Boston Red Sox Case Study

Photographing the Boston Red Sox at the iconic Fenway Park sounds like a dream job, right? While it certainly is, in addition to the immense pressure that pro sports team photographers are under to preserve the evolution of the team, the park, and the game in real time, today’s professional photographers also need to edit on the fly and upload hundreds of visual media assets to an easily accessible digital platform so iconic moments can be shared with fans instantly and replayed over and over.

“When you think about an organization like the Red Sox, we’re dealing with a 100-plus-year-old organization, so not only are the pictures going to serve us well today on social media and in our marketing materials for now, but we’re really providing a historical record of this team and this ballpark. These pictures 40-50 years down the road are going to serve as a great record of what was happening here, so we try not to be so nearsighted to just think about today, but we try to keep in mind that these are going to stand the test of time.”

— Billie Weiss, Manager of Photography (now Director Of Creative Services & Photography) at Boston Red Sox

How does the Red Sox’s Creative Services team manage?

Their approach to visual storytelling is as strategic as a coach’s playbook.

They use visual content to enhance both the in-person and digital fan experience, and PhotoShelter gives them instant access to a fully stocked content library that they can use to engage sports fans on game days and during the off-season.

Learn more about how this team of all-star champions optimizes their visual storytelling strategy each season, and how PhotoShelter helps them stay organized below.

Key Highlights

• Provide a fleet of Creative Services members with secure and seamless desktop and mobile access to an organized content library, leading to the development of an award-winning, first-to-market visual storytelling strategy on social media.
• Enable real-time creative collaboration across internal and external stakeholders and partners.
• Upgrade and optimize the media team’s real-time content production workflow essential with essential secure wireless technology.

The Challenge

• Find a highly-secure cloud storage solution to preserve over 100+ years of Boston Red Sox visual history.
• Find a quick and easy way to give internal and external stakeholders access to real-time and curated archival content.
• Be first-to-market with exclusive Red Sox content—become the go-to digital account fans turn to for updates and to engage.

How We Help

The Results

• Our digital asset management platform is a customizable, scalable, secure solution for enterprise organizations to create, collect and share content with internal and external partners and stakeholders.
• With over 22 of the 30 MLB teams on board, we’re constantly in conversation with our core client base to improve the platform based on their common creative marketing workflows.
• The Red Sox Creative Services team utilizes FTP uploading to wirelessly transmit images from their cameras directly into their PhotoShelter for Brands media libraries on the fly. They also use the FileFlow app and the PhotoShelter for Brands Uploader app to upload, access, and share images from their phones to their content libraries for team members, fans, and partners to seamlessly access.

Secure, Real-Time Reliability

Being reliable means being consistently trustworthy and since PhotoShelter for Brands was founded in 2015, we’ve never lost any client’s assets. In addition to providing unrivaled security for your organization’s assets, we provide key features like uploading through FTP which enables teams to upload and access content as it’s being created.

For professional sports organizations that want to own moments of iconic athletic performance before the media or fans can make any commotion, having a secure, FTP-compatible DAM is key.

Billie Weiss, Boston Red Sox’s Director Of Creative Services & Photography shared, “Back in 2013 we weren’t really transmitting live. We weren’t sending right off the camera, we weren’t tethering to ethernet. It’s a workflow that didn’t really exist back then. It’s crazy to say back then because it really wasn’t too long ago.”

“Now we’re transmitting pictures right out to our team, so within seconds of us winning the World Series, [2018] we had photos out to our social team and graphics team and they were out online really even before the celebration on the field was over.”

– Billie Weiss, Manager of Photography (now Director Of Creative Services & Photography) at Boston Red Sox

Powering Innovation

To go from having the most intimate level of access to working with remote control cameras from behind a glass room 100 feet in the air was quite a shock for Boston Red Sox photographers. In an effort to shift the perspective away from the empty ballpark seats during the early days of the pandemic, the team partnered with Nikon to try documenting the game more intimately with robotic cameras. Weatherproof cameras were hard-wired into the park’s infrastructure, so with remote camera access and a good wifi connection, the photographers can document action at the park from virtually anywhere (even their apartments!)

Plus, the FTP technology allows them to snap a photo and get instant access to it in their media library.

“There’s a lot of pressure to get stuff out quickly because our fans are hungry for content. They want the best content out there and they want it quickly,” Billie shares, “So with a click of a button we can send photos right into our PhotoShelter for Brands FTP and from there, our social media and graphics team are able to pull them to use on social and edit them for graphics in real-time. We can turn around images and have them up online in two to three minutes.”

— Billie Weiss, Manager of Photography (now Director Of Creative Services & Photography) at Boston Red Sox

Now, they continue to use the robotic cameras in unexpected ways; placing them in unusual places around Fenway Park to expand the perspective of the visual story they’re telling.

“Transitioning into 2021, our relationship with the robots again changed. We went back to viewing [them] as a compliment to our work and it allowed us to beef up the imagery we were able to create and angles we don’t usually have access to. So while we’re back to shooting in our usual positions, we’re able to have our camera in one hand and a Surface Pro in the other and essentially be in a thousand places at once! We’re really excited to see where the technology grows from here since it continues to be a very seamless part of our every day workflow and creative process.”

— Maddie Malhotra, Boston Red Sox Staff Photographer