Photo Day

TigerBlog took this picture on his way into Princeton Monday morning.  

That's pretty cool, no? 

By the way, he doesn't recommend taking pictures while driving. This was a rarity. 

Hey, how about today's theme will be something along the line of photos. Like this one:

That, of course, is Gary Walters, the point guard on the 1965 NCAA Final Four men's basketball team, a member of the Class of 1967, an assistant coach on the 1975 NIT championship team and the Ford Family Director of Athletics from 1994-2014. 

The occasion was, as TB said last week, Gary's 80th birthday. By contrast, here is Gary on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a senior:

Moving along, TigerBlog was pressed into service as the photographer for Princeton's field hockey game at Maryland Sunday afternoon. Here is a picture of the opponent, whose rallying cry is "Fear The Turtle":

Wait. That's not a Maryland Terrapin. That's just a visitor TB had outside his house. Here are the actual Terps: 

This wasn't TB's first attempt at sports photography. He likens it to golf: He's not horrible at it, but he has a lot of respect for those who are really good at it. 

Also, he doesn't own his own clubs or an actual camera (other than the one on his phone).

The game started out with a great chance for Maryland, only to have Princeton goalie Olivia Caponiti come up to make a big save. Yeah, TigerBlog missed that. He did get a good picture of the turf next to Caponiti. You could even see some of the goal post. 

Princeton's first goal in the 2-1 win came from Beth Yeager. TB didn't get the goal or much of the celebration, though he did get a few with hugs that were obscuring Yeager's face. Ironically, he got a good one of Yeager after the second goal, from Ella Hampson. 

And this one of Yeager, which didn't come out too badly. 

You can add photography to the list of things that have changed radically since TB first started in this business. You can also put it close to the top of that list, actually. 

Back then, you needed one or two good action shots of each player over the course of a season to use in the following year's media guide. Most of the pictures that were taken were in black and white, since you could only use color on the covers. 

Now? Photography is huge, since social media is, in many ways, the biggest connection between teams and those who follow them. 

The Instagram numbers for the field hockey team, for instance, are astonishing. There were 2.1 million views of the content on the team's feed in the month of September. That's 2.1 million. 

How many page views did TigerBlog get during that same time? He had a good month — 61,000 views. 

In other words, Princeton field hockey Instagram got 35 times as many views as this blog (regardless of how well written it is, right).

And so there was TB, with the office camera, as he did his best to come up with enough photos that were passable for social media purposes. The numbers suggest he did a good enough job.

He's learned enough about taking celebration pictures to put himself in the right place at the right moment. This one wasn't bad, especially with the final score on the scoreboard:

And that's today in pictures. 

TB will be back out there Friday evening with the office camera again, this time with the field hockey team at Yale. 

The goal, again, is to get enough for social media. Oh yeah. He'll also write a story after the game. His pictures will get way more eyeballs.