Hat-Trick Part 1: The Dreams Web — Football Case Study

973/FCS

Hat-Trick Part 1: The Dreams

Visual Case Study by Elijah Agurs
Interview by Fay Harvey

February 2 2025

In May of 2025, Baltimore and NY-based photographer Elijah “EA” Agurs, debuted “HAT-TRICK,” an open-ended, three part visual case study and love letter to the game of football—the sport he first loved. A senior thesis for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Center of Art Design and Visual Culture, where he received his BFA in Visual Arts, the project centers three unique segments: THE DREAMS, THE ROOTS, AND THE THREADS.

EA began his journey through photography in high school after a chance encounter with a friend’s camera, where, after experimenting, he realized the craft was for him. While his thesis focuses on football, EA’s photographic journey was ignited by the track & field space. Shortly after falling in love with photography, EA was selected for a young creatives workshop alongside 9 other photographers to journey across the US to the Pacific Northwest and photograph the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore. This moment led him down a path of capturing prestigious sporting moments, such as multiple World Athletics Championships and World Major Marathons. In 2024, he rekindled his admiration for football and began dedicating his own personal work to showcasing the ins and outs of the sport on the US’ East Coast. Within his practice, EA captures the raw emotion and visceral energy of human performance, creating images that speak to the universal language of movement, dedication, and triumph.

We sat down with EA to uncover the process of creating THE DREAMS, a series of images that explores competition at the highest level, from the electricity within North American stadiums to the small details of athletes pushing themselves to the max while displaying their own unique flairs.

Beginning the Thesis

Fay Harvey
When did you know that your thesis would revolve around sport, and did you always know you wanted to create a series?

EA
I knew I wanted to hit these different aspects of football and what it means to be a part of the sport.

I wanted to exercise my creative skills across different types of work. I kind of just got my reps in in different mediums. That's why one part is a little more documentary focused, another is more where I have control working on a set, and then another one is focused more on the time and motion picture aspect of photography. So that was kind of the idea behind taking doing it in three different parts. I wanted to explore it across different forms of photography, and hit different styles and different pillars of football.

Growing up, football was the sport I played the most.

I've always loved this sport, especially since its the biggest sport in the world. All the passion that's behind it, I feel like there's nothing else like it on that scale. It’s always intrigued me, especially with it not being as popular here, it's always been something that's been super interesting to me. It was like returning to that childhood self.

Also football was kind of what I found myself consumed with the whole previous year. So I was like, “Okay, let me extend this and actually kind of formalize this into a project.”

The Dreams

Fay Harvey
In this first part of this project, you’re on a national scale of football photographing huge NWSL sporting moments and everything that comes with it. What were your inspirations for this part where you merged your creative side with your sports side?

EA
First and foremost, my biggest inspiration was my background in track & field. That influenced my work a lot more, and I noticed myself photographing differently than the photographers I was sitting next to, and having these conversations of when to shoot horizontal versus when to shoot vertical, and things like that.

One of the big things is, I'm not sure if I included as much in in this project specifically, but the movement of the ball, the net and the players is so different than track and field where you're just running in a circle, so that was one of the biggest things that caught my eye and made its way into my work. In track and field, I'm used to seeing the movement of the legs turning, and that was something that's always intrigued me. Translating that into soccer, or even when they go for a slide tackle, you know, those things.

Then also work of other photographers in the sport that I have a lot of respect for.

Football Case Study, Club Eleven, I just love everything that comes out of those publications. I went through and I was looking through a lot of different publications, but I was like, this is the space that just seems right, that hits and that focuses on that North American football, but photographs with a real appreciation for photography. Caring about it as an art form is what was really important to me.

Fay Harvey
You have quite a mix of subjects in this first part: men’s football, women's football, then you have a fan shot here and there. How important was it for you to get this kind of variety of photographs?

EA
I always felt like it was super important. The game of football is a place where everyone can congregate. It welcomes everyone in their own right. When you look at the sport, you don't just see it being exclusive for one type of person no matter what anyone says or what anyone tries to make it be. If you love the sport, you love the sport, and it's beautiful to see anyone participate. Everyone plays their part, and it wouldn’t be the sport without that.

Fay Harvey
The way you set this up is like a collage, everything fits with one another to tell one big story of everyone working together to champion the sport, which I think is so important. I know you mentioned the theme of North American Soccer, but we also have some La Liga photographs as well. Can you tell me about blending those together, and how you went about including these images?

EA
Firstly, I mostly do this for the passion, the love of it, and so it's a huge task to go out and photograph soccer as it is in Europe. When you hear about all these [international] clubs coming to the East Coast, you're like, “Oh, what does that mean for fans of football on the East Coast?” It doesn't matter if Real Madrid is playing their star players or their C roster, the fans are gonna show out. That’s what was super interesting to me is how you can bring these Spanish clubs to New York, New Jersey and it still bring waves of fans. I also just thought it was super interesting photographing foreign football on American turf, you know, especially with that being important leading up to the FIFA Club World Cup last year and the World Cup this year.

The Details

Fay Harvey
How about the image curation for this project? I'm sure you have so many more that you didn't include on this front page, so walk me through what it was like to select and place one near another and so on.

EA
That part of the project was most prevalent in this first part, The Dreams, because it encompasses me shooting the sport for about a year. It wasn't extremely expansive since it was a passion project and kind of what I shot on the side, I feel like it'd be a lot more intense if shooting football was my main 24/7 hobby. But sequencing was super important when it came to the print aspect of it and when it went into exhibition, laying them out and seeing the sizing of the prints as well. Seeing how I was going to order them was super important, and I put in a lot of consideration in when it came to creating the installation instructions.

What I really focused on was making sure I had a key image that was big and center that makes you really feel like, “Oh, this is something powerful,” and draws your attention, as well as including the supplementary images that were smaller, like the boots that were hung up on the net, or if it was a shot with motion blur, that technique kind of helped bring out the smaller aspects while focusing around this key imagery that conveyed a lot more emotion—that was curating it down to what was actually going to be put in print, there are a few more images that are included in the digital version.

When it came to cutting down to those images, I think it really was just what images speak to me most, as well as still hitting the aspects of including women's football, men's football, the fan experience, all of those things were still super important to me, so I wanted to keep a healthy balance, but I also wanted to pull the images that just work the strongest in creating this feeling of passion whether that's in the form of concentration, celebration or exerting your body at a high level.

Fay Harvey
There was one image I was super curious about that almost looks like you took the photo off of a screen. It's of a female player running for the ball. Could you tell me more about that one? I'm so fascinated by it.

EA
I feel like there was this whole wave that’s still kind of going where you're super far from the action so you just photograph the screen because the screen projects everything huge. So it's like, “Oh, wait, if I can't photograph that on field because I don't have a 300 or 400 lens, let me just look up and photograph the screen that's right next to me, right?” So, I explored that a little bit, and I would say it was super intriguing to me.

Fay Harvey
It looks almost like CCTV, or surveillance, you know, like the way you shot it. I think it's super cool.

EA
I think why I really leaned towards it was because of the texture that you can get from it.

I've also just wanted to lean more towards—that’s also something that I'm working on—is taking handicams, and instead of interpreting it as motion like a video, just taking a still from it and seeing what I can produce from that still. I was doing a lot of that on the music tour [I was recently shooting on], and the texture that you can get out of it, because it looks very low quality, is really interesting.

At this time, when I was shooting and trying to make that image, I was thinking a lot about, “What if I could downsize the image and basically make it less pixels than it is?” But it's kind of hard to do when you're shooting something on a camera that has 50 megapixels. So it's like, “How can I make a 50 megapixel image look like three megapixels?” And a part of that is shooting through a screen and giving it more texture or less or more abstractness. And I was like, “Okay, sure, let's explore this a little bit, go down this route.” So that's why I lean towards shooting the on the video board, but I think it's definitely more of a popular thing in running than it is football.

That portion of creating the final product when you're shooting in a stadium like that, when you're actually creating the photographs, that's only a small part of the end product.

A lot of my work comes from re-reviewing images and sitting with the images a little bit to see what smaller detail there might be so that I can bring out of the image. Like, “What is it about the image that really captures my attention, and how can I highlight that through the composition?”

I feel like cropping is so integral to my work, and it's such an important tool that I use. You'll see that through my raws, but even through the end product, it's like, “What details within the images speak to me, and how can I highlight around that?” And I think that's best noted by the image of the the US Soccer shield image that’s in the project.

The shield is on Lindsey Heap’s kit, and I forget what she was doing in the context of the image, but she was on the ground. I had noticed the shield throughout the whole match and I knew I wanted to get a photograph of it especially with it being my first time shooting a US national team. I saw it within the motion of her moving her leg on the ground and it called to me. The image is actually rotated so that the shield is upright. It's also a little bit confusing as to what the image is when you first look at it and that's intentional because the crop is focused on the shield. That was something that I saw while I was in the editing process that I was like, “Yeah, this is it, this is the detail right here.” So I don't know, I kind of just keep an eye out for that a lot during the post process.

Fay Harvey
That’s a process I wasn't aware of until I was around photographers more and watched them edit. The way they crop, or see details in the photo that they knew they wanted to capture in the moment but knew they could get to it later in post is such an interesting detail.

EA
There's definitely some images where it's like, this has to be in color, or like this has to be in black and white. That was the image that I knew from the start that had to be in color.

Fay Harvey
Do you have a preference in black and white or color?

EA
I think it's just what speaks to the image mostly and the color palette that I'm going for. I think a big thing when photographing sports or anything documentary is that you're in charge of the color palette in the editing room mostly, and you try to be as much as possible when you're shooting, but it's really hard when you're shooting to control your color palette when you're shooting what's available and what's in the world around you.

That's another thing I've found super interesting about football fans and sporting fans in general. When you have really, really passionate fans, everyone will come in the team colors, and you don't often have to worry about the color palette being disrupted, because limiting your color palette is super important.

Fay Harvey
It's really marvelous and really does show how supportive the fans are with the team. They're not swaying, they're not showing up in another color, they’re going full out.

EA
That's what's so different between team sports and shooting track and field. In running, all the athletes can show up in different color kits, and the fans can be wearing whatever, maybe a shirt that supports an athlete that's their loved one. That’s what’s really captivating about shooting team sports for me that you don't get in running is this controlled color palette of the team.

In our next newsletter, we will once again be joined by EA to discuss THE THREADS, the second part of HAT-TRICK. If you’re interested in seeing Elijah’s work, check out his website and Instagram.

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