Cool Jobs: Meet Candice Ward, Sports Photographer

Photographer Candice Ward’s history is in newspapers, but she turned her aim to athletics in 2013 when she commenced working with community women’s tackle soccer workforce, the Calgary Rage. Given that then, she has been the team photographer for the Calgary Hitmen, Calgary Roughnecks and the Calgary Stampeders, and has a shopper checklist that involves the Calgary Flames, Hockey Canada and other organizations.

“I normally performed athletics as a child, so I’ve often been ready to comprehend it,” describes Ward. “The emotion you get when you photograph sporting activities, to seize that, it is practically like you’re playing. You can in no way go back and repeat that minute all over again.”

Many teams have pre-match rituals and Ward likes supplying enthusiasts perception into what match-day lifetime looks like further than what is witnessed from the stands and screens. She utilizes her awareness of the sport and the workforce to determine out where by the significant performs will transpire in buy to get the very best possible photographs. When shooting hockey, for illustration, “I study the physique language of the goalie and the defending players in front of the internet to know in which the puck [is coming] from: whatever way they are searching is wherever the shot [comes] from,” she states.

Sports activities images is a aggressive area. There are fewer occupation opportunities out there these days, and, when photographers take care of to land these positions, they commonly don’t depart them. Together with a disproportionately minimal selection of women, the area also has a disproportionately small variety of Indigenous photographers Ward occurs to fall into both of those classes. “I don’t know any other Indigenous female photographers taking pictures high-degree sporting activities apart from myself, and that, to me, suggests that if there are females out there who want to do it, they have to have to see on their own in that function,” she suggests.

“Showing youth, females, anyone in my community that there are destinations for them in these experienced sporting activities corporations is vital.”

Ward’s favourite element of the task is obtaining to enjoy the development and improvement of many gamers through their occupations, but also having to seize all those moments. “You’re documenting heritage. You’re documenting player background, you are documenting crew historical past, and it is definitely awesome to know that you are a part of it.”