As I said in my last post, I spent quite a bit of time in the dugouts during the 2013 UIL softball and baseball state championship tournaments. The photos in this post were the result of that and my quick draw iPhoneography skills.
Dugouts offer relief from the Texas sun, fans circulate air and water and Gatorade are readily available. When you shoot four games a day for several days in a row, these things become very important.
My general plan for shooting each game, as I outlined in the last post, was to spend innings 1 and 2 shooting from the stands to get a few good shots of the pitcher and first base. Then I’d move to the dugout for inning 3, then a place of my choosing for innings 4 and 5. For innings 6 and 7, I’d go back to the dugout so I’d have a good view of emotional reaction from each team at the end of the game.
That means I was in the dugout for at least three innings out of every softball and baseball game I shot. (That’s 10 softball games and 5 baseball games during this year’s tournaments.) If you’ve ever shot a baseball game (or even been to one), you know there can be a bit of down time between major plays, so I had to keep myself entertained.
I kept seeing detail shots in the softball dugouts of sparkly hair bows and other things that seemed to juxtapose the sweat and dirt of a sports venue. Knowing my newspaper clients and UIL were more interested in peek action and reaction than details of the dugout, I pulled out my iPhone and snapped quick pictures of things that amused me or sparked my creativity, then posted them to Instagram.
After day 1, I got a few comments about my Instagrams, so I kept them going through the softball tournament. Then, when it came time for baseball, I heard the question, “Are you going to post more scenes from the dugout?” I guess they were a hit, so I continued.
I wasn’t thinking about Brad Mangin when I started my series, but I realized later that I was mimicking him. Brad Mangin is a sports shooter for publications like Sports Illustrated. He’s been working on a similar, but much better, Instagram series called Instant Baseball for the past year or so. Sports Illustrated recently published a book of his baseball Instagrams.
This was a fun project for me. It was an opportunity to look at what’s in front of me a little differently and show my artistic side, while also getting instant gratification through social media.
Now I’m running out of things to say, so I’ll just post more pictures.
That’s about 30 of the more than 50 shots I posted to Instagram throughout the tournaments.
Click here if you want to see the rest, plus my latest Instagram images. Follow me on Instagram @ashphotog.
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