Baseball, it would seem, has begun again. The twitters is all aflutter; boasts and threats and promises are being made on Facebook. Some are claiming that all is right again in the world; baseball for them is akin to civil rights, justice, even oxygen.
This is an image from my project-in-process: On The Bench, for which I received Rear Curtain’s Fellowship Award to support its completion. A bit of a preview, if you will. A teaser. Happy baseball everyone!
Part of the thrill of working on long term photographic projects is the fun they create. I’m not talking about getting that amazing once-in-a-lifetime-oh-my-gawd-you-have-got-to-see-this! shot. Rather I’m talking about the situations these projects draw us into, quite by accident.
I liken this to the adventure along the way that a backpacking trip might create. Or much the same with a road trip; that feeling of not quite meandering aimlessly along backcountry roads, but the adventure that happens if you give yourself enough time to pay attention to your surroundings as you head toward your destination.
This very thing has happened to me on numerous occasions as I work on my varying projects. I’ve discovered a fun local band called “Los Garapatas” (“The Ticks”) while shooting a Matanza (a traditional Hispanic pig roast), I’ve stumbled across polo players in the mountains of SouthWestern New Mexico, I’m been on a mountain top at dawn, I’ve eaten pie in Pie Town, and I’ve spent an enjoyable day watching a high school baseball double header this past weekend between two teams vying for the district championships. Good stuff! A perfectly enjoyable day. And my camera took me there.
What have you discovered as you chased that once-in-a-lifetime shot? What have you enjoyed that you would have enjoyed without the camera, but it was the camera that took you there? After all, life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans (or making pictures.)
I’ve come to my brother’s house to witness my nephew graduate high school and along the way my brother roped me into photographing his production plant (hey-I do these kinds of things for free airfare!)
In addition, my nephew is quite the baseball player. Shortstop if you’re interested. And good enough to earn himself both a scholastic AND athletic scholarship to play baseball for Butler University. I’d never seen him play before so this weekend I had my opportunity to see two games and I took full advantage.
However, I’ve been encouraged by the recent push into visual storytelling that Rear Curtain has encouraged. And I had a great time watching Sabrina Henry work her way through a Magnum workshop recently where she worked with the subject of dogs. So I thought I might take on a little project while here and explore high school baseball. I don’t know how this will turn out, or if I got the shots I need to make this work in the short time allotted, but it is quite a fun challenge to try to piece together some sort of visual story out of this.
So this image is the first of the lot. It is one quickly processes to be a teaser and I hope it does the trick.