Summit Sports

Jean Fruth

From a small darkroom to the most iconic stadiums flooded with lights—Jean Fruth’s trajectory as one of baseball’s preeminent photographers has taken her on a round-the-horn tour of the sport’s most indelible landmarks.

First base was New York City, where as a student she fell in love with the alchemy of photography. Second base meant a move to Healdsburg, California, where her focus turned to portrait photography, both in-studio and on-location.  From there, Jean covered the Giants and A’s for the better part of a decade, before turning her attention to the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where she helped to build the museum’s profile and photo archive by contributing her work to the venerable institution over four seasons.

Today, Jean is a traveling photographer for La Vida Baseball, a digital media company that tells the story of Latino baseball across the United States and Latin America through original video, written and social content.

She is recognized by Sony as one of its 45 “Sony Artisans of Imagery,” worldwide.
Her book, Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin, the first in a series, was published in 2019 and served in part as an inspiration to co-found Grassroots Baseball, a non-profit organization. Grassroots Baseball’s mission is to promote and celebrate the amateur game around the globe, with a focus on growing interest and participation at the youngest levels.

Maxx Wolfson

Maxx has been one of the top editors at Getty Images for 13 years. As Managing Editor for Sport in North & South America he is onsite at the biggest sporting events all over the world. Maxx will be leading the Getty Images team at his 11th Super Bowl and then leading the editing team at his sixth Olympic games in February. He also works directly with staff and freelance photographers assigning events and hiring photographers to cover events in his region. Through his work with many sports leagues, Maxx possesses a deep institutional knowledge of the industry.

Dave Black

A Nikon Ambassador and one of the pioneers in the conversion to all-digital photography, Dave Black is best known for his sports photography including covering Olympic games for more than 20 years for Newsweek. Constantly reinventing himself, he’s currently pushing new frontiers in combining lightpainting and western imagery, photography well suited for a gallery wall.

Jessica Carroll

Jessica Carroll is the Senior Director of Major League Baseball’s photo department, overseeing all aspects of global photography for the league office. This includes directing photo operations at international and jewel events like the All-Star Game and World Series, coordinating photography with all 30 MLB Clubs, managing business partnerships, hiring photographers, maintaining the historic photo archive and developing league-wide photography policies and procedures. MLB Photos documents the National Pastime for millions of fans with the latest technologies and highest standards in the industry.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s photojournalism program in 2003, Jessica went on to work in the photography departments at the United States Golf Association and Golf Digest. She has been with MLB since 2008.

John McDonough

Based in southern California, John W. McDonough is one of the main contributors to Sports Illustrated. Before working at Sports Illustrated, John freelanced for SPORT Magazine and worked at the Los Angeles Times and Arizona Republic as a staff photographer.

Darren Carroll

Darren is an accomplished sports action and portrait photographer, having done editorial work for the likes of Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Golf Digest and the NBA for over 20 years and commercial campaigns for Dick’s Sporting Goods, ClubCorp, and Golf Galaxy, among others. He serves as a photography consultant to the PGA of America, and is also part of the photography team for both the U.S. Open Golf and U.S. Open Tennis championships.

Mark Reis

Mark is the former deputy director of photography of the Colorado Springs Gazette — and certainly one of the finest newspaper photographers working in the nation. Mark has now entered the world of freelance photography where he will undoubtedly be highly successful.

JC Carey

Joseph “JC” Carey is a lifetime image maker that like many photographers was terrified of lighting until he was gifted with a class in 2007. The class wasn’t very informative with too many of the “recipes” that people love to share rather than teach how to light, but it lit a fire that has never stopped burning. That gift changed everything. It transformed him from someone that barely took pictures of people and knew nothing about lighting into someone still trying to figure out how to light everything. 

The last 14 years have passed with him being blessed with a daughter, a career doing what he loves, multiple magazine covers, and with meeting amazing people and trying to create great images of them. The art of photography and taking pictures is his passion but the ability to make his vision a reality in a photograph is what truly drives him. 

JC has taught all over the US including being part of the Faculty at Summit Workshops. 

JC joined the FJ Westcott Company in 2020 as their Eastern Accounts Manager and also works as a professional photographer.  

Follow his Instagram at JCPhotoMedia

Steve Fine

Steve Fine was the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated from 1996 until 2013. Prior to that he was deputy photo editor serving under the legendary Heinz Kluetmeier. More recently he spent six years as picture and sports editor at Flipboard, a mobile news aggregator. Steve worked at The New York Times from 1983-92, first as sports picture editor and then as deputy photo editor under Kathy Ryan at the Sunday Magazine. Currently he is a digital news curator at Facebook.