Capturing the Collaboration: A Photographic Journey

Capturing Gold provides the inside story of what Syracuse University students learned through their experience as members of the communications team for the FISU Winter World University Games that took place Jan. 12-22, 2023, in Lake Placid, New York.

The Newhouse School and the Games’ local organizing committee forged a partnership following a successful collaboration with students photographing the 2022 Empire State Winter Games. This arrangement enabled 17 Newhouse students to join the Games as official photographers and communications specialists.

Outfitted with SONY A9 kits, the 12 photographers were responsible for covering any of a dozen winter sports daily at multiple venues across the Adirondacks region, delivering collectively hundreds of captioned photos on deadline. The students worked alongside professional photographers with years of experience covering the Olympics and international sporting events.

The five communications specialists supported the venue managers with on-site coverage and athlete interviews, produced social media content and wrote news releases on deadline daily.

The work produced by both was made available to media outlets and winter sports fans around the world that incorporated photos and content into their own coverage of the Games.