September 3, 2023

Lawyer by Day, Photographer by Night

Today, I created two new email addresses and strengthened all my applications after meeting for the sixth time this summer with my college’s career advisor. I applied to be the Executive Assistant to Ball Park Operations for the New York Mets. I feel strong about this one, and the Mets tour guide position I applied to again under a fourth email address; feeling extra confident after receiving an award for a newspaper article I published last year with my school’s paper during my time as editor for the Sports section.

 

Seeking mentorship in any field, I reached out to a friend of my father’s who is a full-time lawyer with a passion for sports and photography. While maintaining his law practice, he took workshop classes at night, learned which cameras to invest in, and started advertising his skills for any upcoming event he knew would need a photographer; weddings, anniversary parties, bar mitzvahs, et cetera. Once he was an established hire for little league and high school sporting events, he was able to narrow his job offers to sporting events. It only took that one great game at the right place and the right time to be recognized and picked up by USA Today as their freelance sports photographers. He’s out on the field and in the media booth for Mets games, Yankee games, the U.S. Open, Knicks courtside- it’s a dream come true. Naturally, being a freelancer has its downsides of not being first picked for bigger event coverage, but he is therefore free to accept any job by any media publication as a sports photographer. He is a passionate man, and I was lucky to meet and train with him at the possibility of one day being courtside or in a dugout; taking a picture of that perfect millisecond to define the past three-hours.

 

Ultimately, the profession wasn’t for me, and I saw that before I went any further, wasting his time.

 

I met Superman; he’s a lawyer by day, sports photographer by night.