Senior Shae Griffith’s passion for sports photography began in 2022 when the track team made it to state. As an athlete in both the long jump and triple jump events who also competed on the football team, Griffith wanted to be involved in sports in a new way, and he decided to try and capture these significant moments for his team from behind the lense.

Griffith did not go into his first attempt at sports photography with high expectations, but he was motivated to continue this passion after receiving positive reactions from athletes, coaches, and parents. He began to realize that his work had the potential to become something even bigger.

“That [praise] kind of just provided a lot for me and kept me motivated. So when I picked it up coming into my sophomore year, I just saw the true impact I could really have,” Griffith said.

So he decided to continue his passion for photography, capturing moments of emotion, camaraderie, and athleticism at games, meets, and matches. After snapping plenty of photos, Griffith edits his photos with high-contrast style and “poppy colors.”

Although Griffith’s impact in the local photography community is well known, he was not the first in the DePaul Prep community to explore this passion.

“There was somebody before him who did sports media, but Shae has really taken it to the next level,” says Athletic Director Patrick Mahoney. Aside from Griffith, there are several other sports photographers in the DePaul Prep community.

Senior Nick Hathcoat has “seen many new people who have started taking sports pictures after Shae and it’s very cool to see Shae’s influence on DePaul’s photography.” As a member of the football team, Hathcoat and his teammates have been photographed by Griffith as well as other photographers in the community on many occasions.

Coach Gary Anish, a Kinetic Wellness Teacher at DePaul, has seen an uptick in the “bumping” sports photography community at DePaul Prep. “I’ve seen kids of every single grade, almost, you know, getting the camera and going out and at least giving it a try,” said Anish. “It’s cool, because you don’t need that much, you just need a camera and to build a following,” Anish says.

School publicity has also been impacted by the sports photography scene. “It’s a great service to DePaul, these pictures…we use them for social media, and we also use them a lot for our senior day photos for families,” said Mahoney.

Though these student photographers are not paid, Mahoney describes it as a “win-win situation,” where DePaul Prep can utilize the photos for the athletics website or team social media accounts, and the photographers get tagged in these posts to help build their brand and get their names out online as artists.

Additionally, Anish believes that widespread sharing of sports photos on social media platforms may not only benefit the photographers and the school, but also the athletics scene as a whole. He believes it may help push others to show up in support of the school’s athletic community, especially in sports with smaller crowd turnouts, while helping boost the esteem of the athletes on these teams. “Everybody likes to have a cool picture taken of them, it’s a confidence builder, it’s a good thing,” Anish said.

But the sports photography scene does not only involve snapping pictures, it is also about the community that has been built around a common passion. “I’ve just been able to be so fortunate to be in such a good network between other [photographers] in the city,” says Griffith. He credits photography for helping him build relationships and bonds within the photography community, both inside and outside of school. Griffith also takes pictures outside of DePaul Prep, through invites from students from other schools asking him to shoot at their events. He has captured shots for teams at schools such as Lane Tech College Prep and the University of Illinois Chicago.

Griffith largely credits his social media with the recognition his work has gotten, inside and outside of the DePaul Prep community. “I’ve seen photos taken by Shae Shoots, for example, on much larger platforms on Instagram, like @slocheofficial, things like that, who have thousands of followers,” says Anish. Instagram was a key tool in helping Griffith build his platform and local reputation as a sports photographer. Since the Shae Shoots account was created on Instagram in 2022, it now has over 1,000 followers.

Looking to the future, Griffith hopes to continue his passion for sports photography. He wants to study photography in college, with his biggest dream being to work for either the World Cup or the Olympics as a photographer. Griffith wholeheartedly believes that his work in the sports photography community has transformed his life. “I don’t think I’d be the same person, genuinely,” Griffith said. He believes his involvement in both the arts and athletic community has shifted others’ perception of him. “Without it, I’d probably just be another football kid.”