My Cards - 2012 edition

Most of the time, the cards I display on this site are "custom" digital versions of something I have created. Recently I got an updated list of actual in production baseball cards utilizing pictures I have taken.

Here are the latest additions to "my collection" along with my original image.

My cards: 2012 Gerrit Cole

What a nice way to start a long holiday weekend! A baseball photography colleague alerted me to this Cardboard Connection post from yesterday. The Gerrit Cole autograph card they are previewing is one of my images.

The actual picture was taken during one of the early games at the 2010 College World Series in Omaha. UCLA went all the way to the finals, but lost to South Carolina. I am very impressed with the quality of the photoshop airbrushing by the artists at Topps. Quite an improvement over what we have grown up with.

My cards: 2010 Justin Smoak

I took this photo in 2009 during one of the Oklahoma City Red Hawks visits to the Dell Diamond in Round Rock, Texas. Last summer, Smoak was the key prospect send to Seattle from the Rangers for Cliff Lee.

My cards: 2009 Brandon Belt

Here is another "real" baseball card with a photo that I made. He was only a fifth round pick in 2009, but Brandon Belt is getting a lot of buzz lately in the Giants system. He was featured last week in the Sports Illustrated article about impact rookies. He led the minor leagues last season in OPS (1.075) and when he gets the promotion to the majors, he is expected to make a bid for the NL Rookie of the Year.

My cards: 2010 Chance Ruffin

As a kid I was an avid baseball card collector, I still have most of my card collection now 30-40 years later. In case you don't already know, I am also a serious baseball photographer. I shoot a lot of college and minor league games during the summer. Recently (the last couple of years) my images have been picked up by the baseball card companies. I still get a kick in seeing an image I created show up on a 2.5 x 3.5 piece of cardboard with a chance of it being in someone's attic or basement decades from now.

To the left is an image I took and to the right is a card of a Detroit Tigers draft pick named Chance Ruffin (yes, he is Bruce Ruffin's son). The original image I took had him in his Texas Longhorns uniform. Topps air-brushed a Tigers uniform on him.