Do lacrosse players actually struggle to find photographers at their events?

[u/Luka_Conjedos3]

Hey everyone! I'm Luka, a high school senior and cross country runner who's also been doing sports photography for the past few years.

I've been trying to figure out if other people experience the same frustration I do, where athletes struggling to find photographers at their events, and photographers struggling to find consistent work in sports.

I'm doing research for a class project and would love to hear from real athletes, parents, and photographers about their experiences with sports media. This is not a product, pitch, or promotion, I just genuinely am trying to understand if this is a problem other people face or just me.

[u/buddyboo17]

My dad became the volunteer photographer for years. It was his hobby so he was really good, but even my high school yearbook would use his photos. My high school finally hired a dedicated sports photographer but definitely was a challenge for a while. My college had a media team of a decent size so they’d at least get some pictures of each game but would have to bounce to get all of the sporting events happening at the same time.

TLDR yes, “smaller” sports struggle to get photographers and photographers tend to go for the big money events (football, soccer, etc.) * smaller based on your area obviously, I’m from the South so lax is smaller here

[u/Luka_Conjedos3 → u/buddyboo17]

That’s actually really helpful insight, thank you. The point about photographers naturally gravitating toward the bigger sports/events is something I’ve been hearing a lot especially from athletes in smaller or less-publicized sports. I also hadn’t thought much about how schools often rely on volunteer parents to fill the gap, so that’s super interesting to hear too.

And yeah, the “smaller sport” definition definitely seems regional. I’m in Southern California where lacrosse has grown a lot, but even here sports outside football/basketball still seem to struggle with consistent coverage. Would you mind filling out the survey?

[u/buddyboo17 → u/Luka_Conjedos3]

As long as it’s anonymous sure, if not then I’m afraid I’ll have to pass!

[u/Luka_Conjedos3 → u/buddyboo17]

Yes sorry I completely forgot to mention that. It’s fully anonymous .

[u/Grouchy_Evidence2558]

We have some dads who do our photography for high school and they’ve gotten pretty good. But on our travel team we don’t usually have anyone.

We have a couple of local people who occasionally come to various games and do some video down at a sort of low angle that gets fun action clips for social media (as opposed to our high up camera for game film). And I think one of those guys does rent himself out for teams to make hype film.

I think there’s a market for sports photographers for sure and if you’re good parents love to have pics of their kids. The other thing that’s always in need is someone to come take individual and team photos.

[u/iamArchiexD]

My teammate is a amazing photographer and is currently Injured so he has been photographing out games

[u/Individual-Risk-5239]

I’m a photographer that “retired” from everything except my sons’ teams. When they played football, especially high school, there were too many (and frankly, most were just suburbanites that could afford equipment they set on full auto and that was that). For lacrosse, I’m the only mom for high school and college (college has a few media kids that snap the first half of games for graphics) and summer club there is sometimes one other but she is an aforementioned auto-queen. Lacrosse is more niche, and sports photography is a niche unto itself, so the pool is definitely smaller.

[u/No-Mention-5335]

At the town and club level there's usually a parent or two that will take pics of the game and then share with the families (I was one, I took thousands) in hs there's a student taking them for year book as well as the local paper. D1 we have a mom with field access as well as occasional pros who then offer them for sale to families. Honestly, it's the kids in club who want to play in college that really need video footage to make their high light reels to send to coaches that a lot of parents need. That's been my experience and I had two and I the last one just finished junior season yesterday so I'm almost at the end of this long road!