Everywhere: Articles: Cooperstown Up Close

How do you photograph a familiar place in less than ideal conditions? Pick a theme.

1908 Boston Red Sox by Brandon Vogel

Curt Schilling's bloody sock resides elsewhere in the Hall. This one predates it by 96 years.

I was thrilled to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the third time.

I was not thrilled about my chances of taking some compelling shots of my own away from Cooperstown. After all, the first two trips had proven too much of a challenge for my photographic prowess.

It's dark. Everything's behind glass. You don't have much control over your angle. Put all those things together and I was convinced that every set of photographs from a place like the Hall had to look more or less the same.

Then I decided to focus on the uniforms. Here I could get close with a little bit of zoom. I could creatively crop shots the way I wanted and I was photographing one of my absurd obsessions...uniform design.

Sure I had to jack the ISO a bit and the pictures aren't perfect but I was able to take something away that was unmistakably mine.