Hello There...

Welcome to my rebrand.

Well…where do I begin?

For starters, let me first say that if you’re here and reading this, thank you. I don’t really know what to expect with this new direction I’m going, but one thing I do know for certain…it had to happen.

And now is the time.

For the last 19 years, I’ve been covering Michigan Football. Not in a traditional sense – I was never a typical reporter or writer. I was a blogger. You know, one of the loner dudes posting to message boards from their mom’s basement? Well, I was never that guy, but I was part of this new voice of sports media. It was fun, I enjoyed it a lot. It wasn’t a job. It was a passion that just happened to spill over into “side hustle” territory pretty quickly.

Covering Michigan Football was something I chose to do on my own. I was never going to get a job doing it – no one would hire me anyway. So I started small, with my free blogger website and zero readers. Then social media started to take over and before I knew it, I was sitting in the old Michigan Stadium pressbox in 2009 covering the Delaware State game. It was surreal. Soon after that, I got a season credential. And then another one. I started selling ad space. Revenue started to come in. I hired a recruiting writer. I hired a photographer. My little blog was growing.

And I had no idea what I was doing.

It was starting to become something I didn’t want. I didn’t want to run a business…I wanted to write about Michigan Football. I wanted to attend games and experience things up close. I wanted to go to away games and I really, really wanted to cover the Rose Bowl.

So I chose to go smaller. I took down the ads from my site. I stopped covering recruiting and off-season content essentially disappeared. I had a real life to live with a family and a career that I cared a lot about.

The blog had to take a back seat.

And so it did for a lot of years. I would post to the blog after games, and that would be about it. I created STAT-O, a game preview infographic which I really enjoyed making. But most importantly, I began to work with some incredibly talented photographers. Thankfully, I was able, for the most part, to have a photographer at almost any home and road game that I would apply for.

I had a bit of formal training in photography. I took a few classes in college, shot for the yearbook briefly, and even did a summer internship with a commercial photography studio back when film was a still a thing. So when I would see some of the incredible images captured by the photographers I would hire – people like James Coller, Paul Sherman, Patrick Barron, Tyler Carlton and Zoey Holmstrom – I would be so impressed. But also very inspired.

So in 2023 I finally decided to make the move from the pressbox to the sidelines. Something I probably should’ve done a lot sooner. But in the first game, September 2nd versus East Carolina, when JJ McCarthy stepped out of that team bus with the “Free Harbaugh” shirt on, I knew that was where I was meant to be.

Let me tell you something about football photography…it’s hard. There’s a shit-ton of things going on all at once. And knowing where to point your lens is only half of the equation. You have to know football. You have to know where the play is going, what the proper framing will be, how to get the right person in focus and keep them in focus while people (especially refs) are constantly flying in and out of the frame…and sometimes right towards you. You have two, sometimes three cameras with big heavy lenses and you need to decide which one will be the right one for what’s about to happen. And this happens every 45 seconds for 3 and a half hours.

And it’s fucking awesome!

I absolutely love it. I love it way more than I ever loved just writing about Michigan Football. Sports photography is special. Moments of celebration or anguish, or sometimes just a great play you just happened to be in the right place at the right time for. Every photographer has a mental collection of those shots, the special images captured that make it all worthwhile.

It’s like a great shot in golf…the one that keep you coming back.

This is what inspired me to launch MGoPhoto. And no, we’re not affiliated with any of the other MGo’s out there. We’re on our own here.

My old blog had run it’s course. And much like new direction of Michigan Football under head coach Kyle Whittingham…it’s time for a fresh start. MGoPhoto.com will be where all of our photo galleries will be featured. We’ll also maintain our Flickr page so anyone can browse and download any image we post. This substack will be where me and other photographers (hopefully) will have the opportunity to connect with you. Again, I don’t know exactly how this will evolve, but we have time to figure that out.

For now, this is just me saying…hello. Welcome to my rebrand. Thank you for following me here.

-Brad

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