Reflection

Daniel Sheetz

When asked, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" my most recent, reoccurring answer has been, a sports journalist. Ergo when the opportunity to do a photo-journalism project about my hometown came along, of course I chose to do the project about Boston sports. I realized that in Beantown, the sports are so important and so continueally succesful and storied that the teams share a more significant connection to the city than in other places. After this realization, I decided that my photo essay would document the impact that our 4 pro teams have on the city. Starting out, I wasn't very good with the camera settings such as the apeture and the shutter speed. However, after a lot of help from others such as my coaches, I learned how to use the different settings and my project really started to come together photo-wise. I photographed at a Red Sox game and got a lot of good shots, some of which ended up as part of my end-product. I got feedback that I wasn't shooting enough so the next time I went out to take pictures, I took tons. This set of pictures was taken at the site of the Marathon Bombings and at the makeshift memorial for victims of the tragedy. I took over 400 pictures this time around, many of which were really good and many of them ended up in my finished photo essay. As for the written portion of the projec, I reached out to a bunch of different people who I knew or had a connection to somehow and asked if they could help me with the project or at least let me interview them. I talked to the commisioner of the Pacific-12 conference, an executive VP in the Red Sox legal council, and a former Patriots player. I interviewed these three people about various subtopics that fit into the general theme of the connection between Boston sports and Boston.  After conducting these interviews, I read over what they said and gathered some great quotes that I ended up using in my final written piece. On the last thursday of the studio, I really sat down and started writing my article. I chose the title, "Wicked Sporty" because it was short and sweet and it involved the famous Boston colloquial usage of the term 'wicked' to mean 'very'. I wrote the piece reasonably quickly because it was on a topic that I love and a lot of it came quickly to mind. I decided to start and end the piece with a narrative of my experiences through my childhood at Gillette Stadium watching the Pats. After these decisions were all set in stone the rest of writing came easily to me and I was able to finish the article. I'm very proudl of how it turned out and I had greta time doing the studio.