Matt Morgan is now the all-time leading scorer in Cornell University men’s basketball history and this quick photo blog features the portrait photography session with TheRealMM10 in Newman Arena in Ithaca, NY.
First- I absolutely love feature shoots. It gives me the opportunity to get to know our coaches, student-athletes and staff a little bit better, on top of the fun of creating fun and invigorating images to share with the Big Red fan base. This feature shoot with Matt was no different.
When Cornell Associate Director of Athletics for Communications Jeremy Hartigan approached me about helping with the story - I jumped at the opportunity to help in any way I could. I researched basketball portraits, melded a few ideas together and into something I could make my own and started preparing for the shoot and our final needs.
My ideal goal was to create enough unique images that we could use them in Jeremy’s story (Please read - link below), on our website and for social media. Matt was set to hit the 2,000-point mark soon and then eventually the career-points mark, so I planned the different poses in my head that would help illustrate those moments and work well within our graphics package. I wanted to isolate Matt as much as possible, making him the focus of every photograph, so there was no doubt what the importance was for each post.
Matt was a fantastic subject! He knew when to lock it in, when to relax and I felt like his personality and determination that I was seeing on the court night-after-night really came through in the images I was making.
And while I walked away from the shoot a little discouraged, feeling like I didn’t get everything I wanted done and/or done just the way I wanted, the images came out great! I anxiously got up early the next morning and headed to the office to start working on the images immediately. I was delighted to see that my images played out *almost* as perfectly as I had planned out and eventually that Jeremy’s use of the images on the web and social media over the next couple of weeks (as Matt broke record after record) aligned neatly with my vision.
Long story, short - I had an absolute blast with this shoot and can’t thank Matt enough for his patience during the shoot; and of course a special thank you to my wife, Diann, for being the perfect photo assistant/human light stand that I could ask for! I hope everyone enjoys viewing the images as much as I did making them.
STORY LINK : https://spark.adobe.com/page/Qufi2z8mhxImf/ #YellCornell
Cornell University men’s basketball all-time leading scorer Matt Morgan.
Cornell University men’s basketball all-time leading scorer Matt Morgan.
Cornell University men’s basketball all-time leading scorer Matt Morgan.
Cornell University men’s basketball all-time leading scorer Matt Morgan.
Cornell University men’s basketball all-time leading scorer Matt Morgan.
All images © Eldon Lindsay/Cornell Athletics