My Sports Photography “Resume”
I have taken photographs practically my whole life in many different genres from nature to NASCAR, and everything in between. My sports journey started somewhere around 2010 when I snuck out onto the field at Jefferson City High School to shoot pics on a Friday night when Helias Catholic High School had to use the Jeff City field for their home games. I got a handful of decent images and shared what I had on social media which caught the attention of a couple football moms from Helias. I was soon recruited by them to shoot Helias games which I did for free for a few games.
After doing this for a couple years I began to really like it and discovered a 5 day Sports Photography workshop in Knoxville, TN which I signed up for. It was taught by the late Peter Read Miller who was a longtime Sports Illustrated photographer with over 100 covers of that magazine to his name. I learned a lot in those 5 days, primarily from the critique sessions we held after shooting each event. I had the opportunity to shoot University of TN swimming/diving, volleyball vs Alabama, sports portraits, and a finale of an SEC game in Neyland Stadium vs Arkansas. The craziest sideline I’ve ever been on, there were 110,000 people at that game!
Not long after returning from this workshop, I noticed an ad in the newspaper looking for a Friday night football photographer by the Fulton Sun newspaper using. I applied and using images from the recent workshop as my resume, got the gig. I shot High School games at 4 area schools for the paper and they kept my on to shoot part-time, expanding into basketball, wrestling, softball, and, baseball. I did this for about a year and a half before the larger sister paper to the Sun, the Jefferson City News Tribune stole me away. I shot for them for about two years, mainly covering sports, but also covering other general photographic assignments. I think I was the first photographer to have a drone shot published in the Tribune, a night shot looking down on the Cole County Fair. I had some real exposure from that job, adding soccer, tennis, and track and field to my resume, shooting state championships in several sports and classes, and adding Lincoln University football. There were instances where I had full page inserts of my pictures from some of these events. I
I then attended another Peter read Miller workshop, hoping to build on my resume and learn even more. This was taught at the University of Arizona where I had the opportunity to shoot PAC10 baseball, softball, sand volleyball, tennis, and womens basketball.
At some point during my time with the News Tribune, I was contacted from parents at Blair Oaks High School and started shooting some live games for them when I could. The next year, I left the paper as cutbacks were forcing them to reduce pay and I wasn’t about to go backwards, I figured I would be fine on my own. I started shooting for the parents at several sports at Blair Oaks and picked up a Saturday night gig, shooting sprint car racing at Lake Ozark Speedway from the infield (I used my experience and images from shooting a NASCAR race from the infield at Las Vegas Motor Speedway a few years prior to help with that). The racing gig on lasting two summers as I got tired of all the dirt, dust, and grit that is not good for expensive camera gear. I still, to this day, still shoot for a few Blair Oaks parents. I’ve shot for 20-25 different high and middle schools and 8-10 Jr League sports teams/groups along the way.
I was at some point recruited to shoot pictures at the annual Norm Stewart Classic basketball showcase held every December at Mizzou Arena. I shoot this every year and probably will until they don’t want me anymore or I can’t. Subsequently I also shot pics at the Sophie Cunningham Classic girls basketball showcase for a couple years which is held in Columbia every January. This provided a unique opportunity as Sophie got me access to shoot one of her WNBA games when she was with the Phoenix Mercury at the Fottprint Center in Phoenix. I am very thankful for that opportunity. It was amazing, and to this day, the only Pro sporting event I’ve had the opportunity to shoot.
The only thing I wish would have been different in this journey was an earlier start. About 10 years before I started shooting sports, one of my best friend’s brothers played in the NFL. I attended one of his games in Baltimore for Thursday Night Football in 2000 against the Chiefs and had the opportunity to go bar hopping with some of the Ravens the following night. What an experience that was! Maybe had I already been established with some sports photography, he could have got access to shoot a game or two from the sidelines. Who knows where that might have led…………….
It’s been fun and I will continue to do it as long as I can. Besides other Pro level sports, there is one bucket list event I still want to shoot, a rock concert. I haven’t found a way in though. I was lucky enough to get approval to shoot a couple of Country concerts by Martina McBride which were awesome.
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