As the sports landscape continues to evolve and cheaper alternatives are presented to lower costs, it appears that a lot of social media teams and their members have begun to act more as team photographers than social media specialists. Teams expect their social media teams to have a phone in one hand and a camera in another capturing content. All the while it feels like team photographers are slowly being phased out because now some 22 year old social media specialist can press a button on a Sony camera and now they don’t need a team photographer. The persistent undervaluing the skills and experience a team photographer or any photographer in sports for that matter, has become really disrespectful.
First and foremost this post isn’t about bashing social media teams or the wonderful people that work in them. It’s about how social media should stick to social media tasks and team photographers stick to team photographer tasks. Hell I feel the same way about marketing photographers who go around shooting games and presenting themselves as team photographers instead of sticking to photographing fans, team activations, LED boards and marketing initiatives. It’s this pervasive thinking that anyone can be a photographer let alone a team photographer that teams and people devaluing the work of a photographer. It is also lines of job titles and responsibilities being blurred.
Now before we get into the meat and potatoes of this post ask yourself this question, “When you walk into an arena or stadium what photos do you see hanging on a wall? Do you see social media posts showing likes and retweets or do you see the art work of team photographers?”
Social Media Teams Can’t Do Two Jobs at Once
Being part of a social media team for a professional team or league is not any easy job. You have to come up with social strategies, new ways to produce content to show the human side of a player or pushing a new team related hash tag amongst other things. So why has it become acceptable to have social media teams take over certain team photographer duties?
I don’t see team photographers walking into marketing meetings and saying ChatGPT gave me great ideas for a new promotion so we don’t need a marketing team anymore. If a photographer did that, they would probably get laughed at and told to stick to their job. So why can’t social media teams do the same?
I’m aware that there is this misconception that a camera takes a photo or how hard can it be pressing a button. How hard is it to put an emoji in a post or jump on some new trend on social media? Does that mean anyone can do social media?
There are people in social media who are great with a camera, but their job is not to be a team photographer. It just feels like it’s cheaper to get rid of team photographers and just have social media teams do multiple jobs nightly for a paltry salary of one entry level position.
Conflict of Interest Regarding Content
If you’re a social media specialist and you took photos of team arrivals or a celebration, whose photos are your going to post? Yours of course. So when you look at team’s photos on social media you see photos with crooked horizons, players not properly framed or cropped you know it was a social media person’s photo. There are photos where a flash was used and it was used against a reflective surface so you have all these hotspots in the photo. The color balance is off and so on and so on.
Photographers have spent year working on their craft, buying the expensive gear, working for pennies on the dollar and now they have to contend with the photos they were hired to shoot not making it on team sites and social media because someone in social media wanted to post their pictures so they can have something to add to their resume?
A team photographer understands how to properly expose with flash. They know how to adjust color balance and how to frame a player so it’s more impactful. Let the team photographers do their job.
Use their photos and promote their work. No one is going to work hard or shoot more if people in social media are only using the photos they took. If the team’s social media posts are only going to be the photos that social media took then why even have a team photographer?
Being an LCC Didn’t Help Either
I’ve come to realize that me working as an LCC for various leagues also didn’t help differentiate that team photographers are needed. When I started being an LCC back in 2017 or 18, I thought we were just providing supplemental content because let’s be honest, a team photographer can’t be everywhere. I was aware, though, of the hate and how other professional photographers looked down on LCCs because they felt they were taking away jobs from other professionals. And when I look back at it; they weren’t too far off.
An LCC is basically a cheap labor alternative for a team photographer. While the various leagues promote it as additional content, some teams see them as a reason to not have a team photographer. There are professional teams out there that don’t have a team photographer and they exclusively use content from LCC. their social media teams and from the wire services. I’m not going to name names, but they’re out there. Anything to save a couple of dollars I guess.
I was naive to think in small terms and not see what an LCC was doing to the overall landscape in sports photography. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an LCC. I love being able to help a team or league out with visual content, but I also know that some times our stuff is used more than a team photographer’s work because we’re able to pump it out faster from our phones, but that shouldn’t diminish the need for the photos that a team photographer can provide.
I have editors on the other side that edit my photos for me during the game and believe every team photographer should also have a dedicated person who edits photos in real time for the team photographer. There is no such thing as too much content. Different angles and perspectives can only enhance the celebration or the game action.
Let Team Photographers be Team Photographers
When you think of team photographers that have shot for the same team for 10, 15, 20 years; what is it that makes them great at their job? They build relationships and rapport with the players and coaches. The team know who the team photographer is and they’re comfortable with them being around for the most intimate moments before or after a game. If you only have the social media specialists around the players they will never build that trust with the photographer.
Having the team photographer around only on media and game days is not beneficial. They need to travel with the team. They need to shoot the arrivals and be in the locker room post game, not just on the field. They need to interact with the players on a daily basis not just the people who work in social media.
You can have a social media specialist hide a piece of candy in their hand for a video post just as easily as you can have a team photographer capturing photos that show a player’s personality. It doesn’t have to be just one or the other. Give the photographers the same access that social media has to the players and coaches. Teams have made it that social media are the only ones who can interact with players and not only is that a detriment to both the photographer and players, it also a missed opportunity for amazing content.
As the younger kids say, “Let the team photographer cook.”
The best photos don’t always come exclusively from game action. They come from when the team photographer and the players have a relationship. When there is trust and when the players know they can be themselves and sometimes vulnerable after a loss. You can’t have a relationship when you shield the team away from the team photographer and only expose them to the staff in social media.
Working Together is More Beneficial
Teams need social media and they also need team photographers. It’s a symbiotic relationship that needs to be present for the social media teams to be successful and for the photographers to be successful. Social media should come up with content ideas, present them and let the team photographers execute them without any overlapping. And on the same token photographers should come up with ideas that the social media team might want to consider.
This way team photographers are doing all the shooting and the social media are curating posts, coming up with fresh ideas etc. Everyone is sticking to what they were hired to do. It seems easy to write this all out, but it comes down to teams and upper management properly valuing the work of a team photographer. It’s their decisions to not blend job descriptions because it looks better to pay for one salary for doing three jobs than pay three people to do one job.
I don’t believe team photographers will go the way of the dodo, but that doesn’t mean teams won’t try to save money somewhere along the line.