Conversation: Epic Matchups—Where Art and Sports Collide

(people murmuring)

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Wow.

People love art and sports, clearly. I'll just, you know, take a couple moments to let people come in. I am just so excited about the turnout.

(Emily chuckling) You know, a funny note is that this was gonna be a gallery tour, and then we were all just gonna go together in the galleries and look at art together, and then we realized it's going to be a big crowd, so we moved it here. So I appreciate your flexibility in pivoting, and to the Art Institute staff also for helping us, too. Okay, so good afternoon, and welcome, everyone.

Thank you for joining us. I'm Emily Fry, non-sports person, but the Executive Director of Interpretation here at the Art Institute, and I am delighted to welcome you to today's program, "Epic Matchups-Where Art and Sports Collide." So today, I'll be in conversation with LJ Rader, the creator of the popular Instagram account Art But Make It Sports, and sports photographer Kevin Sabitus on the connections between sports photography and artworks in the museum's collection and beyond. So in Chicago, you really don't have to choose between arts and sports.

They're both part of the city's heartbeat, and they shape how we experience the city. You feel the same energy in museums, stadiums, and arenas, which are all gathering spaces that bring people together through moments we celebrate, debate, and remember along after they happen. And Chicagoans, we know what this feels like.

We show up for our teams. We carry those moments with us, and from the Chicago Sky championship run to the Chicago Bears' appearance in the Super Bowl XLI, those aren't just games. They become part of the city's shared memory, and even our lions outside of the museum are always dressed to become beacons of civic support.

And you can't tell me that that Chicago Sky jersey is not the most adorable thing ever. (audience laughing) So (laughs), so that's one reason why this afternoon's conversation feels especially fitting. So LJ Rader's account Art But Make It Sports really bridges these two worlds in a way that feels both unexpected and instantly recognizable.

With more than 1 million followers, his pairings of art and sports have made art fans into sports fans and sport fans into art fans. But Art But Make It Sports has a way of revealing the artistry of sport and the emotional power of art. LJ's matchups illuminate something fundamental, our shared desire to find meaning in moments of drama, challenge, triumph, and failure.

And this is one of his earlier posts, which pairs Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills with Francesco Boneri's depiction of "The Resurrection," which is currently on view in the art museum, in the Art Institute in Gallery 211, and both images really bring a striking sense of life and suspension. The feeling of the figure, or the football Jesus almost levitating, creating a powerful visual connection. So whether you came here this afternoon on team art or team sports, one of the things that we'll explore is that artists have long been drawn to movement, ritual, and the emotional intensity and beauty of athleticism.

This, let's see here. Sorry, okay. Oh, so sorry. Okay, so across cultures and centuries, sports have given artists a way to capture something larger than the game itself. The artist of this Mayan ball player panel feels almost like an ancient frame by frame analysis of play, and although in the sport the general aim was to keep a solid ball from touching the ground, kind of like a keepy uppy game and you deflect it from your body, but in these ancient games, like, they were, they tend to be very aggressive, and could lead to the sacrifice of the loser.

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich used the figure of the football player in this painting to forge an entirely new visual language. Breaking from realism, the work fragments the athlete into planes of color, movement, inviting us to reconsider the assumptions of representational painting, especially how football, motion, and form might be seen beyond literal depiction. And Richmond Barthe often found lyricism, grace, and the physical power in the "Boxer," this work on screen.

The artist modeled the "Boxer" from memory inspired by the famed Cuban featherweight Eligio Sardinas Montavalo, better known as Kid Chocolate, who Barthe said moved like a ballet dancer. Barthe explored the expressive potential of the body's form, pose, and movement. And more recently, the Art Institute's acquisition of "The Dugout" by Norman Rockwell captures the anticipation and the sideline drama that unfolds around the game, especially as Rockwell stages the dejected Cubs player with the elated Boston Braves fans as a study for the 1948 "Saturday Evening Post" cover.

So what all these works remind us is that sports give artists a way to monumentalize what might otherwise feel fleeting, a gesture, a burst of motion, a moment of suspense, or the emotional life surrounding competition. Harold Edgerton, the photographer of this image, advanced strobe photography in ways that transformed sports photography, making it possible to capture split-second action with unprecedented clarity. So with all that in mind, a little, I know, art history lesson, it's my pleasure to introduce you to today's speakers.

LJ Rader is the creator of Art But Make It Sports and he's a former Emmy Award-winning Olympics producer, and now works full-time in the sports data industry, and he's going to share a bit about his creation of the account and his process, and then he'll be joined by Kevin Sabitus, an award-winning freelance sports and commercial photographer, who's relocating to Chicago as of this weekend, and Kevin has been part of the NFL Photos team since 2021 and the WWE Photos team since 2025. Kevin will provide insight into his own process as a sports photographer and how his images work at the intersection of art and social media. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming LJ to the stage.

(audience applauding) (audience member cheering) (audience applauding) All right, thank you, Emily. I'm very much used to being behind the scenes, and so, this is a very special treat. If I throw up, it's not my fault.

(LJ laughing) (audience laughing) There are a lot of you here, which is incredible. As Emily mentioned, this was supposed to be a gallery tour, a walk and talk, and I think a lot of folks reached out to the point where we opened up the floodgates and now we're all here. So I come from, I guess, the corporate world.

So made a little bit of a agenda of the topics that I'm gonna talk about. At the end of the day, though, I think I'm just gonna be up here improvising, so used a Kandinsky named (mumbles), oh, okay, I gotta talk closer to this, called "Improvisation." So could go a little off the rails, but we're all here together, so all right. Why are we here? If I can click this, cool.

Or how did we get here? (audience laughing) (LJ laughing) Yeah, yeah. Again, I'm very much used to sort of being on my couch, on my phone, making memes as opposed to the public speaking, but this is awesome. The Art Institute is a pillar and long been a dream to come here, see the art, and then, obviously, talk to you all.

Emily, longtime follower of the account, reached out. She heard I was gonna be in town and said, "Let's set something up." So again, we started as a gallery tour, but thanks to you all, have kind of expanded this into something bigger. All right, cool.

Some of you might know nothing about the account. So for those of you that got dragged here, sorry, but I'll go a little bit into the process of how I come up with the pairings a little bit later. But at its most basic, I take pictures of art, and I put them next to pictures of sports.

Tends to be that I use moments that are viral. So I'll be on my phone, and I'll start to see, you know, a hundred people tag me in the notification saying, "@artbutsports, what do you think? "What do you think?" You know, "Make this into an image." And I think these are two examples that are at the Art Institute and ones that were a lot of fun to start to think through and come up with. On the left, you see Trevor Lawrence, you know, compared to a portrait of Picasso, and I think this is a great example, because it sort of represents the types of images that, you know, this is, it's kind of a nothing moment from a game, but it ended up going viral because of the sports photography behind that.

So when we go on the panel, and I, up there with Emily and Kevin in a little bit, we'll talk about sort of how sports photography, you know, elevates, at least, my experience and I think the experience of others, and can take what is kind of a mundane moment in a given game and turn it into something really special, and to be honest, those are the ones that I like celebrating the most with the account. On the right-hand side, unfortunately, I'm a Tottenham fan, but this is the Arsenal's Women's team winning Champions League. But again, another fun sort of pairing.

I think one of the things that I try to weave into the account is a little bit of humor. I think you can do the visuals, but at the end of the day, it's gotta make people laugh. It's gotta make them feel something, and so, building in those additional layers.

I also use both these examples 'cause we've got, you know, American football, global football, men's sports, women's sports. To me, it's all sort of the same. I enjoy, you know, I was at the Liberty when they won Game 3 of the Finals.

I kind of enjoy all sports, just anything that I can watch, anything that has some gravity against it, and I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who follow the account that they really appreciate that I cover the full spectrum. It doesn't really matter, you know, who the athlete is, what the sport is, what the moment is. It's all just kind of celebrated within the account.

Okay, a little bit about myself. Who am I? So I was actually born in Tokyo. I lived there until I was three.

Neither of my parents know anything about art. They don't care about art. My dad worked for IBM and that's why we were over there.

My mom taught English to Japanese students and eventually became a preschool teacher. But my love of art is from my grandparents. So my grandparents, who have both since passed, way back in the day owned a parking garage in the West Village, and, you know, they didn't have a ton of money, and their patrons didn't have a ton of money, but the folks that used their garage were, a lot of them were kind of starving artists, and so, they would barter.

And so, my grandparents amassed a handful of, you know, artworks that I think are, you know, collected in museums now, and had them scattered throughout their house. As you can see, it's not the best picture on the right-hand side, but there's a nice piece of artwork up there. On the left is a Ben Shahn piece, not one that they have.

This is one that's part of the Art Institute collection, and then in the middle is an artist named Michael Goldberg. Again, not the same piece that they have, but there's a Michael Goldberg in my parents' house now 'cause it got passed down. So yeah, my grandparents used to take me to museums, gave me an appreciation for art.

I think one of the things that I hear from folks about the account is that they use it as kind of a teaching tool for, you know, educators reach out and say, you know, this helps them introduce their students to art. And so, I think I was lucky enough to at least get that from my grandparents, but it is fun to know that the account gets used in that capacity. Cool, oh, and shout out to, I'm gonna butcher his name, Bruno Krauskopf is the painting up there.

Yeah, and this painting hung in my room growing up, and then I was able to turn it into a meme for this viral photo of Jordan Poole. They shot him at like a media day, and he was clearly very pissed off, not happy to be traded to the Wizards. So again, that like level of humor ends up playing really well in the account and I like weaving it in.

And then, yeah, Dr. Shanyfeldt, so love of art from my grandparents. Never really thought anything about, you know, art history. I just enjoyed seeing art.

But then I took a Art History 101 class second semester of my freshman year, told my parents that I was thinking about minoring in it, and they said, "Do you wanna work in art?" And I said, "Absolutely not," no offense to anybody here that works at the Art Institute. (audience laughing) But yeah, I was not, I was more just interested in learning more, and, you know, my parents said, "Do you wanna just do that your own time?" So I kind of did. I traveled a lot for work, and every time, I'd try to tack on an extra day or two to see, you know, all the museums in a given city.

I would document everything, and that, I guess, brings us to the next slide. No, it'll be the slide, eh, a few slides from now. Anyways, I would document everything from, (LJ chuckling) from every city, and I would, you know, I see things, because I work in sports, I see things through a sports lens and I would just start captioning artwork that I would, you know, photograph at museums, and post them to my personal Instagram account, and would have friends, as you can see here on the left-hand side, reach out and say, "You should turn this into, "you know, its own thing." I was pretty resistant, but peer pressure got the best of me, and at the end of 2019, I decided to, you know, make a little spinoff.

For the first year or so, it was just me kind of posting into the abyss. It was like my mom, her friends, my friends, and that was it. And then Sarah Spain, who's sitting in the crowd, gave the account, clap it up for Sarah.

(audience applauding) For those that don't know, Sarah is an incredible media talent, and you know, big supporter of the account, shouted it out, and I got like a thousand followers from that, and then those people told other people, and then it's kind of ballooned. But I think, if I press play, will this play? Yeah, okay, this was from my like personal Instagram account that you can see. (audience laughing) It'll play through.

I'm a Knicks fan, so there's a lot of Knicks stuff. (audience laughing) So... (LJ chuckling) All right, okay. (audience laughing) I'll give it a second to go through. I don't know if you can read.

(audience laughing) Vince Carter was like 42 years old at that point in time. The Knicks were really bad too. Yeah, all right. (audience laughing)

[Audience] Aw! Yeah, sorry. (LJ chuckling) (audience laughing) And I was waiting for the Knicks to win the lottery and then they inevitably lost. So yeah, so I started the account by captioning artwork as you can see here, and eventually, well, I guess I'll get to the eventual part.

I don't really know what I've talked about on this slide, but I just like to, I like this picture or this painting and wanted to use it. Yeah, part of why I decided to, like, make it its own thing, in addition to the peer pressure, was I was just kind of getting sick of seeing the same old, you know, content that was on social media, people stealing other people's work, and things like, you know, engagement bait, and it just felt like something new and something fresh, and, you know, I still continue to run the account, 'cause I get a kick out of it and I enjoy it, and I enjoy the part that it is just kind of my little corner of, you know, the internet that I get to contribute to, and being able to, you know, morph that into something that I can do on the day-to-day is a lot of fun. But as far as the process, okay, cool, so on the left-hand side is just a screenshot of a folder, I should've taken a video like I have with the other one, but there are 15,000 photos in that folder called Meme Fuel that are from all over the world that I photograph myself.

And so, the process ends up, I guess, there's sort of four layers in terms of what I do. So I eventually, well, first off, I eventually moved from, you can see here, instead of like captioning the artwork, I realized that why don't I just put the painting next to the sports image, and that's when kind of the light bulb went off and the account started to take off, and it's also turned into, which I'll go on the next slide of kind of the celebration of sports photography, because that's a huge component of what makes things work. But the process ends up being a handful of components.

So the first is the image sourcing. So sometimes, I'll get tagged in a screenshot and I don't know if I wanna use that screenshot, if I wanna wait until there's a photo that drops from one of the photographers or the wire services. So that's actually a huge component of figuring out, you know, what ends up making it to the account.

I've become good enough and, you know, have befriended enough of the photographers that I can get my hands on the truly, like, really special angles, and, you know, those images end up being brighter and more interesting. So sometimes, I'll wait. Sometimes, if it's a moment that's truly like super viral and it's a screenshot, I'll just roll with the screenshot.

When I look at the image, there are sort of three things that I determine. One is, like, I just might know it instantaneously and that's from memorizing what's in Meme Fuel. So yeah, I have kind of a photographic memory, do a lot of pattern recognition, and yeah, have spent countless hours scrolling through that folder and really trying to know what's in there.

And so, sometimes, it's just immediate, but that's honestly, like, not the most fun way. The other two ways, one is you look at, and you can kind of see here with this, like, you look at that sports image, and, you know, it reminds you of something that is art, right? It reminds you of the Lamentation. And so, it's, you know, seeing that sports image and then looking through paintings of the Lamentation and figuring out which one, oh, wait, I'm not talking about the right image.

That was the one earlier. This one's what, St. George, St. Michael slaying the dragon? St. George, yeah. So then there's, you know, tons of versions of that that you can find and trying to find the one that like matches up directly.

And then the most fun is when I see a sports image and then it reminds me of a certain artist's style, because that then tests my knowledge of art history that I've kind of taught myself, you know, the Alma Thomas for certain abstract artworks, Joan Mitchell for, you know, being able to do hockey scrums and colors, and I've tried to, whoa, I've tried to bank a Rolodex of, you know, artists and what their sort of defining features are. And then when I compare a sports image to something that I only was able to come up with for the artist's style, that ends up being the most gratifying and the most exciting. All right, and celebration of photography.

So yeah, again, it morphed from captioning to putting the photos next to each other. These are both from Kevin who is gonna speak in a little bit on the panel, but yeah, you can see it's just, it becomes a little bit more interesting, and a little bit more of just a kind of treat to be able to feature incredible sports photography. When I post, I always make sure that I can credit the photographer, because to me they are just as much an artist as, you know, the Van Goghs of the world and anybody else that might be featured on the account.

What they do is, you know, it's special. There's a ton of prep work that goes into it, and then oftentimes you'll see online that, you know, photos just spread, and people aren't really crediting where they came from, and certain art, or certain photographers have their, you know, unique styles, and I think it's really important to celebrate. So I'm excited to talk about that aspect.

And then, all right, what's next? Cool, so I wrote a book. So that was a lot of fun. I think the art or the account will always just be kind of a hobby to me.

I feel like if I make it my full-time job, it would feel like work, and I think that might take some of the fun and the joy away from it. But I did quit my full-time job two weeks ago, so- (audience laughing) (audience applauding) Thank you. (audience applauding) So the, yeah, so I ran what was called the Broadcast Product Group for a sports data and technology company.

So we basically did all we all the, they still do, I don't anymore, all the statistics, and research, and like research tooling, the coalescing of historic data, the graphics integrations for any sports broadcast that you watch. So I come from the sports side and not really the art side. But yeah, left that to start a sports data company for women's volleyball with my buddy who I've worked with in the past.

So super excited about that, hence the volleyball image, and yeah, you know, we'll see where the account goes. I think everything that's kind of come from it has been organic and grassroots, and that's really made it special. It hasn't, you know, felt like anything's been forced and it's given me opportunities to, you know, come up here and, thank God, not puke in front of everybody, at least not yet.

And yeah, excited to dive a little bit in with Kevin and Emily on some of their questions, and then I think we'll have a audience Q&A, so cool. (audience applauding) So we're going here. (audience applauding) Thank you.

(audience applauding) Here you go. (audience applauding) All right, thanks for that, LJ. Your exciting career, also life changes, sharing that too, which was nice.

Okay, so we wanted to use this panel discussion as a unique way to really merge kind of the sports photography angle and about that process alongside what, LJ, what you do. And so, Kevin, excited that you're here. Yes, thank you.

Can you just share a little bit about how you got into sports photography, your process, and also lastly, what you thought of when you first saw LJ's account?

Yeah, for sure. I went to Notre Dame down the road, and my senior, (audience laughing) yeah, yeah, yeah. (audience laughing)

There's- We're back.

We're- (audience laughing)

Yeah, and I joined the school paper. There's actually a couple friends here. They were on the team with me over there.

Yeah, it was late, I mean, late for college, but senior year, just started shooting the men's basketball team and a couple other things, and got a regular person job for a year or so, and then kind of had a couple lucky breaks, worked for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Whoo! (audience laughing)

There we go, and then the Tampa Bay Rays for a few years, and then kind of just started freelancing after that, worked for NFL Photos, which I still do, and then joined the WWE staff, all contract stuff, but in the last year, so yeah. My process, I think you just put a lot of reps in, and you get comfortable being put in kind of like weird situations where you don't know what's gonna happen, because, you know, sports are random, and you don't really see what's gonna happen, and just making the best of those moments, and kind of like knowing where to be in certain moments. You're gonna miss stuff, and being okay with that, and then just trying to convey emotion, and you know, you have these like superhuman athletes in front of you, so when they do superhuman stuff, being able to capture that.

I think I found your page, you did something really funny. I think it was the- (audience laughing) Yeah, yeah, that. A photo from my friend on the NFL team, Kathryn Riley, and yeah, the word of mouth kind of traveled.

It's a very small community of like sports photographers in America. So yeah, like, you started collaborating with people, and the word got out, and you were always giving credit, which we really appreciated, and kind of like boosted our industry a little bit. But I was like, "Man, this guy's funny." So, like, I started tagging him in a lot of my posts, and just being like, "You know, if you find anything, "like, just let me know."

My DMs are, if you look at with Kevin, is just tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag- Yeah, yeah.

And then I'll see inspiration, and I'll make a post, and it's tag, tag tag, tag tag. It's great.

Or the NFL tags you. Yeah, so this one was fun, 'cause I think anybody that's an NFL fan was tuned into this game. It was the playoffs, and yeah, the NFL tagged me, and I was out to dinner for my mother-in-law's birthday, and I never ever, ever have my phone down, and this was the one, and I just knew, I knew that something was gonna happen. I didn't know something quite this viral was gonna happen, but thank God her birthday was wrapping, and I looked at my phone, and it was only like a few minutes after, and yeah, came up with this pairing, which, yeah, I guess it's got the humor baked into it.

Honestly, it wasn't even my favorite, but I guess it became because of how big it, you know, when it dropped. My phone, I think I still have the same phone, it overheated because of how many notifications I was getting and how many people were following. So it was a pretty fun experience, and it made my mother-in-law's birthday worth it, so- (audience laughing)

Well, I mean, I think that especially in this example, you were able to, I mean, the subject matter is obviously like humorous, and like has a nice connection with Jason Kelce, who was probably drunk too, as well as "The Feast of Bacchus."

Yeah. But then, like, you do this, like, uncanny thing of, like, you know, you have the composition, you think about the lighting, and, you know, finding these pairings is pretty, it's like it immediately snaps, you know, in lots of different ways.

Yeah, and I think that's part of why, you know, I think the account blew up when it started featuring sports photography. Like Kevin and his team, they do so much prep work to make sure they're positioned in the exact right spot at the exact right time. He was telling me earlier about, you know, Super Bowl, they've got six different shooters all over the halftime show.

And so, it really is an art and a lot of work that goes into capturing that exact moment in a similar way to how an artist might, you know, be deliberate about what they're painting, so, or sculpting. And so, it ended up being really exciting when I sort of took that step, and then, yeah.

That's great, so thinking about that deliberateness, I mean, when we were preparing for this talk, I said, "Oh, you probably just shoot, "you know, like 100 images in a football game," and you're like, "Oh, Emily, it's more like 4,000-plus," and I had no idea. So, I mean, in thinking about, I mean, your images are incredible, and just as an artist is like all these choices and decisions that you're making, what do you hope to capture in a sporting event, and then technically, how do you get the image?

I think it kind of boils down to, I mean, I want the images to be pretty, to start, like clean backgrounds, good facial expressions, like composed well, like all the basic stuff that I don't really think about anymore. But like the deliberate things that go into a game, like I think finding like a quiet moment pre-game where, or maybe not so quiet if you look at former Bear Roquan Smith. Just our access is so good, so we kind of have the entire field to play with, and finding those moments that kind of tell the story of the game I think are really important.

So you have these pre-game moments where there's the National Anthem. There might be team huddles that we're most of the time allowed in and warmups. After that, it's sort of like, "How can I tell a story of the game?" So like the photo on the right here, that was the NFC Championship Game in 2023.

Every Niners quarterback got hurt that game, and I found a fan in the stands that kept updating his jersey, (audience laughing) and he went through like a whole roll of tape, and he was asking people for tape, and then the next guy got hurt. So I went back, I tried to find him, and he was taping on, I think it was Josh Johnson or something. He was like the fifth-string quarterback.

But to me, like that told the story of that, pretty much that whole season for that team, 'cause, who knows, they might've won the Super Bowl if they didn't have those issues. After that, I think you have like peak action, which would be, you know, any kind of incredible split-second moment where somebody's doing something interesting, you know, diving through the air, catching a pass, or whatever that might be, and then some of the emotional side of everything. That photo on the right is from the Super Bowl two years ago.

It was Trey Smith for the Chiefs. I was assigned to do all the Chief stuff pre-game and he was on the Chief sidelines during the anthem, and that's kind of the moment where everybody, including myself, if it's a big moment, I'll like kind of look around and take it all in, and there was a lot of emotion on the sidelines. So I didn't really prepare for that exactly, but I had a 400 millimeter lens, and I figured if I kind of go tight, I can capture some of that at a different angle than what you might see, you know, like take advantage of my access at the very least.

I'm always looking for good light. So some stadiums, Soldier Field's got great light, but Miami, you have these pockets of light, and people kind of dive through them. So preparing for that, I might set a second exposure button on my cameras, where my settings are different on this second button.

It's like a secret that I don't tell anybody, but- (audience laughing) Now you know.

It helps a lot, if someone runs through that light, I can switch my focus button, and then all the settings are changed for that. So there's a little bit of preparation for that, and then something different, like that's not a very different photo there, but Younghoe Koo hit a game-winning field goal. I knew he was gonna go kick the field goal, and all the people on the sidelines I saw with their long lenses trying to get the moment of him actually kicking the ball and I just put my lens down and figured if he makes it, I'll just run out there and beat everybody else to the spot.

So I ended up like in the huddle, but like, I don't, I think the Falcons person got a different angle of that, but it was different than everything else that I saw. So I try to aim for stuff like that to just set myself apart. And same thing here.

I was at the COVID Super Bowl, which was weird, 'cause there was like cardboard cutouts everywhere of all the people. So I went up, it was a rout. I think the Bucks were up by like a million points, and I was working for the Chiefs at the time, unfortunately, 'cause I think I would've had a ring, and that would've been really cool.

That would've been cool. But yeah, I kind of figured I'd go up. I rented like a tilt-shift lens, which scientifically, I don't really know what it does, but essentially it breaks the camera down and sort of, it'll like hinge the camera and create some distortion effects where you will make the players kind of look like miniatures. So little things like that that I just wanna set myself apart, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but-

So it's just not going with your iPhone to a football game.

No, but that sounds a lot easier.

More gear. Great. All right, so thank you for that context.

So yeah, I mean, I would love to hear, LJ, what's been, obviously, you all have been working kind of collaboratively together over DMs. Is there a favorite pairing that you've created with Kevin and what has stood out to you about, you know, mashing up those two things together?

Yeah, so I think one of the nice things about Kevin's work is he tends to shoot the big events, right, the primetime games, the playoffs. And so, those games have a lot of gravity towards them, and ends up getting the best shots. So I think the one you see on screen is my favorite.

This is actually in the book that everybody should go buy. But I think in the moment, because of how excited I was, I just used the screenshot of this, and then came back later, and was like, "Oh, somebody got an incredible photo of it," and figured it was nice to elevate that for the book if I couldn't on social. And yeah, seeing this, I think it reminded me of St. Peter.

There's a basketball player, Terrence Shannon Jr. on Illinois, who last year, two years ago, had his number retired, and they pulled up the banner, and it was upside down. And so, I used a different version of St. Peter, "The Martyrdom of St. Peter" for that.

But yeah, it's, you know, and you see this, at least I see this painting in a museum, and I'm like, "I cannot wait for the moment "when I can use this when somebody is inevitably "gonna be flipped." And so, yeah, getting to use that and feature Kevin in the book was a lot of fun.

The fun part about that photo, which is why sports photography is great, is I think he was tackled on the one yard line, so it wasn't even a touchdown, and then they fumbled on the next play. So no one, like, no one really needs to know that, because it's a still image, but if you look up the stats, that's the backstory.

Well, and the way you described pairing it, you have a photographic memory, or can you talk a little bit about, like, you said, "Oh, when I see this painting, "I can't wait to pair it with an image." So can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so as people were filing in and I was getting more and more nauseous, I walked through the museum, 'cause I haven't had a chance to fully capture the collection, but my process tends to be I will go room to room to room to room and just start photographing all the things that I think could find its way into the account, and then I dump them into that folder, and then I spend a lot of time afterwards just sort of studying it, like a freak. There's something about just like seeing new art and like being able to mentally bank it that excites me. I can't explain it, but yeah, I think there's, I don't have like a true, like, I can't see a page in a book and memorize all the words, but I can see an image and, you know, memorize the composition.

So yeah, when I was, you know, walking the museum, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then banking it, and when something like this comes up, it kind of makes it feel like it's worth the time and energy that I put into it.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so we have an Art Institute, Pablo Picasso's "Old Guitarist" compared with a Bears player.

Yeah, so for- Yes?

For this one, I don't think I've ever even posted this. Before this talk, Kevin put together a folder of his images, and I guess it became a little bit hard for me, 'cause I'm used to referencing art that I've photographed, and I've never photographed this, but it reminded me of the same sort of both position and also just kind of the emotion in the image. I don't know if this would quite hit the editorial bar of something that I would post to the account unless it was maybe like a viral moment.

But at least for, you know, the setting and obviously being in the Art Institute, it definitely fits in, you know, sort of the essence of Picasso's Blue Period is pretty well-captured there.

Is there a style of art that you think particularly works well for your matchups?

Yeah, so I'm a junkie for anything that I can get my hands on. I think the ones that excite people the most are when I can take a sports image and then compare it to something that doesn't have human figures in it, so more abstract art, especially ones that play on sort of the color aspect of maybe it's the, you know, the jerseys that a particular team is wearing. So yeah, I tend to be drawn more towards, you know, abstract art.

Russian suprematism works really well and is a lot of fun to play with. But I really don't discriminate in terms of what kind of art I try to consume and what I try to feature in the account. Sometimes, I'll make sort of deliberate decisions on what I'm using.

So for the book, for example, I only had the luxury of using public domain art. So, you know, there's not a ton of female artists that are featured in public domain art, artists of, you know, color, minorities. So really trying to highlight, you know, the full spectrum of folks that create art.

And so, having the runway and time to put the book together, I was able to do that, and then, yeah, you know, you gotta be careful about what you're comparing certain people to, and you know, I avoid injuries, 'cause you don't wanna be, you know, making fun of somebody's injury, and then posting it, and then people getting mad. So being, you know, being thoughtful through it, and again, kind of just trying to pull from whatever's interesting. I also think, sorry, I'm rambling here, but, you know, there's a broad group of people that follow the account that all enjoy different styles of art.

So now that I have a, you know, a large audience, all you, it's nice to kind of, you know, hit every, every portion, 'cause I know at least somebody out there is gonna appreciate the type of art that I'm using.

Mm, I love that. Okay, so you talked about a lot of your matchups have gone viral. So what have you found that really resonates with audiences? Is there a connection that you're looking for when you are sourcing images?

Yeah, so I thought I knew what worked and what didn't work and I guess I'm constantly evolving. At the end of the day, though, the only reason why I keep the account going is because it's fun for me, because it tests me. I get a lot of people saying, you know, "You use AI. You use a program." It's really just me, but also I just, my brain can't process that if I were to be using AI, what would even be the point to doing it, because I only do it 'cause it's fun.

And so, I kind of just, you know, do my thing and then throw it out there and see what works. The account, on the day-to-day, I tend to feature those viral moments. The book was a great opportunity to go back into, you know, the archives.

Getty was really helpful in, you know, making the book financially feasible, and just sort of giving me access to all the photos that they have. So, you know, like Brandi Chastain, her iconic photo, like, I could post that tomorrow, and people would be like, "Okay, that matchup is interesting," but it sort of has to be tethered to a moment that has to do with either the US Women's National Team or Brandi Chastain. And so, getting a chance, you know, Willie Mays making his incredible catch, being able to go back into the archives and pull is more fun for me, but the stuff that tends to go viral are the images that people are already tagging me in.

It feels like kind of an obligation these days where people like get mad if, you know, an image goes viral and I don't do it. So that's a whole other thing I have to grapple with, but yeah.

Well, I wonder, I imagine that many of these artists would appreciate some of your matchups in particular. We have this image of Renoir up here of the two sisters and it makes me think about artists who are always drawn to kind of spectacle, or on, you know, figures on stage, and although these two sisters were, you know, kind of invited to the studio, and Renoir painted them, and you're photographing live events, there is like some quality to many of these mashups and some of these artists who are wanting to kind of create these like iconic images, you know, showing these like bold gestures, also really trying to capture some of these everyday moments.

Yeah, I always wonder, like, if, you know, Renoir was still alive, what would he think about the account? And it is fun to feature contemporary artists that are still alive, 'cause I get very interesting feedback from people. I don't know if folks know the artist Bisa Butler.

Mm-hmm, yeah- But she's supported the account, and I've used her work without her knowing about the account, and then, 'cause I tag whoever's, you know, whoever the artist is, and the photographer, and she hit me up, and she's like, "Oh, this is incredible." So that was a lot of fun. But yeah, it's, you know, the details of the painting and sort of the, you know, potential humor behind this. I, out of respect for Renoir, I flipped the sports image on this one as opposed to the art, 'cause we are where this piece of artwork lives.

So that is also something that, you know, oftentimes I'll, like, look at certain details of a painting as opposed to the whole thing, and certain crops, and moving stuff around, and you know, that's a whole, like, yeah, what was it, "The Garden of Earthly Delights" becomes, it's one, I guess a triptych, but it becomes like a hundred paintings in my mind of all the different little, you know, scenes and vignettes that could be referenced, so...

That's great. Okay, so Kevin, you know, similar to artists who are trying to kind of capture action, you capture split-second action. That's your job, (Emily chuckling) but you have to make a lot of choices in terms of framing, vantage point, gesture.

So what do you hope visitors experience when they see your images in this kind of, for these fleeting moments?

I think I kind of worry about the technical side of things. So for photographers, like f-stop, I have a bunch of prime lenses that I use where there's no zoom, and you get a little bit more of that depth of field blurry background. So I have my own style that I use, and a lot of other people have similar things, but it's more just about can I find the good light in a stadium where if something happens in this corner I'm like praying it's in this corner and then it'll look pretty, but if I'm on the other side, it might not look good, and if something happens there, you're kind of wasting your time a little bit.

So a lot of it is, like, anticipation. I might need to know, you know, the tendencies of each team, if they like to, like, throw deep. Like when I was with the Chiefs, they used to throw deep every week.

So I'd have to go all the way down the field just to kind of get ready for that. The rest of it is just, there's a lot of luck involved, like right place, right time, and then when that moment happens, like being ready for it if you have to switch cameras or whatever it might be. Like this photo here, I thought I was gonna get completely run over and my heart rate was like 180 for the rest of the game, because it was a 50-yard run, and I didn't expect him to go that far into the corner.

But sometimes I just set up and hope something happens, so-

I think it's, if people go to your Instagram, right, on your Reels, you have a video of somebody throwing out the first pitch and-

Yeah. You're getting hit-

Yeah. By it, so.

Yeah, we've had some close calls, but I'm still here, so... (audience chuckling) That's great. (Emily chuckling) I know this is a, yeah, you don't always film or shoot in sunny weather.

Sometimes, it's snowy or inclement weather.

[LJ] Yeah, this game was like super viral. I mean, I don't think it was a quality football match, 'cause I know it featured the Browns, so I can't imagine it was, can't imagine it was any good. Sorry if anybody here's a Browns fan.

But yeah, because of how much snow was going on in this game, I started harassing Kevin for photos, 'cause I knew he was shooting it, and he sent me a bunch, and it turns out, I sent him, like I knew I, this is one of the very few times that there's like a certain piece of artwork that I know I wanna reference. I think I had this one banked for a long time. I was like, "This is my perfect opportunity to do it," and then Kevin sent a bunch of stuff over that like didn't work, and then I was looking closer.

You had thought like the figures in the foreground were gonna work, and then I was like, "Oh, the people in the background," and I zoomed in, and it, like, it ended up pairing really well. So this was fun.

[Kevin] Yeah, the out of focus players in the background worked out this time, so- (audience laughing)

I agree. I think it looks very nice. I did not see this game, but-

Yeah, I don't think you missed-

It started sunny. I had to go buy a jacket when I got off the plane.

Yeah, wow. It was like 60.

Yeah, that's wild. And then that happened, so-

Wild. I mean, so how has it changed? I mean, you have this image. How has social media and your account really changed how people are encountering sports photography? Is it, do you feel like audiences are more engaged in, like, the images that you create? Are you also feeling like it's expanding your audience too on your account?

Yeah, so I hear from a lot of photographers they get really excited when their photos make it to the account, and I do think it gives them a sense of the fact that they are artists in their own right, and you know, they're taking something that, you know, might be their job, but it really is both a labor of love and a true, like, practice. And I think, you know, here that becomes sort of the version of having a "Sports Illustrated" cover that you might have back in the day. And so, I do think it hasn't elevated sports photography, but it's definitely, you know, been able to shine a light on, you know, the folks that are out there, and truly taking the best images that resonate, because oftentimes, like, I don't know, for me, at least, I watch a game, and the thing that I remember from the game is the photo.

I don't remember anything about the game, and the best photos are the ones that can tell a story and capture everything that happened in that given game in one image. And yeah, so those are sort of my, what I take away from, again, Kevin again. This one, again, the humor part-

[Emily] This was a favorite too.

Some dynamism. But yeah, so I think that everything that you're seeing now is Kevin's work, but, you know, some of the techniques too that sports photographers are starting to use and experiment with. We were talking about one of our favorite photographers, Steph Chambers, who, look her up, she does an incredible work of taking sort of these mundane moments in a given game and just making them feel like somebody truly painted them, and kind of puts you in the moment and in the place, and you know, with so many different games and so many different photos, it's really hard to differentiate.

So anytime you can see something that's, you know, more unique and a new technique ends up being exciting. I am curious, 'cause I don't really know how you capture something like this. So like what goes into it?

I guess we would call it a pan, 'cause you're panning the camera, but you'll turn your shutter speed down. I think this might have been a 20th of a second, where if you want like to freeze your action completely, you'd go to a 2,000th of a second, so there's no movement. But when you slow your shutter speed down, the shutter is open for longer.

So sometimes, if someone's running in a straight line, I have that second button that I got I told you guys about that's secret. I'll set those to my, like, pan settings, and then in the middle of the play, if someone's running, I'll just flip my thumb over, and then try to match the speed of my lens with the subject, so the pixels line up, and then anything else that's in motion, so in this case, it would be the background would just blur out. So I do it way too much, and most of it is unsuccessful, but every once in a while you get a couple good ones, and you know, it helps differentiate your work.

Well, and I think what is unique about this image and of the speedy dachshund underneath it is that the subject is really the speed itself, and that's what you captured itself-

Right. Which I think the painter, you know, who is love, you know, part of the, you know, Futurists, wrote a Futurist manifesto, probably would've loved this image of yours, and you know, probably would've included it in his manifesto too. But the little dachshund, it's like very, it's so, it's brilliant. That's great. I'm sure you guys have seen, there's a famous Olympics photo of Usain Bolt smiling and looking back.

It's the same technique there for what I do all the time and try to get lucky every once in a while, so-

Mm-hmm, that's great. All right, okay, so what's been one of your favorite collaborations, Kevin, with LJ that you've seen, where maybe you've seen your image that you've taken in a different light?

[Kevin] This one here was, it made me laugh, because I think it was a night game, and it was like 2:00 a.m. and I saw he posted this, and just the painting is very serious, and then you have this, I think your account's very funny. So when you see a combination like this, it just, it kind of made me laugh, because it's so spot on with the positioning. Yeah, I would say this one.

Yeah, I love tavern scenes, and sort of Dutch Golden Age art that has little brawls and kind of peasants that are flipping over each other, and this one's, I don't even know, I don't even know if this one is, I don't think Dutch, but-

No, it's- No?

French- Yeah?

[Emily] And it's 19th century looking back at Dutch 17th century style.

Yeah. Which is interesting. It's like "Three Musketeers."

And yeah, the, I mean, you can see like it works really well from a visual standpoint. And yeah, shout out to the Falcons. You see they come up a bunch.

I did schedule release with them the last two years, so they've definitely become a team favorite to put on the account. And yeah, this was a viral image that I felt like I had to do, and then I kind of took a second to think about it. I was like, "I know what this piece is," because I had that banked, so...

I mean, I think that when I look at this image, it's you, when you see these football, when you watch a football game, you kind of, I don't know, understanding each individual kind of, they all end up being, like they're all on a team, you know? And I feel like your images really bring out different characters, and then you're, when you pair it with these tavern scenes, you think of a narrative in your mind, you know? Like there's this action, or what's the brawl or the conversation that's happening on the field? I don't know if they talk, but maybe they do.

No, I mean, it is- Yeah, it's drama, just like a painting. Yeah, I think it goes back to the idea that like some of these paintings have their own, you know, their own paintings within a painting, and anytime that, you know, sometimes it's fun when that isn't the case, when it's a scrum in front of a hockey net, and it's a Joan Mitchell, and it's just kind of chaos and color, but it seems to work. But then other times when you have certain individuals, and this one I think because it's just such an athletic movement from Drake London and something that, you know, went viral because you don't always get a player that's gonna take that risk of, you know, putting the ball out and risking fumbling, and you can then hone in on a certain individual in a piece of artwork, so...

That's so great. Okay, so have you, Kevin, ever captured a moment that seemed small, but then really took on a monumental status?

I think, I mean, the Super Bowl halftime show would be a silly answer, but when I captured this, I don't think I knew it was gonna kind of go everywhere, because I didn't, I was told to go in the end zone and just stay there until you see him, and the set pieces were so big that day, the Bad Bunny halftime show this year, that I didn't see him performing until the last like minute of the show, because he was behind all these big set pieces, like towns and shops. But I was told something would happen in the corner, so I went over there, and just hung out there with, I think, Jon Hamm was next to me dancing the whole time. (audience laughing)

Sick, man. And he was very cool-

[Emily] Coolest job ever.

He had a Bad Bunny custom T-shirt on.

What? And I was, like, "Well, I don't see anything," so I was waiting, and then they popped out, and they had this, you know, the message at the end, which I think was, you know, culturally extremely relevant, and I was the only one over there, because I don't think, everyone else was kind of chasing around the middle. So I didn't expect this to like blow up, but it did, and I don't know, I think the message is very positive, and it's cool to be a part of that.

Yeah, and Kevin showed me this image this morning, and I just came up with the Goya, which I don't know if it's, like, quite good enough to have posted to the account, but it is fun to, people throw stuff at me in the moment, and then I can just kind of, you know, riff on it. But yeah, insane photo, and obviously that moment, you know? Also, I'm going to remember it from the photos, so it's a cool way to transcend.

[Kevin] And he found that in, what, one second, I think. Yeah.

So if anyone thinks it's AI, like, I saw it- It's definitely not AI. Yeah, we- Come up to me after-

We experienced it. Yeah. So this is, I know.

So I mean, this is to the, how both the account and your images really kind of elevate these figures to an iconic status, and, like, how do you feel photography has shaped kind of elevating these athletes into being kind of bigger than themselves?

Well, I think I made the Jets look good for once. (audience laughing) But, you know, they're doing incredible stuff on the field. I think this was the catch of the year a couple years ago, and I was kind of kicking myself, not that it's my fault because I don't know what's gonna happen, but, like, the background's kind of messy, you got guys standing there watching, and, like, the ref cut me off on the right, so this is like the only crop that would kind of work.

But I think when you paired this, it kind of elevated everything a little bit, and it was a, I think you zoomed in pretty good to this artwork, right?

Yeah, this artwork is much bigger. I think, obviously, it, like, looks like the Jumpman logo. And so, I think all the, and this kind of comes back to the point that I made when I was up there of, you know, with something, like every single account's like, "Oh, the Jumpman logo." You see the same thing, and then people taking that from somebody, and they're like, "All right, I gotta," like, "I can't post," and I don't wanna post this, and I wanna post art.

And yeah, Bill Traylor, one of my favorites, kind of this, what, outsider, you know, self-taught artist from Alabama, born into slavery, and just kind of an incredible story, and he does a really good job of, like, his works are very, I don't wanna quite say simple, but they just depict sort of everyday life, but then there are certain things that figures in his art do that are just kind of unique, make you laugh, and it was fun to take like just a, I think he painted on like cardboard. And so, to take something that was like painted on cardboard to me was cool to pair it with just this incredible athletic move, 'cause it was just like a little bit of a further juxtaposition of the two.

Incredible. Okay, so wrapping up our panel discussion part, how has this project changed how you look at art or sports? And that's to you as well. I'm curious how being, participating in this has changed your view of art.

I think it just helped to enhance it. I think it's kind of just reinforced my love for it. I think getting feedback from folks like yourself that this has allowed you to bridge a gap with a spouse, you know, one of you likes art, one of you likes sports, and you know, this is the one thing you guys have in common, which maybe you need to reconsider your marriage.

(audience laughing) But no, and like I referenced before, the educational aspect of it, it really does mean a lot to, I had a teacher send me, they did a whole like bracket presentation during March Madness of my posts, and had their students talk about each, and then they voted on them, and yeah, you're kind of taught growing up that you kind of have to pick one. You kind of have to be either an athlete or you gotta be an artist and you don't really get a chance to, you know, be a little bit of both if you want. I think it's kind of shown people that you can like both art and sports, and you know, they both feature improv, they both feature, you have to practice if you're an artist, you have to practice if you're an athlete.

You know, our favorite athletes are usually the ones that are the most colorful, and there are just tons and tons and tons of parallels between the two, and I do think it's important that at least for what my account tries to do to show people that, you know, they're not that different, and we shouldn't be told that they are different, and you should be able to enjoy whatever it is you wanna enjoy.

Yeah, I've always been a huge sports person, and the art side of things, like, I've been very heavily into music and movies my whole life, and more pop culture kind of stuff and less involved with fine art. But I think this is sort of, it's been cool to be part of it, to be part of this whole account just to learn a little bit more and kind of see, you know, different periods of history and how different everything is. And, you know, it's inspired me to be, I guess more present with when I'm presented with stuff like that, so...

Yeah, I mean, I think what I appreciate about it, and probably why I was, like, stalking you and following you for so long is that it's like bringing art history to such a wide audience and that it's also really throwing into relief that, you know, all art is pop, was pop culture at some point, it was of the everyday. You know, you have this image by Van Gogh kind of showing this like image of, you know, endurance, or kind of survival. There's like this emotion and you're comparing it to George Kittle of the, who I think lost this game, apparently.

I don't know, but it really adds like a layer to, you know, comparing these two, what that means, and really how our visual culture really, you know, whether it's a Van Gogh, or if it's a sports image frame, it's all relevant.

Absolutely. Yeah, great. Okay, so we have some time for questions. So if you have a question, we have folks with mics, and we'd love to hear from you.

So just please raise your hand and a staff member will bring a microphone to you.

[Staff member] I'm gonna head towards the front. Come down. All right, we've got one right here.

[Audience Member] Do you ever think about, like, the George Lucas type aspects, like wanting to go back and like redo a photo? Like, oh, you see something later on that's like, "Oh, that would've been a better one for that one, "and I wish I would've done that," or maybe even post something twice?

Yeah, it's the worst. (audience laughing) I think one of the fun parts of the account is because I'm going and sourcing from, you know, museum collections all over the world, I do tend to see a lot of art that, you know, most people maybe have, you know, never seen, like they're not famous, quote, unquote, "famous paintings." And yeah, sometimes it's I see one of these, you know, in a random room in a random museum, and I'm like, "Oh, that was that thing." I don't think I've ever gone back, just the, kind of just with the Kevin's piece in the book, it's a little bit of like maybe redoing the sports image side if taking, being able to take a screenshot and using the actual sports photo. But yeah, it's terrible. (LJ laughing)

[Audience Member] Is there any, like, moments or photos that have truly stumped you that, and also for Kevin, like any like moment where you're like, "Dang it, didn't get the shot I wanted"? Well- Yeah, all the time. (audience laughing) Most of the time I work these games alone, so I'm trying to figure out where to be, because it's a 120-yard field, so I miss stuff like all the time, and you just can't let it bother you at that point. If there's something in my lap that I miss, I think I like hit a wrong button when I moved my camera, it was like a one-handed catch in the playoffs for the Patriots game.

It was like in the snow, beautiful, right in front of me, and my camera was like off, because I hit a button when I moved it. So stuff like that really kills me. But just wrong place, wrong time is kind of what happens, so...

Yeah, and then from my end, I think this goes into like the image sourcing side, where oftentimes if something is important enough to, like, it's important enough if it, you know, reaches the level that enough people care, it tends to be that there might be other angles to that image. So yeah, sometimes I'll see something, and it's like, "I can't work with this angle," but if, you know, if a photo drops, or, you know, they do a replay and I can grab that other frame, but yeah, there are a handful that, was the Patriots' catch Kayshon Boutte?

Yeah. Yeah. (LJ laughing) (audience laughing)

I almost left the game, I was so mad. (audience laughing) You're opening up some wounds here-

Yeah. On stage, the first two questions. But yeah, I think, I don't even think I did that one. Maybe out of respect for you-

Thank you, yeah, yeah. Maybe I knew.

You're a good friend.

So cool. We have a question up here.

[Audience Member] This is for LJ. Have you done many pairings with LeRoy Neiman?

I don't think so, but now it sounds like I need to. (audience laughing) Oh, oh, sorry, I've, the sports artist, right? Yeah, it took me a second to realize. I feel like that'd be cheating, no? I haven't.

I think I saw, I saw some of his work at one of the art fairs in New York last year, so there's some stuff sitting in my folder, but I've never used him before. I use Ernie Barnes. You know, Ernie Barnes, for those that don't know, oftentimes features hoops in his artwork, and I used him for like a Wemby and Chet, because his figures tend to be elongated, just like Wemby and Chet.

So, but yeah, I haven't used him before.

[Staff member] There's one up here, right down. Would you mind passing the mic?

[Audience Member] Yeah, this is for Kevin. I was wondering your thoughts on like the trend of former retired professional athletes entering sports photography. I think it's like Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson.

I'm sure there's others. I was wondering if that, I don't know, bothers you at all, or if you, (audience laughing) or if you embrace it.

No, it doesn't. I think it bothers some people, but no, I mean, people are just trying to have fun. If you're retired and you have a bunch of money and you wanna do that, like, that's fine.

But if anything, I think it kind of like brings, you know, more eyes to what we do. So there's a positive to it. Some people are, you know, crotchety about it, and they're like, "They're not us," or whatever, but, like, I don't have any issue with it, and I think guys like Ken Griffey, and who was it, Randy Johnson, they've been doing it for a while.

It's kind of their thing. But there's other people that are, they'll jump in, and like, I don't know, I don't really give it too much thought.

[Staff member] Got a question in the middle to your right here.

[Audience Member] Yeah, this is for both of you. Obviously, a lot of football and basketball, real kinetic sports. Are there sports that are more of a challenge and you kind of feel like, "Oh, I'm really glad "I got something out of that"?

Soccer's hard, just because, I don't know, I enjoy watching soccer, but it's rare that you get something that's like very unique and it's hard to riff off of. Football I feature a lot, but it's also just a little bit harder, 'cause they have helmets on, so you're not usually doing like facial expressions and matching on that. Yeah, tennis is hard too.

I enjoy doing hockey. A lot of like the lighting and the color plays really well with abstract art. So I don't know about what are you in for shooting? Kevin's got like a whole portfolio of like incredible WWE work- Yeah, it's a challenge, because you're shooting through the ropes.

I'm usually ringside, and there's kind of a dance you have to do with the TV cameras that are there, because in most sports, like, TV gets priority. So I'm kind of tied to their hip, kind of moving in tandem with them, and trying to shoot through the ropes, and there's a lot of, you know, high spots and dangerous stuff. So just being prepared for all that, and sort of knowing where I can be, and like what, you know, where the lights are and everything.

It's a challenge, but it's really exciting, so...

[Staff member] Down here, over on the left.

[Audience Member] Question for either of you or both I guess. Any particular angle that you guys enjoy? I know I'm referencing specifically the Russell Westbrook from above when he's yelling after getting an and-one.

Yeah, I missed the first part of the question.

[Audience Member] Any angle that you prefer-

Oh, yeah- In photos-

So I think I did that was a Kandinsky. Joe Murphy is the photographer that shot that one. I don't really, I, you know, any angle, but anything that is just different, and I think the best photographers, you know, kind of mix things up, and you know, those are the things that I like to riff off of.

Yeah, I think anything different if you're, we do remote cameras a lot, so we'll set up something, you know, up in the rafters, and then we'll have a remote trigger that, so we have it all set up with different focusing styles, and that's sort of just, if we're doing a gallery, it breaks things up a little bit more, so it doesn't all look the same. But in terms of NFL specifically, or a lot of sports, like, I see a lot of people when they're just starting out, they're standing up on the sidelines, and like I really try to get as low as I can to make these athletes look bigger, because if I have that angle, it just makes things, the horizons look nicer, and you end up with making these people look more important, so...

[Staff member] I've got a question in the center, center.

[Audience Member] Wayne Gretzky said, "I don't skate to where the puck is, "but to where the puck is going to be." Some of your work looks like you saw the play developing before it happened. How do you get that?

I think knowing the sport kind of goes a long way, but like I said, I can't prepare for, like, a strip sack for the defense, or anything like that. So there is a lot of luck involved, and then there's sort of just knowing tendencies for each team, and then when something does happen, I think the hardest part about sports photography is being able to change. I have three cameras on me, so I have a 400 on a monopod, like a big lens, and then two cameras on a harness that I wear.

So knowing when, if it's a deep pass, like when am I gonna switch to my other camera, and am I gonna pick the right one, like that's probably the biggest challenge that I still struggle with now. But if you can figure that out, I think you're gonna get a greater success rate for just dealing with like changes in how far people are.

[Staff member] Center front, or center middle, I guess.

[Audience Member] Hi, this is for LJ. Have you noticed with the explosion of women's sports and women's pro sports in the last four or five years since you created the account, do you see more women's sports come across your feed, or are you more often tagged in women's sports photography?

Yeah, not enough. So anybody out there, if you're a women's sports fan, feed me images, please. The, yeah, I think one of the most exciting things that has come from the account is I'll post women's sports on the regular, and I don't think I've ever gotten a comment being, "Why are you posting women's sports?" I think it's really shown that women's sports, men's sports, they're kind of the same.

I mean, they obviously have their nuances and their differences, but I think people respect the account enough, and it helps, you know, elevate both men's and women's sports together. I don't get nearly enough PWHL that comes across in tags, so I wanna see more of that. I think women's hoops has definitely elevated a lot, which is exciting, especially with like the investments that teams are making in social staff.

So now they have more photographers and more people that are shooting these games. So yeah, the more, the merrier. I'm going to Minnesota tomorrow to go to the Aurora game, a soccer team out there.

So hopefully, yeah, hopefully, some cool photos come from that, but yeah.

[Staff member] We've got a question top right.

[Audience Member] Quick one for Kevin. What lenses do you typically have on those two hip cameras, and Canon or Nikon?

I use Canon. I have a 50 millimeter lens, 1.2, and a 135. On my right side, 1.8, and then the 400, and then I have a wide, like 15 to 35, and some other stuff.

But like for a game day for football, it's usually 50, 135, 400 focal lengths for, so the 400's the big lens that you'll, you know, super tight, and then the other two I have are just fixed at those distances. So, you know, they look a little bit better, but I don't have a lot of variability to zoom or anything. So it's riskier, but I think it pays off most of the time.

I guess before the next question, shout out to everybody still here.

I know- Thank you. 2 p.m. on a Friday to be here, first off, incredible. Also, like 3:15 is my nap time each day, so-

[Emily] I know, I've learned that you take naps every day.

I'm a big nap guy. I have a 16-month-old son. Him and I are on similar schedules.

(audience laughing) Yeah, yeah, so thank you for everybody.

We have one more question. Are there more questions? Yeah. Do we have time for a few more questions? Oh, yeah.

Okay. We're here.

Did you- Can ask me a question. (audience laughing) [Audience Member] For LJ, we're just blowing through nap time, aren't we, right now? Sorry about that. This is better than nap time, so it's good.

[Audience Member] But I'm just curious if you see like different reactions across social media between Instagram, Twitter? Is the audience kind of different? I don't know if you do Facebook, but that as well-

I stay away from Facebook. (audience laughing) So I got the cheer in the back. So the feature on Instagram where you can tag an account for collaboration, right, so you tag a, like I'll tag a team, and then they become a collaborator, and then it goes to all their followers.

So whenever that happens, people flood the comments being like, "What is this?" Because they don't follow my account, and there are a lot of bots, and there's just a lot of chaos that goes through. But luckily, for the most part, the people like that follow my account, they follow it, and they know what it is. Twitter, I honestly don't even, Twitter becomes tough.

I don't even look at it much anymore in the comments, because it's, I think it's changed a little bit and become better, but for a while it's just super botty and spammy. Instagram feels a little bit more like a museum and sort of a librarian and celebration. But yeah, whenever those collab requests get accepted, I dread looking through what my notifications say.

[Staff member] Got a question towards the front here.

[Audience Member] Yeah, this one's for LJ. I was wondering what inspired you to, like, make the move and actually quit your job and do what you're doing now?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I wanted to be my own boss. I've worked in sports for a long time.

I was a producer on the Olympics, was a fantasy sports writer, was early on on the product team at DraftKings before it became like gambling, and was DFS, and had been with this last company for, I guess, nine years and learned a lot through all my stops, and one of the things that I could see at all the places that I was at was that women's sports weren't really being taken seriously from a data standpoint. There was a massive delta between the attention that these sports were getting from like a viewership side. So, you know, you turn on the volleyball championships, and you got a million-plus people that are watching and tuning in.

Granted these are, you know, the early rounds are like buried on ESPN+, and you know, they aren't brought to the network forefront, but you watch these games, and the graphics are just kind of meh, because they haven't coalesced their historic data. And so, yeah, my buddy and I have kind of a passion for, he's a huge women's volleyball fan. I just like the, you know, the challenge, and you know, being able to actually, you know, people say like, "Oh, support women's sports," but actually like taking the step to do it.

So we've built a lot already, and super fun. So excited about the next steps. (audience member cheering) (audience applauding)

[Staff member] We have a question, top center.

Yeah.

Oh. I think you might need a mic though, sorry. Okay- Actually-

Oh, wait, I think it's for the closed captioning, or sorry. [Audience Member] Can't I just be loud?

Frances can bring you a mic. Okay.

Cool. Yeah, she's coming down. Thanks, Frances. (audience member mumbling) Mm-hmm.

[Audience Member] I was wondering if you, I mean, obviously, these photos are beautiful, these art pieces are beautiful, and I think it's easy for you to sort of humbly excuse yourself from being a curator, but if you view what you're doing as a curatorial practice, how does that like inform what you're doing and has that changed over time?

I guess it's always in the background of how I go about handling the account. I try to keep various standards of, like I mentioned, not doing injuries, although we were talking earlier about when Deshaun Watson got hurt, that was compared to the vanquishing of the devil. So we managed to, we break that a little bit.

(audience applauding) But yeah, I think I take the same steps as a curator might do, but I avoid putting any labels or anything, because at the end of the day, I just still think of it as kind of my dumb musings that now have a lot of people that are paying attention, and yeah, I don't, I feel like if I thought about it any more, then it would feel like work, or it would feel like something more than maybe it really is, so...

[Staff member] One back up here. Mm-hmm. [Audience Member] Hi, LJ. I love that your practice is grounded in featuring art that you've seen yourself in museums.

Can you talk a bit more about why you haven't, you know, maybe given into temptation to dive into like an online archive and expand that?

I do sometimes. I just don't, I don't look and then save the pieces all that often. So for example, like I might see a piece that reminds me of, I don't know, a Joan Miro, and it's like, all right, I don't have the exact, I went to the museum in Barcelona, and I've got a bunch of his work, but maybe there isn't anything in there that strikes me.

So then I'll look online through his archive, but I'm not, you know, I'm not like taking those photos and just dumping them into my folder, because part of what helps me memorize them is having shot them and then looked at them after. Otherwise, it's tough to bank. So I tend to avoid, like, saving those in the folder.

[Staff member] I've got a question in the center here.

[Audience Member] So first of all, I believe I heard you say you were a Tottenham fan, and God bless you. (audience laughing)

Yeah, not great. I should never have admitted that.

[Audience Member] But I did wanna follow up on your comment about the lack of football pictures from soccer, and I wonder if you have any speculation, is that pitchside access? Is it the lack of promotion in the media? Is it just that people aren't feeding it to you? Because I think it's an interesting observation.

Everyone's leaving because you reminded them that I'm a Tottenham fan. (LJ laughing) (audience laughing) I don't blame them.

I'm a huge Arsenal fan, by the way, so-

God bless. It was like the- Look at us.

The dilemma of West Ham game, the last game, for those that are hopefully not following the Premier League this year, basically Tottenham about to get relegated, Arsenal about to win the league, and Arsenal played West Ham, who Tottenham is in a battle with for relegation. And so, as a fan, you have that dilemma of, like, do you root for West Ham to win and knock Arsenal out, but then get rid, that's what I was rooting for.

Thank you. I'll sacrifice Spurs to watch Arsenal burn. And now I forget what your question is. See, I come from the sports side, so I get heated, but- Pit access I heard-

Oh, you might know better than I. I don't really know about shooting soccer all that well. I just don't really get a ton of like super compelling soccer photos that come my way, but-

I've had a handful of games, like the US National Team, but it's, I don't, it's a difficult sport to shoot, because in football, if I go too tight, the ball's up here, so I'll be waist up, but like, you have to have the whole body pretty much in every soccer shot. So it's different than what I do. I think there's people that probably think it's easy, but yeah, I don't know.

It just, it's a challenge, so-

I did a (mumbles), there's one in the book for the US Women's National Team. That's an incredible shot of, I forgot who, which player. Maybe Kelley O'Hara? I think that's her name.

She got like cleated in the side, and all the players are pointing at it. But I guess that's, like, because that wasn't a moment in the action, I assume they could do, the photographer could do a better job of having the runway to frame it up and capture it, but I don't really know about, yeah, capturing like live, live action. And no Tottenham.

Tottenham's not good enough to feature. (audience laughing)

[Staff member] We have time for one more question. It's up here.

[Audience Member] LJ, I just saw that you did a collaboration with the WooSox for Art But Make It Sports Night. So I was wondering if you could design a jersey based on a piece of art, who would you design a jersey for and what piece of art?

It's a great question. Maybe like an artist that I really like that maybe it isn't, like, I think I mentioned Alice Baber before. I love her work.

I feel like it would play well for like an alternate jersey. She has like kind of colored orbs that tend to sometimes make Xs, and sometimes float around, and feel like it'd be subtle, and still fun. Or I guess you could go, I don't know, like a Van Gogh "Starry Night." That just seems so, I don't wanna call it generic, but it is what everybody knows.

So it could be a good one. (audience applauding)