practice action shots to put on (what was then) the athletic page on the college website. (The athletics department now has their own page, largely in part to this same person, but that's another story.)

I was a more than willing volunteer to photograph the team in order to help them promote and market their image, even if there were barely enough players to form the infield.

These days the baseball team's grown a bit--they sport a full roster and they'll be officially entering several leagues at the beginning of the next academic year, which are tremendous steps in just a year & a half.

I've grown a bit with the team as well. These days I have my own camera that I'd like to think I can utilize to capacity (I use to borrow from some wonderful people who were gracious enough to let me use theirs) as well as the lenses and skills to help me in sports photography.

So, as the team is coming into their own, so am I. These days I'm a sports correspondent with the College paper/athletic department as well as the baseball team's official photographer. Yes, I am their very own photographer. I've gotten to the point that this is absolutely of NO obligation to me because I enjoy doing it so much.

This past weekend was my first time with as their christened photographer. Over the course of the two days, I took cabs, trains, buses and spent more time on an island with a psychiatric hospital than I would like. But it was all worth it to be able to photograph the team.

Here's some of the images I was fortunate enough to capture. (Also, check out the quick weekend wrap-up of those games.)

Also, for the record, I shot both games in manual--if that matters to you. ;)

The first six photos are from Saturday's game and the next ones following those are from Sunday's.