Buster Posey in Sports Illustrated

Posted on October 8, 2010

Buster Posey #28 of the San Francisco Giants chases a foul ball against the Florida Marlins during the game at AT&T Park on July 29, 2010 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

This has been a great season for the San Francisco Giants and a fun one for me to photograph. I have mentioned many times how fun their rookie Catcher Buster Posey is to shoot. I wrote about him a few weeks ago, and I wrote about him at the end of July. When I wrote about him a few months ago he was coming off an incredible month that saw him with the National League Player of the Month Award for the July. He was well on his way to a terrific rookie season, leading his club to the playoffs with his skills behind the plate, and his bat.

I have had the chance to get several nice pictures of Posey this season and one of my favorites was of him chasing a foul ball in a day game against the Florida Marlins on July 29 at AT&T Park. I was in one of my favorite photo positions, low inside first base. From this spot I shot many pictures with my 70-200 zoom so I can shoot a little loose and capture the scene of the wonderful ballpark and try to get some pretty blue sky into my pictures. I was able to do this when Posey darted out from behind the plate and ripped off his mask, so I could see his face.

My picture editor at Sports Illustrated, Nate Gordon, told me that they were putting together a small piece on Posey for the weekly baseball column and they needed a column opener to run with the story. These pictures always run as a square spread across one and a third pages. As soon as he told me this I knew I had the perfect picture. Sure we could have used a picture of Posey swinging the bat and showing off his beautiful stroke, but it is not often that we have a chance to run a good picture of a catcher in action.

I was thrilled when the magazine came out a few weeks ago featuring my big picture of Posey chasing the foul ball, as well as a tiny picture of him batting. To top it all off, the pictures were accompanied by a nice story written by terrific Bay Area scribe Ann Killion. Pretty cool company for me to be in!

I will be back out at the ballpark tonight shooting Posey in Game 2 of the NLDS between the Giants and Braves. With any luck I will be able to shoot another Giants victory for the magazine.