For me, watching baseball is an act of simple mindfulness. It consumes my attention, lightly but fully. I’m not thinking of statistics or how likely match ups will play out – I’m just watching. And I love that about it. I love the uncertainty and that the uncertainty lasts until the final out. I also love the arc of the season, the steady accumulation of wins and losses, the way young players blossom and older players fade, the sudden impact of injury and jarring swiftness of trades – of seeing OUR players in another team’s uniform. This photo project – which was accidental at the start, and morphed over the season – connected my day-to-day lived experiences in Sydney and elsewhere to that ebb and flow of wins and losses in an equally mindful way – of just going out after a win, walking, looking, discovering my image. Sure, it would have been more fun if the Nationals had a better season, but this project was a joy, it really was.

 

It started so well – a win on opening day and more wins in quick succession. On that first day of the season, back in March – I was on a bush walk in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. When I checked my phone at Govetts Leap and learned the Nats had won I celebrated with a selfie and posted it on Instagram.

As I walked on that afternoon, I amused myself with the idea of posting further photos whenever they won. Just whatever I was doing next, but something with red in it – and so the accidental project began.

At first, it was pretty easy and the photos were okay – I mean, I wasn’t really trying that hard to have good photos, just something red, once they’d won.

Pretty quickly I made rules – because that’s how I roll.

• Take the photo between the end of the win and the start of the next game – so no saving images, shoot today for today’s win
• Only shoot any image once. So if I saw something good and shot it, but ended up finding something better later in the day I couldn’t return and shoot that same thing again later in the project.  Once I got serious about trying to take good photos – around mid-season – it meant I went out on proper photo-walks and sometimes decided, say, the light wasn’t right for today so I won’t shoot that thing now but might come back to it later.

But in the beginning it was all still a bit random – what red thing could I shoot just after the Nationals had won. Oh, look, tomatoes!

Given the time difference between the places the Nationals play and Sydney, where I live, I was often at work at the end of games and would look for something handy. A Monday night game was being played Tuesday morning my time.

I started thinking of props but still wasn’t giving the quality of the photos too much thought. I did like the brickwork and shadow here, but I didn’t even manage to get my Cherry Ripe in focus.

Food was becoming a theme.

When they were scheduled to play the Rockies on a Saturday afternoon in April – I invited a few friends round to watch the game on delay Sunday afternoon. We had chilli cheese dogs (not quite as good as Ben’s Chilli Bowl’s) and chips with homemade guacamole and skipped over the ad breaks. But I failed to take a photo, grrr, so that evening when I made dinner, I was left with this.

The next day I wore red to work, so it was time for a selfie.

When they won again the following day, I thought I best do another selfie.

By now it was well into April and I had scheduled to take the week of Anzac Day off of work and go on a bicycle tour around the Goulburn region of New South Wales. My first day out riding the Nationals won.

Sadly, that was the only game they won the whole week I was away but I did get these new socks on the trip.

If you want to read about my bicycle ride and look at the accompanying photos – I wrote several blog posts about it, the first one can be found here.

The boys were doing it tough in late April and it was a long time between drinks, as they say. You’d think with the long gap I might have come up with something more interesting that raspberries on my muesli, but no.

Bear with me, eventually the photos get better. But for now, more food.

Selfies while wearing my Nats hat were almost the laziest photos of the whole project only topped by this one.

An empty chocolate bar wrapper on my desk is also pretty lazy but a little creative. Just a little.

Photographically, anyway, I felt the tide turning for win number 20.

Getting into late April and the weather the boys were playing in and the weather I was watching in really began to diverge as the United States headed towards summer and Sydney headed towards winter.

I realised I had some friends who were passively following the season through my posts and thought I’d offer a summary.

I quite liked this one – the long black shadow, the coffee.

 

This may have been the worst photo of the lot.

This might run a close second for worst photo, I think.

I attended an event in Canberra. The Nats won during morning speeches – I noticed this speaker, a member of Parliament, was wearing red.

At the beginning of June went for a weekend away with my friend Matthew to visit some friends of his; we all went for a ride together.

After their 35th win I went for a coffee and sat an watched people going past in the rain waiting for people in red.

 

 

On a wet chilly Sunday I went up to Manly for a pedicure and the Nats won while I was in the chair. The markets were on and these tulips brought a bit of spring into our autumn.

As far as I’m concerned this next photo is when I started trying harder to compose my shots. This woman in red passed me and I knew she’d be walking under the bird cages, so I followed, in hopes of something good.

 

After I took that photo I went back to my office where I was pulled into a meeting with my manager and the human resources manager and made redundant. Which, well, was probably a good thing in the grand scheme of things. Sure I’d have less income but I could watch Nationals games live (not just listen or keep an eye on them on GameDay) and put more effort into the photos.

This might be my favourite photo of the lot. I love the painterly vibe – this was at night and the streetlights cast the light which made this one a bit magical.

Being unemployed meant I could go to the art gallery in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week.

Being unemployed also meant I could just go out, camera in hand, after a win and walk around to see what interesting red things I could find.

By this point in the season, I felt like my eye had really tuned in to spotting good splashes of red that I could work with. I saw this shadow and curtain as I was riding my bicycle past this building in Redfern.

What followed was a long week of losing until they finally picked up number 61.

Before being made redundant I had booked a holiday to the States – to see friends and family, hit a couple of Nats games, and go for a long bicycle ride. The day before I flew out, the Nats won their 67th.

And, just like that, they won for me in person!

It had become a bit hard to post photos as they won as I was riding my bicycle towards Pittsburgh – but I was taking the photos as needed, to post when I could.

I didn’t have one more post. The Nats lost their last game of 2018 to finish with a 82-80 record and, for the first time since 2015 they didn’t proceed to the post-season.

As the fans of 29 of the 30 teams say at the end of every season – wait until next year.