There are challenges…and then there’s this project. For this particular challenge, we were shooting portraits of Hall of Fame baseball coach Joe Torre. So we HAD to shoot in a professional baseball stadium…but we didn’t have access to a professional baseball stadium because Joe was on the west coast of Florida for Spring Training. Full disclosure: I’m a lifelong Yankees fan, which made the job particularly important. I’d absolutely kick myself forever if I didn’t nail it!
Since the parks in the area were, let’s just say, a lot less grand then your typical MLB cathedral, we had to get creative. Countless advertisements had to be removed in post. We had to hang a 20×20 foot fake roof. We even had to sweet-talk a park handler into removing a banner that went across the entire back of the dugout.
But the biggest problem was getting the stadium to allow us to shoot while the teams were training there. Everyone said no. Eventually, I had to call out the big gun, Joe himself. His agent made the request. And BOOM! “When would you like to shoot here, Mr. Grecco?”
