Night Owl Cards

It's been mentioned a time or two that the photography on 1970s baseball cards was a bit primitive by today's standards. One of the examples that is cited often is the slanted backgrounds in the photographs. Here, in this 1974 Topps card, the most impressive thing about Tony Oliva is not that he is an eight-time All-Star, but that he is some how remaining upright while the rest of the Oakland Coliseum slides into the Pacific. There are so many instances of these slanted backgrounds that it's considered almost a standard look for 1970s baseball cards. While compiling my 1975 Topps blog, I'm constantly running into cards that feature tilted stands or fields or baseball equipment. I'm waiting for one of the players behind Jay Johnstone to start clinging for dear life to the batting cage. I'm no photography expert, but from what I've heard, the tilting appears when the photographer is a bit lazy in taking the photo. But that's as technical as I can...

With the arrival of Topps Series 2 and some of the other midseason card releases, there has been a re-examination of the photography in the sets. Several posts, including a couple today , have followed the theme that maybe Topps is trying a bit too hard this year. The cards are "too artsy." This topic makes me smile, because it is something that I deal with on a regular basis in my job. Every photographer is different and each photographer will shoot according to what they've learned, but also according to their personality. Some provide straightforward sports action shots. Some provide consistently fantastic stuff. Some stray toward the artsy stuff. Artsy is good sometimes, but in the sports world you're treading a fine line with that kind of shooting. Most sports followers want good, solid action photography, like the Hank Blalock card at the top of the post, which is a great shot. But "artsy" turns off a lot of folks. So sometimes we have to tell th...