Today we’d like to introduce you to David Frerker.
Hi David, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As a freshman at San Diego State University, I was extremely passionate about sports. One of my friends and I came up with the idea to create sports fan groups for SDSU. It began with the now named “Official SDSU Basketball Fan Group.” The goal was to promote SDSU’s main sport and give fellow fans a place to talk/pass information. That information could be news about the team, injury reports on players, game threads, fan photos and so much more. As that group began to take off, we created the now named “Official SDSU Football Fan Group.” The group was used to pass along all of the same content, as stated above. However, I started writing blog posts within the football group.
Through a friend of a friend, I was introduced to a long time TV personality Rod Luck. Rod Luck would love what I was doing and asked me to become a weekly contributor on his ESPN San Diego Radio show that aired every Saturday. I would come on for a few minutes to discuss what was going on in the world of San Diego State Sports. I was even invited into the studio for a few shows. This would go on for about six months until Rod went off air due to a medical procedure.
Shortly after my stint as a contributor on Lucks radio show. I was approached by FanSided. FanSided is an all-inclusive sports lifestyle and entertainment network that consists of more than 300 websites (NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, Boxing Etc). They had a struggling San Diego State Website that they wanted me to take over. I became the lead writer & editor of Surf The Spear (SDSU Sports Blog). Under my tutelage, STS went from 100 views to 60,000 views in just six months. Due to differences in opinions between myself and FanSided. I decided to move on from FanSided and create my own all-inclusive sports blog.
San Diego Sports Domination was born in June of 2012. A few friends and I met in an empty classroom on the campus of San Diego State University. I wanted SDSU only as that is what I knew the best. Another friend wanted to cover just the San Diego Padres. Another friend wanted to just cover the San Diego Chargers. The San Diego Union-Tribune was just beginning to put in place the paywall forcing readers to pay money for content. Based on everyone’s opinions, we decided to create an all inclusive sports blog and keep it free.
SDSD, for short, was focused on writing articles and doing interviews with opposing team blogs. Then we received our first media credential in 2013 to cover the San Diego Flash Soccer team playing in the NPSL. The team was owned at the time by Clent Alexander. Alexander was on the forefront of soccer in San Diego. He knew how powerful a blog could be in helping get fans to games. Covering live sporting events became an addiction for us. We began to reach out to other semi-professional sports teams in the San Diego Area asking to help provide those teams with coverage. We have covered almost every aspect of semi-pro sports that San Diego has to offer (ABA, NPSL, Pac-West Football, WPSL and LDFL Football).
We built on our success of covering semi-pro sports in early 2015 when a PR Firm for USA Rugby reached out to us and asked us to cover the Eagles run into the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. I got to visit the Eagles training camp at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center and interview players to build my story. This opened the world of Team USA to us. Now on the Team USA Press List we got to cover events such as the Road To Rio San Diego pit stop, 2016 USA Olympic BMX Trials and Rugby Friendlies between USA and Canada. We grew to include coverage of the San Diego Chargers once we obtained press credentials to attend Chargers Training Camp and practices. We have covered every level of sports from High School Football to Olympics.
San Diego Sports Domination has been awarded two blogging awards. One from Our City San Diego, naming us one of the Top 10 Blogs in San Diego (Only Sports Blog). The other from E College Finder, naming us one of The Best College Sports Blogs in America (Only California Sports Blog to win). Both online publications have fallen to the wayside.
Now to the present day. In 2019, we changed how San Diego Sports Domination operated. We moved away from writing and moved towards visuals. Instead of posting a few photos from a sporting event, we now share between 50 -100. The fans and athletes we cover love this.
We covered thousands of events in our sites history (High School Football, Major League Rugby, National Lacrosse League, Labelle Developmental Football League, National Arena Soccer League, Alliance of American Football, SDSU Marching Band, SDSU Cheer, SDSU Dance, Women’s Premier Soccer League, SDSU Club Water Polo, National Premier Soccer League and Indoor Football League). Our event photography has helped contribute to four times the amount of normal traffic.
Due to the amount of photography, I had been shooting with San Diego Sports Domination. I decided to branch off and make photography a passion of mine. It led to the creation of David Frerker Sports Photography. I utilize San Diego Sports Domination as a media outlet to get credentialed for certain events and I have David Frerker Sports Photography as my portfolio website.
I have been able to branch out and photograph for many teams and clients. Sports San Diego is one of my more well-known clients. They are the team behind the Holiday Bowl and the brand new Rady Children’s Invitational. I am the official photographer for Sports San Diego. I have had the honor of photographing multiple holiday bowls and the first ever children’s invitational. My goal was to make my social media more professional following this client and that allowed me to get even bigger clients. I have begin freelancing for the University of San Diego. So far I have photographed 11 different sports for USD. This season, I am serving as the Director of Photography for the San Diego Strike Force. My sixth season in the IFL. Recently, I became a photographer for the San Diego Wave and I just celebrated my one year anniversary as a USA Today sports photographer here in San Diego.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Photography is quite never a smooth road. I like to say photography is 50% skill and 50% luck because you always have to be in the correct spot to capture the image. Let use football and rugby as an example. You are positioned correctly in the end zone/try zone and the ball is moving down the field. You pretty much have a 50% chance the ball is going to come to you and that is where your equipment can come into play beginning as a sports photographer. I had basic gear and I would’ve loved to have progressed up the totem pole, much quicker, but that was not the case. Photography sometimes it is about the gear that you have.
I learned to photograph with my beginning gear and create a secondary bank account for all of the money that I created through my photography. As I began to make more money, I began to invest in better gear that allowed me to get closer to the action, I also had to learn techniques of making my photos better with the gear that I had.
Sometimes you are able to create an amazing image and someday you just can’t do the mitigating circumstances. The lighting could be off. Your team could be struggling your camera gear isn’t ready. There are so many different things that can happen when out covering an event and I have learned to have every single back up in place so that I can create top quality work every time I photograph.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am out in the community photographing sporting events. I specialize in pretty natural sports images shot at a high shutter speed. I have a more editorial style of shooting. Sometimes I will play with my blacks or the contrast, but 99% of the time I make very minimal edits. I want the photo to tell the story.
I am most proud of becoming a USA Today Sports Photographer. If you think about how many people there are in San Diego… I am now in the top 1% of sports photographers. I have put in a ton of practice photographing between 200/300 events a year to get to where I am now. I book out months in advance for high profile events. Such as the New Zeland All Blacks vs. Fiji match in July and Padres vs. Dodgers in July for USA Today. I am currently accepting freelance photography opportunities.
I would have to say my work ethic is what set me apart from others. I don’t know a single photographer in San Diego that photograph as many events as I do I would say maybe 5% or less. I am photographing because I want to get better at my craft and what I do. Photographing 3 to 5 events a week on top of working of 40 hour work week is not easy and I would say that is why I have been able to climb the ladder so quickly. One of the sports information directors at the University of San Diego told me that over the course of the last year… I have made one of the most meteoric rises of any photographer he has ever seen.
Pricing:
- $75 an hour
Contact Info:
- Website: https://davidfrerkersportsphotography.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidfrerkersportsphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidfrerkersportsphotography/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-frerker-52323845/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidFrerker
- Other: https://sandiegosportsdomination.com/
Image Credits
Photo of myself: Abraham Arredondo Sports Photography Images; David Frerker
