Hockey’s dominant storyline this season has been the expansion Vegas Golden Knights’ historic run to the Western Conference Finals. Documenting that ride has been official team photographer Jeff Bottari, who has endeavored to be unique and proactive in chronicling the Knights’ inaugural year.
“We get to capture history, the first season of the Vegas Golden Knights— it’s pretty, pretty trippy to think about,” Bottari explained in a video documenting his work, adding: “That’s the whole challenge, right? the challenge of capturing the essence of an inaugural season so that allows for some creativity, some new beginnings in terms of photography.”
Bottari has relied heavily on remote photography and embedded a Nikon D4 in the back of the goal. To aid the social media team’s ability to rapidly react, Bottari plugs an ethernet cable directly into his camera and uses a program called Photo Mechanic 5 to drop the images directly into a shared Photoshelter folder within moments of his camera’s shutter closing. The Golden Knights have been at the forefront in sharing content from this season, including the recent launch of their own Twitch channel.
Libris’ Kristin Twiford compiled this video discussing Bottari’s process, which has been shared exclusively with SportTechie.
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More insights into his process (and that of the Chicago Blackhawks’ Chase Agnello-Dean) can be found in a Libris-produced fan engagement webinar. (Libris is Photoshelter’s enterprise product, which other sporting organizations such as the Big 12 Conference have been using for several years.)