ANTICIPATION

By MICHAEL PERKINS

SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY IS FLAT-OUT REPORTORIAL IN MOST CASES, placing its crucial emphasis on the capture of “the decisive moment”. The play that saved the day, or, at least, earned the headline. Hail Mary passes. Impossible catches. Long, nothin’-but-net buzzer-beaters hurled hopefully from Downtown. These are the essence of sports coverage; images that freeze such moments, photos which often outlive the text that they were designed to accompany. Sports photography is, for the most part, about moments of record, moments of now.

Take it out of its pro-level context, however, and sports, as played by most of the rest of us, can simply be about someday….or more precisely, any moment now. Sports reports are often viewed as strongly edited segments that stitch together one now moment after another in breathless digests of daily “greatest hits”. For many of us regular slobs, however, life isn’t played out that way. Real time, on our playing fields, consists of an infinite number of long, eventless stretches. Sadly, most of us don’t move seamlessly from career high to career high. Instead, there are many stops along the way…to smell the roses, count down the clock, and praaaaaaay for the final bell.

Photographically, kid sports often strike me as more fun than adult games, principally because the terms of engagement are so very different from the grown-up stuff. Children’s games are free of the deadly seriousness that seems to have tainted sports in recent years, robbing them of much of their playful escape. Young Dick and Young Jane aren’t doing this for a living. There is seldom anything of consequence on the line, except maybe the vanity of their parents. And when it comes to providing great images, the mix of true technique and awkward innocence makes for a charming combination, as the young combatants ape their mentors, even as they betray their innate kid-ness.

Opportunity..? (2016)

The young man captured here is, above all else, having fun. He’s enjoying the sweet anticipation of the unexpected. He already has the mechanics of a young pro, but his curious exploration of the option of stealing third is all little boy. Lots of story here, and in many moments which never approach the drama of a national championship or a three-peat. Images are narratives, and, in photographing more than just a player’s once-in-a-lifetime Grand Slam, we learn about striving. And waiting. And dreaming.

Theirs and ours.