Matt Hawthorne Brings His A-Game to the NFL
As a sports fan Matt Hawthorne’s been lucky enough to become a photographer, a job at the intersection of his interests and his talents.
His work is replete with athletes of all stripes running, swimming and pedaling through various physical pursuits. Matt’s found his share of commercial success with his signature fashion and portraiture work, but recent spreads in Men’s Fitness and ESPN magazines as well as his trips to Florida to shoot a Gatorade campaign, and recently Chicago for a LifeTime Fitness shoot, many of his website’s “On Set Videos” all impressively showcase the photographer’s eye for athletics.
So you can imagine the Dallas-based artist’s excitement when a recent Forbes magazine assignment led—albeit a bit circuitously—to Cowboys Stadium and a sideline pass for a game against the team’s archrival New York Giants.
“I shot [Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones for Forbes,” Matt recalls. “He really loved all the shots, so he hired me to shoot his daughter, Charlotte Anderson, for press and publicity stuff.”
Between the “Jerry shoot” and the Anderson assignment (she’s also involved with Cowboys franchise management), Matt started making connections among the team’s management and was soon able to arrange a sideline pass for the big game. The idea was to pad his personal portfolio, and Matt had some clear thoughts on how he wanted to do it: by capturing “details from moments that weren’t the focus.”
“I told them I wanted to shoot the game from a little different viewpoint, obviously getting action but also emotions from the players,” he says. “I definitely didn’t want to leave with only action shots.”
Matt closely watched the interaction of players and fans, noticed how intimidating the armored athletes could be up close, and tried hard to “capture the frustration and celebration between the players.” The veteran of the cheap seats completely enjoyed the “cool experience and huge challenge” of an NFL sideline … and he “only almost got tackled by an out-of-bounds pass once!”
Click here to see more of Matt’s football fantasy (and the rest of his awesome work).