Photographer Kellen Davis ’22 is most proud of a photo he took of Boston College’s (BC) men’s hockey team earlier this year. The score was tied 2-2 against Western Michigan with 52 seconds left on the clock. He recalls the nerves from the players, the fans, and himself. Then, a player scored, and Kellen took a photo of the players celebrating the game-winning goal. (Photo on page 23.)

“The players are embracing, and their limbs are going every which way, and I could feel the release of the stress,” said Kellen, who ran up to the office to get his photo ready to post on social media and missed the final goal of the game.

Now in his junior year at BC, Kellen is an intern for the BC Athletics Department and a social media intern for the BC football team. For his BC Athletics Department internship, he takes pregame photos, game photos, and press conference photos for various Boston College teams, including hockey and basketball. The game-winning BC hockey team celebration photo that he took was highlighted on the school’s Instagram and X accounts and its athletics website.

As a social media intern, he works with the full-time BC football creative team to produce content and learn from them. He photographs football practices on Wednesday mornings and Sunday nights, photographs Saturday games, and works on graphic design projects throughout the week. Recently, a video clip he filmed of the pregame tradition of team members touching the mascot eagle statue that sits outside the locker room before they take the field was featured on the CW Sports Network’s Instagram account and X feed.

Kellen relies on many of the skills he learned in his UPrep Yearbook classes and as a yearbook editor for the work he is doing now. In these classes and as an editor, he gained experience in sports and art photography and developed his artistic eye and a passion for graphic design. He recalls earning an honorable mention award from yearbook publisher Walsworth for a photo he took of students wearing masks while participating in a tug-of-war contest at UPrep Camp Day. The photograph, entered in the Life During the Pandemic category, was one of 78 award winners out of nearly 7,000 entries. “That was the moment I thought, ‘Wow, I’m kind of good at this thing,’” he said.

Kellen said the most important skill he learned as a yearbook editor was time management.

“A lot of the work I do for my internships is very chop-chop-chop. I’ll take photos at a game and, as soon as I get one that’s good, I’ll have to run off to edit it, offload it to my boss, and then it’ll go up on socials,” he said.

When he’s not in the middle of the action, he’s studying for his environmental studies degree. Whether Kellen decides to pursue a career in sports photography or sports communication or to apply these skills in the field of environmental science, he’s currently thankful for his time management expertise. His schedule means he can sleep in a few days a week. “Actually, I planned ahead for that when I created my schedule,” he said.

Kellen’s Rules for Sports Photography

I learned my first rule from Scott [Collins, UPrep Yearbook teacher]. For someone to connect with a photo, it all goes back to the eyes: The viewer needs to see a person’s face and eyes. I also break sporting events into three types of occurrences: common, kind of uncommon, and super rare. Someone kicking a ball is going to happen hundreds of times during a game. A kind of uncommon occurrence is someone shooting the ball to try to score, which makes for a more captivating photograph. But the super rare occurrences are the hardest to capture because they only happen one time, from someone scoring a goal or a goalie making an amazing save. These photographs are definitely the most captivating for an audience and they are also the most gratifying photos for me to capture.

Read more about stories about UPrep alumni in the current UPrep Magazine.