New York does not have one place where the games happen. It has hundreds. Soccer pitches on Randall's Island, a basketball court in Harlem that made Kevin Durant score 66 in one night, ice rinks under the Manhattan skyline, and a 400-meter track that has hosted a world record. This is the map of where to actually point a camera.
Soccer: Randall's Island
Randall's Island is the soccer capital of the city, with more than 60 athletic fields, both synthetic and natural grass, packed onto one island between Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. The centerpiece is the FIFA-certified Kentucky bluegrass pitch inside Icahn Stadium, used by NYCFC II and Gotham FC, but the real volume for a working photographer is the dozens of surrounding turf fields that run youth leagues, adult rec leagues and club training on a near-constant rotation. One island, one subway or bus ride, and more matches in a single Saturday than you could shoot in a month anywhere else in the city.
Basketball: Rucker Park and the Cage
Two courts, two very different energies. Rucker Park sits at 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, founded by playground director Holcombe Rucker in 1950 and the site of Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving and a 66-point Kevin Durant performance. Summer tournament season, the Entertainers Basketball Classic, is when the stands fill and the runs get serious.
Downtown, West 4th Street Courts in Greenwich Village, known as the Cage, sit right above the subway station and run a summer league that reportedly draws over 100,000 spectators a season. The court is undersized by regulation standards, which makes for tighter, more physical, more photogenic basketball at close range.
Ice rinks: Wollman and LeFrak Center
Central Park's Wollman Rink sits in the southern part of the park and runs late October through early April, with the Manhattan skyline rising directly behind the ice, which is as good a backdrop as this city offers for a winter sports shoot. Brooklyn's answer is the LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, near the Parkside and Ocean Avenue entrance, running the same winter season with public skate sessions, learn-to-skate programs and youth hockey.
Track and field: Icahn Stadium
Also on Randall's Island, Icahn Stadium holds 5,000 spectators around a World Athletics Class 1 certified 400-meter track, the same surface where Usain Bolt set a world record in 2008. It hosts the annual Adidas Grand Prix Diamond League meet, along with high school and college championships throughout the year, and the Randall's Island Park Alliance runs youth track programs there for thousands of NYC public school students. If you want a frame that looks like professional broadcast track and field, this is the one venue in the city that actually is.
The public courts and tracks that run every week
Beyond the marquee venues, the boroughs are full of public tennis courts, tracks and fields that fill up on a predictable weekly schedule rather than a single big event. We have covered two of them in depth already: the best courts to photograph tennis players, from the clay at Central Park Tennis Center to the Hudson-side courts in Riverside Park, and the best spots to photograph runners, including the McCarren Park and Astoria Park public tracks where local clubs run intervals every week.
Race days worth building around
Beyond the standing venues, New York's race calendar is its own category of opportunity, from the Brooklyn Half to the NYC Marathon to NYRR's near-weekly races in Central Park. The full breakdown of which races are worth shooting for sale, and why, is here: Best NYC races to shoot for photographers looking to sell race photos.
Getting paid for a game nobody assigned you to shoot
The advantage of all of these venues is the same one: nobody has to book you. A soccer field on Randall's Island, a run at the Cage, a Saturday skate session at Wollman, they are happening whether you show up with a camera or not. The only real problem is what happens after you shoot it, since a stranger who just played their pickup game has no idea how to find you afterward.
Upload the session to Surf Snaps and it becomes a shoppable, watermarked gallery that players can search for by sport, location and date, so someone who played a Saturday afternoon run at Rucker Park can find themselves without ever knowing your name. You keep 90 percent of every sale, paid monthly by bank transfer, and you keep the copyright to every file you shoot. The full mechanics are on the how it works page, and the fee details are on the FAQ.
One small step
Pick one venue from this list that you have never shot before, in a borough you do not normally work in, and go once this week. Create a free account and put the set up the same day. New York has more games happening right now than any single photographer can cover, which is exactly the opportunity.
