Going into the project, and even when the project was first introduced, I knew off the bat who I was interested in documenting. Our athletic trainer at Redwood, Alex, is someone who personally inspired me to want to go into the sports medicine field. He’s an awesome athletic trainer and is amazing at what he does. My junior year, I was apart of our sports medicine class and got to be on the field and also be in his room at different points in the year so I already had an idea of what he did on a daily basis. My goal was to show the kind of work he does whether that be taping an athlete up, helping a newly injured athlete with rehab or spending hours on end at sporting events. Alex is a busy guy, so I knew scheduling would be a little challenging but luckily during my time documenting him, I spent a lot of time in his room because I was dealing with my own injuries at the time. As I was in the room, I was able to grab my pictures of him in action. My plan was to grab pictures that represented what he does as an athletic trainer. I got a shot of him taping up an athlete before practice, him at at our girls wrestling Division 1 tournament a couple weeks ago, showing him out during a game, or in this case a tournament. There are also times where Alex sometimes is the only high school trainer that is there at a sports event meaning that during those times, he is responsible to look at any athletes injured, even if they aren’t from Redwood so I planned to get a shot of that as well.

A shot I am most proud of is a picture I captured of him with both his current Athletic Training Assistant, Maria, and a student trainer that was there to help volunteer at the wrestling tournament as well. Why I am most proud of this picture is because it shows that although Alex can get pretty busy he still offers his help and knowledge to other people who are also interested in the sports medicine field. Alex works with Mrs. Wall’s sports medicine class and allows students taking the class to get more interaction within the field, offering training room hours, being on the sidelines for football games and other sporting events which is what I loved most about the class. Another cool thing he does, is he welcomes in other learning Athletic Trainers, like Maria, and offers up his space so they can continue to learn and develop in the field as well. As he does, he opens himself up to any questions any students have whether it’s about an injury, rehab questions, or the content currently being taught in class. This picture I took has all three of them together and he’s explaining something to them which I think just represents him as a person and the fact even in the busy times, he always finds the time to be someone that helps.

A shot that I wish I had gotten is a picture of Alex helping someone with their rehab workouts. As I was rehabbing on my own, a lot of other Redwood Athletes were coming in with injuries as well. I wish I got more interaction with that since that is what he normally does on days where there are no games and there are times where is packed with kids either doing rehab or doing recovery. A challenge I faced was getting my interview in. Like I’ve said previously, Alex has a pretty busy schedule with all the games he has to be at, and with the athletes that come into his room. During the last two weeks, it was playoff season for soccer which had him out of his room a lot. I was also busy the last two weeks with postseason in my own sport and would be gone towards the end of the week. Even when I was in his room, he was working with other athletes and I couldn’t catch him at a good moment to stop and pause for an interview. I unfortunately couldn’t get my interview in person but I reached out to him through text and got my interview done that way. What I’ve learned with this project that it’s harder than it seems to put yourself out there and go up to somebody asking to document them, even if you have a connection to that person. I liked that with this project I was able to overcome that and tell a story. Pictures that have a backstory to them have always been interesting to me and I found documentary photography very interesting as well because it tells a story without words and helps bring life to one picture which I think is important because if there is a story or meaning behind a picture, it becomes more impactful and people will feel something when looking at it.