Why I photograph the scoreboard at every game

My camera is usually pointed at the field, but before kickoff I often find the scoreboard and make a frame. The display may show zeroes, a start time or a late lead. Recording it gives each game a fixed point, an object that will later hold the result while the players, weather and crowd around it have moved on.

The decision to photograph it is less about the digits than the act of keeping time. A game can live in memory through a tackle, a catch or a coach on the sideline, yet the scoreboard offers a calm factual anchor. It says how long remained and what the contest meant at that particular moment.

Those frames sit within a much larger archive of Queen’s Golden Gaels football, university athletics, bands and U SPORTS events. My photographs connect the people on the field with the seasons, volunteers, travelling supporters and Kingston settings around them. Seen in sequence, an isolated scoreboard becomes evidence of a community changing week by week.

For Australian viewers, the ritual has familiar echoes: checking an AFL or cricket score on a phone before catching a suburban train, seeing a packed crowd at the MCG or Sydney Football Stadium, then discussing the result over a beer. The visual language travels, while the match-day details are distinctly Canadian. That difference makes every scoreboard image useful as both record and local portrait.

A scoreboard is more than the score

Before kickoff, I ask what the scoreboard will remember after the stands empty. Its digits hold the score, period and remaining time, but they also catch the pale morning light, snow around the base or a row of bundled supporters behind the structure. The frame turns a practical fixture into a timestamp for the day.

Approach	What it records	What it leaves out	Best use
Scoreboard close-up	Score, clock and visible wear	Players, weather and crowd	Verifying the result and time
Scoreboard within the venue	Score, field, stands and light	Small facial details	Preserving the atmosphere
Scoreboard behind live action	The relationship between play and match state	Some digits may be obscured	Showing the human context

A close view is useful when the numbers must remain legible. A wider composition can show the scoreboard as part of the stadium, including weather, light and the shape of the crowd. When the board sits behind live action, the photograph gains human energy, although some digits disappear. I choose among these approaches according to what the moment needs to say.

That choice is why scoreboard pictures rarely work as a single formula. A crisp image records the result with little ambiguity. A frame filled by snow or spectators records the conditions in which the result was earned. Together, these images help me reconstruct a game without pretending that one camera position can explain everything that happened on the field.

The venue changes around fixed numbers

At Tindall Field, the scoreboard has a stable relationship with the stands, track and tree line, yet those surroundings alter constantly. Snow can whiten the lower frame, leaves can intrude into its edges, and floodlights can flatten the colours after dark. Keeping the board in the photograph records how a familiar venue changes with weather and time of day.

Australian stadiums offer their own comparisons. The MCG and SCG belong to a sharper, louder spectacle built around cricket and Australian rules football; suburban grounds in Melbourne or Sydney often sit among parked cars, local clubs and railway or tram routes. Queen’s contests feel smaller in scale, but the scoreboard carries the same civic weight beside university fields.

That smaller scale makes relationships easier to see. A student photographer can work within walking distance of campus, where the same scoreboard is encountered on match days, during orientation or while passing between lectures. A fixed object becomes part of a shared routine, and each photograph gains a layer of familiarity that a distant stadium image cannot supply.

Reading time, weather and pressure

Clocks carry emotion. When a home side protects a narrow lead, the remaining time feels heavier; after a penalty or a late score, the same digits read differently. A photographed display can reveal that tension without inventing it. The board preserves an objective marker beside the more interpretive images of gestures, faces and movement.

Rain or snow can pause play, compress the schedule and change how urgent every second appears. Showing the conditions beside the game clock gives later viewers information that a celebratory image alone would miss. It also explains why some scoreboards show an older time, a blank panel or an unexpected reset.

The habit fits an Australian rhythm built around live updates. A commuter checks the app at the station, a cricket fan waits through a rain delay, and a Saturday crowd debates the result in a pub. These small rituals echo what happens around Queen’s games in Kingston, where students, families and alumni gather for U SPORTS football under the same open sky.

The seasons leave different evidence

The light around a fixed scoreboard changes more dramatically than the structure itself. Spring can place green leaves against the frame; summer adds long shadows; autumn scatters colour across the ground; winter strips the view back to grey metal and snow. Each season gives the same object a different emotional weight.

That wider view also shaped my reflections on changing seasons, where the scoreboard becomes one fixed reference inside a much larger cycle of weather, work and campus life. Photographing both the digits and their surroundings makes time visible in two ways: the time left in a game and the much longer time through which a university community keeps returning.

For Australian readers, the seasonal reversal is immediate: Kingston’s autumn arrives while Melbourne enters spring, and Queen’s winter matches sit opposite Sydney’s summer cricket. Canberra can offer a hard frost at the same time of year. The same scoreboard therefore marks different clothing, vegetation and daylight in each country, making comparative albums unexpectedly precise.

Keeping a record people can use

My connection with Queen’s University and Canadian university sport has taught me that context is as valuable as dramatic timing. A caption should identify the programme, season and venue when known; a scoreboard image can then answer questions that a cropped action shot leaves open. Searchable archives also let visitors trace a rivalry, a coach’s season or the return of a long-serving volunteer across many match days.

Australian readers should keep copyright in mind when reusing any photograph. A score displayed at a game is factual information, while the particular image may be protected as creative work under Australia’s Copyright Act 1968. The archive is generally available for personal, non-commercial use with attribution; a promotional campaign, commercial print or resale requires separate clearance.

This matters because sports pictures circulate through a busy local market. In Australia, club newsletters, school communities, fan accounts and sponsorship decks often share images faster than formal archives can track them. Clear credit to Jeff Chan and Golden Gaels Photos preserves the photographer’s connection to the work, while the original gallery tells viewers where the wider story lives.

Keep the clock running

The archive is ready to be explored. Browse by season, team, competition or venue, and use the search function to follow a particular player, band, coach or athletics event. The changing-season feature offers a useful route into the wider collection, showing how individual match images gain meaning when placed beside the people and places around them.

When you download or share a photograph for personal use, include the credit Golden Gaels Photos and photographer Jeff Chan. Keep the original gallery context in mind, and do not assume that a visible image carries commercial permission. For editorial, promotional or licensing enquiries, seek permission from Jeff Chan before publishing the work.

Keep exploring, share a favourite frame and send someone back to the collection with it. Each new photograph extends the clock: it holds the result, the season and the people who were there. That is how a scoreboard becomes part of a living sports archive.