The 2022 social media campaign “Photog Friday” from the LSU baseball social media was huge in the world of sports photography, but it has disappeared from the social media pages in recent years.
Every Friday during August of 2022, the LSU baseball social media page would post a series of photos highlighting their photographers.
“I think it was really cool to see them dedicate whole posts to each photographer,” former student photographer Sierra Beaulieu said. “We are used to getting our photos posted all over their social media every game, but our names are never attached, which is totally okay, but seeing them dedicate a whole post and put a name to who took the photos was really cool.”
LSU’s Assistant Director of Media and Branding Ashleigh Maerke said that it was their play on the NCAA Photo of the Week, and even though everyone on media was students at the time, they had enough autonomy to be able to post their ideas.
The lack of Photog Friday content in 2023 and 2024 is making everyone wonder what happened to the specific appreciation posts for the photographers.
Maerke said it was never meant to be permanent. It was mostly filler content for the LSU baseball social media pages.
“The point of our social media is to post about the sports, but it was a nice way to kind of give them credit, and, you know, help them out and fill space on our timeline,” Maerke said.
A lot of the photographers on staff were well known in the photography world, and Maerke said the campaign might not have been a big deal to the photographers.
While Beaulieu’s work wasn’t affected by the campaign, she liked being recognized by the official social media pages, she said.
“I don’t think it really impacted my future work, but I do think it was cool that more people started following me and supporting the photos that I posted regardless if it was baseball, any other sport, or even my freelance work,” Beaulieu said.
Winning the 2023 College World Series had some impact on the future of Photog Friday as a future social media campaign, Maerke said.
“Well, we won the national championship after that,” Maerke said. “So, you know, we had a lot of content going out, and we didn’t really have to fill space with it.”
While it was nothing huge, Beaulieu said looking at her favorite picture from her feature brings her joy. Beaulieu’s favorite picture from her installment of Photog Friday was a picture of pitcher Blake Money celebrating after a strikeout.
“When I look back at that photo, I am excited,” Beaulieu said, “I think it’s cool to think that I not only captured this for the LSU baseball account, but also for the guys to have the high emotion of playing for LSU baseball.”
Despite this, Maerke said that Photog Friday might not be back anytime soon. The campaign will probably just become lost in the depths of LSU baseball social media.
“A lot of times, the photos you see are selected from our photographers,” Maerke said. “We’ll make a project, they’ll give us their best photos. We post those. So even though we’re not tagging them and saying these are Sierra’s best photos, they are.”
