More than 20,000 people ran the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon in Indianapolis last Saturday. The highlight for many runners is taking a 2.5-mile lap around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and stopping to kiss the bricks. I biked the entire course so I could catch the starting line action, the mid-race lap around the track, and the…
Josef Newgarden visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum last week for the first “An Evening With” event in the newly renovated space. Fans bought tickets and waited in line for this sold out event to meet one of their heroes, a back-to-back winner of the Indianapolis 500. If you don’t follow racing, it’s important to…
I recently worked with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to document their Verizon 200 at the Brickyard race weekend. There were four races over the weekend and I was there taking photos of the experience. The Scene I took a documentary approach to show what it felt like to be at the track, capturing the overall…
Having lived in Indianapolis for 17 years now, I always wondered who got to drive the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Camaros I’d see around town each year starting in the spring. Well, now I know because I’m one of them! An Extremely Brief Introduction to the IMS If you’re not familiar with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway…
The Indianapolis 500 is a month-long celebration during the month of May in Indiana. This year I photographed two different perspectives on the festivities. First, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum hired me to photograph their Hall of Fame dinner two days before the race. It was an evening of racing legends, stories and a celebration…
The Big East Esports Championship at Butler University was full of action and emotion and I was there to document it all! Scroll through the photos below and experience the story of the event as it unfolds. Related Posts For more sports & esports photography, check out these posts. You can also learn more about…
Using motion blur in photography is a great way to convey action, movement, and excitement while telling a story. In this post I’ll give some examples of how I like to use motion blur. All photos here are from this year’s Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. To Pan or Not To Pan? There are two primary ways…
Photographing the new Butler Esports Park was my second photoshoot this year in esports. It’s been great learning about this new frontier in sports and technology. Both photoshoots have been for the architect of the new arenas, Populous. Their attention to detail is incredible and I’ve enjoyed showing it off in the photos. It’s also…
In addition to focusing on action and emotion, I like to find the art in sports photography. Here are some methods I employ to get a greater variety of images and bring the audience closer to the subjects. God is in the Details Looking around an event, I’ll see what details catch my eye. A…
I absolutely LOVE doing documentary photography of basketball! If you haven’t heard, Indiana is a HUGE basketball state. Yes, more than other states. There’s nowhere else a movie like Hoosiers could have been made. I scanned years of my archive of images I shot for organizations like the Indiana High School Athletic Association and the…
Last fall marked my third time documenting the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. It’s always a lot of action and emotion with plenty of great photos to take (if you know what you’re doing, that is). My SEO plugin wants me to type a bunch of words. “F*ck off, plugin,” I say! I’m going to tell this…
The NBA season is about to get underway, so I thought it time to finally share this shoot from last season. The Indiana Pacers hired me to document the inaugural game for their partnership with Motorola. I was brought in to capture some pre-game shots in the locker room and game action photos that highlighted…
In October I was commissioned to document the Indiana Pacers premium experiences. They want to give fans looking to purchase tickets a sense of the available spaces during a game. It was fun to get a first-hand view of all the awesome areas throughout Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. In this post, I’ll talk about how I find good…
In 1948, Nat Fein shot this photo of Babe Ruth shortly before his death. Photographers were gathering together to get a shot of Ruth’s face, but Nat “got a feeling” and headed behind Ruth and captured this image, which was the first sports photograph to win a Pulitzer Prize. I’ve been greatly influenced by this…
Here’s some documentary photography of a youth baseball team from Carmel, Indiana. These photos are taking at Grand Park, a massive 400-acre sports complex in Westfield. Baseball usually requires a really long lens to get any decent action, but with youth baseball, I can usually stand close enough to get some cool shots with my…
To start this month, I documented the Monumental Mile in downtown Indianapolis. This was a fun community event with a straight-shot run along Meridian Street from 12th Street to the finish line at Monument Circle where participants and guests could partake in some local beer and food from sponsors like Quaff ON! Brewing and Chipotle. Below…
Basketball in March. It’s crazy. Insanity. Lunacy. Delirium, even. There should be a term that applies specifically to this phenomenon. Any ideas? With all of your basketball viewing options this time of year, IHSAA Boys Basketball State Finals is among the best. A few of these players will go on to the NCAA to have the bragging…
Time for high school boys basketball playoffs in Indiana. Here are some photos from Carmel’s 53-36 win over Westfield last night to get you hooked. There will be more in the coming weeks from regionals and state finals, so follow our blog, Twitter and Instagram so you don’t miss anything.
When a game is packed with fans, there’s an energy that undeniably affects how the players play, especially when a close game gets down to the final minutes. Indiana High School Athletic Association State Finals always provide this type of electric atmosphere. Seeing small-town schools play is another great component to these championships because, in some cases, you…
You know wrestling is a popular sport in Indiana when the Indiana High School Athletic Association State Finals are held at an NBA arena. This was something to behold. Watching, it was easy to forget that these are teenagers. A clash of two titans in the 285-lb weight class, evenly matched, brought the entire arena to its feet in…
When a client needs enough photos for a two-day shoot, but day 1 gets rained out completely, it means a 15-hour, sunrise to sunset shoot. Add to that carrying 20 pounds of gear over miles of trails, up and down hills and rocky terrain, and you have one hard-core day of shooting. I was up for the challenge,…
Usually when people ask me about getting better sports photos, the question is focused around what equipment to buy. For this post, I want to provide advice for parents, students and aspiring photographers on how to improve sports shooting. 1) Get close. The best thing you can do is physically move yourself as close to the…
Getting out in atypical weather is always something I enjoy. Wednesday we had an unusually dense fog that lingered until nearly noon. In looking for an interesting place to shoot it, I ended up at Prairie View Golf Club. I was happy to find some golfers out in the fog, which made for some interesting images.
Whatever I’m shooting, my aim is to document all aspects I see, so viewers will have the most complete picture possible of people in a certain place and time. What people wear says something about their personality. Showing surroundings creates context for the subjects and expands the viewer’s experience. When I’m physically close to the subjects, the…