11/25/2025
COULD THE 49ers INSPIRE ART & TURN MY DREAM INTO REALITY?
MY name is Kacie Crisp, and I’m a photographer just now in retirement reclaiming my life-long dream of being an artist. I loved cameras from the first Brownie I used at age 5, progressing through cool 60’s Instamatics with their square photos to a Pentax with removable lens I used in high school. Sadly, I never considered a career in photography because I was afraid it was so competitive I would never make it.
When the events of 2020 wiped out my business which involved travelling the world to teach healing to others, I decided to go for it and do my best to create a portfolio and photography business.
It has not been easy for this dinosaur who learned typing in high school on a manual typewriter to master the technology required. It seems every week there is a new program I am required to learn, and some of them (that’s you, Photoshop!) would take a lifetime to master on their own.
An assignment from one of my coaches was “take photographs of stadiums!” This has been quite a challenge for me, since the last football game I attended was in high school. The stadium of the San Francisco 49ers is two counties and 43 miles away from San Francisco and the North Bay which is my home turf. Driving the maze of freeways that connect Silicon Valley towns arranged in no discernible order into totally unfamiliar turf for a stadium I’d never seen was a stomach-churning venture into the unknown. I arranged my entire day of travel to allow myself to be there in plenty of time for golden hour, the time before sunset when the light is best.
I arrived with hours to spare, driving randomly through ginormous empty parking lots and past locked gate after locked gate. I found a spot at the top of a deserted parking garage—but the view from there was not inspiring in any way. Another viewpoint was already in the shade, as it faced away from the eventually-to-be-setting sun. I did my best to photograph these sites anyway, and kept driving.
The full blue sky finally faded. That was my moment. Desperately hoping the clouds would stay long enough for me to capture them, I pressed the shutter. My tripod stabilized the effect of my trembling hands. When I got home, I realized I had done it—captured a dramatic moment in time for this stadium. Even better, I had expanded my portfolio and my own skills, even better! Talk about a true win!
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