At a glance, it looks like baseball, but a closer look — and a listen —reveals something decidedly different.
Umpire Darren “Sugar” McCanne draws two puffs from a cigar and barks, “Two hands down!” as the striker, Jason “Batman” Risnes, steps to the line next to home plate.Portraits of players in the Southern California Vintage Baseball League at Harich Field. photographed with an 8-by-10 camera on X-ray film.
As a thick cloud of dirt settles, it’s the Loggers 14, Prospectors 13. Game over. Noriega dusts himself off, then helps Hiraoka to his feet for a polite handshake.Seeking that connection to the past motivated me not just to photograph these hardened athletes, but to do so using a camera built when Theodore Roosevelt was president. Like the Loggers, Prospectors and Trolleymen — the team names are all vintage — I found the experience to be transformative. Surprisingly, so.
Umpire Darren “Sugar” McCanne logs the score between innings at the Southern California Vintage Baseball League semifinal game at Harich Field. Lake Arrowhead Loggers player Glenn “Glenergy” Cummins warms up before a game against the Perris Prospectors of the Southern California Vintage Baseball League at Harich Field.
In a way, so did I. The players let me shag a few balls in right field and I could appreciate the odd mechanics of using an old-style glove. I thought I had a fly ball lined up for a catch, but the ball ticked off the end of my fingers. You essentially had to get used to catching without having a glove at all.
The old process of manually focusing, setting the exposure, pushing the shutter button and winding the film forced me to use muscles that have lain dormant for years. The art of patience, anticipation and composition excited dormant brain synapses. In a nod to modernity, we use film, not glass plates, with the 8-by-10. Focused and ready, I set the shutter and drop in a cartridge loaded on two sides with Fuji hrt X-ray film, rated at 3 iso. I pull the dark slide, alert the subjects to hold real still and trip the shutter for a half-second exposure. Like baseball, hours of preparation culminate in a split second of action.