As many of you may already know, this is the last year of the old Yankee Stadium. A new stadium is currently being erected across the street.

Recently, I went to see a Yankees-Red Sox’s game– even forking over more than $300 on StubHub.com for prime seat, since it is the last year. My husband and I had no idea of just how good the seats were until we arrived. We had Field Level seats just a few rows back between the Red Sox dugout and homeplate. We were in the field of vision of the players, if they would have just turned around.

I was in awe the whole time, not really caring who won (shhh), but just “wowed” by the experience. I mean we even had waiter service. That’s right. There was a menu and we could order lunch from it.

After I got over the initial shock that I was a stone’s throw away from Derek Jeter (i know, it’s cliche, but those uniforms look so nice in person), I looked around at the stadium. It was probably going to be the last time I saw the place afterall.

Call me naive but the photo industry practically “owns” the available ad space around the stadium walls and seating areas in the field and inside where the concessions are as well. Below the scoreboard: there was Sharp and Canon, on the field level was Sony, Fujifilm and Nokia; Mitsubishi popped up too. They were the main contenders…they weren’t all necessary referring to cameras directly–just the brand names were listed.

I felt proud that the industry has such mainstream appeal…but I wondered ‘why does Canon and the others go so well with baseball, like say baseball and beer, or baseball and Cracker Jacks’ (which I happened to be pigging out on incidently)?

Well, I looked at what I was doing at the game. It really enhanced my experience to capture this memory with my camera. I even took video of the entire 9th inning…Jeter slipped and fell at bat and I have it on video for all posterity. I shot the seats we were in, the players doing their warm-up swings on deck, the crowds pawing at each other to grab a foul ball, the field sweepers, the plastic covering when it began raining, the subway stop we walked out of. It all added extra fun to the experience.

Whether you make a living from photography or take photos as a hobby or to capture memories–Photography is important. It is a vital piece of American culture. As American as baseball. And the industry’s products that are compatible and/or support digital make photography even more satisfying.

I mean my husband has never asked me to take a picture of him anywhere. But he asked me to take lots of pictures of him at Yankee stadium that day–at the subway stop, by the field, in his seat, in the rain. We will soon show these to his 87-year-old father, who once took him there as a boy.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Alysha Sideman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.