It goes without saying that I really like baseball. 

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to see a game in Seattle at Safeco Field. It wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment thing since I was out in Vancouver and Seattle was only a few hours away, but I never thought of it as the beginning of a long-term personal goal. That goal, of course, is to see a game at every current Major League Baseball stadium. A few years after that I made my way down the 401 to see a game in Detroit. Another few years later I was on the US east coast and was able to do three—almost four—in one trip.

It was at this point the thought of trying to get to each stadium didn’t sound so crazy. It’d obviously take years, but I’ve researched it enough to look at how I could maximize future trips and make this a reality. Places like Texas (Houston and Arlington), the midwest (Kansas City and St. Louis), and California (Los Angeles, Anaheim, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, and even Phoenix since we’d be out in that direction anyway) are all places where multiple sites could be checked off the list in one trip if planned properly.

Overall I’ve seen games at 17 stadiums, although three of these—Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Tiger Stadium in Detroit, and the Metrodome in Minneapolis—no longer exist. Of the current crop of 30 stadiums, I sit at 14, one short of 50%. I’ve only experienced one rainout (my first trip to Pittsburgh) with a few others coming close (Wrigley and Cincinnati) but every other game went on as scheduled.

We just got back from a game in Cincinnati (pictured below) over the weekend which was probably the last one that is in reasonable driving distance. Places like New York, Washington, and maybe even Minnesota are still possible for driving, but with those distances we’d have to make it a trip beyond just seeing a baseball game.

To top it off, my wife is totally on board with this and the last few stadiums we’ve visited (Cleveland and Cincinnati) were her idea. I’m pretty lucky to have someone that wants to take part in this and advocates to make it happen.

I’ve also created a gallery of each stadium that I’ve seen. Think of it as a running tally to keep me going.

Coming up this Saturday is a unique new photography show called Distillation – The Essence of Waterloo. Put on by Art$Pay and taking place at CIGI, the show will feature a number of local photographers—including myself—that will have their work that has some sort of connection to Waterloo.

What makes this show so different from others is that each photographer’s work has been paired with a musical accompanist. The artists will have their work projected on screen for everyone to see while the music plays. We were able to suggest the type of music or audio we preferred (classical, drumming, spoken word, etc) but we don’t know what the final presentation will be; the first time the attendees see the show will be the first time for the artists as well.

I don’t want to show too much of what images I’ll have during my segment, but, believe it or not, they will be of local architecture. I’ve included a couple with this post to give you a glimpse of what I’ll have up.

There are two shows only, both on Saturday, May 26. The first one is at 1:30, the second at 7:00. Tickets are still available and can be purchased here. Each show will also have a reception afterwards for some social interaction with the artists.

There are eight photographers taking part and each presentation will be anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes. ABBA wasn’t available for my segment so we’ll see what I’ve been paired up with. Hope to see you there!

Throughout 2017 I completed a personal photo project albeit a bit different from ones I’ve done in the past. 

365 projects are popular and can be fun. I’ve done them in the past but for each one of those I felt burned out as early as September. The first time I did one I shot a photo each day for the year of pretty much anything; there were no limits or themes I had to follow. In the years that followed I tried doing themes to challenge myself. Two of those themes were architecture (gasp!), typography, and our newborn’s first year of life. The architecture and typography ones were fun projects to keep me busy but I will admit that I started to find it difficult to take a meaningful photo every single day. There was more than one occasion where I noticed it was 11:30 at night and had yet to do my daily shot so instances like that kind of made the work suffer because I was essentially using filler to get my quota in. I can’t say the same for the project on our newborn but that one was on a whole other level.

Fast forward to December of 2016 and I heard about doing a 52-week challenge. One photo per week is much easier to stick to than one for 365 days straight. I decided to go ahead with this project, but like some of my early 365 projects, I wouldn’t stick to a theme. The other key to this specific project was that I kind of did it subconsciously. I say that because I shoot enough both for work and pleasure that I know I’d have a wide array of photos throughout the year that would complete this project.

In the end, I have 52 shots. As you’ll see in the gallery they more or less fall under architecture or our two-year-old. The past couple of years I feel my work has evolved and gotten a lot stronger so I’ve been making conscious efforts to go out and shoot when I have any spare time. Which, by the way, isn’t often.