In celebration of the College of Charleston's 250th anniversary, the CofC Men's Basketball team wore special throwback uniforms to commemorate the sestercentennial milestone.
The new threads had their own photoshoot as part of their reveal, which took place in TD Arena. Although not the most luxurious set up, we were able to make it work with a standard look for the photos and with each of our players, group shots for our starters, and the uniforms on their own. The release earned an ensemble of media spots and the reveal earned us all-time numbers on the Athletics Instagram.
The flash + dark stands behind the players were meant to replicate the harder flash of earlier cameras for a vintage look. Also key was utilizing the College's "History. Made. Here." banner which helped celebrate #CofC250. It was paramount for the photos to really highlight the details and contrast of the white-on-maroon look, along with mixing in shots with a tight aperture to have as much of the player in focus as possible for cutouts/graphics.
This was my first crack at setting up a photoshoot, it was a lot of fun with much learned along the way! Top shots from the shoot:
The CofCSports Instagram post unveiling the retro uniforms set new highs for the account in: reach, engagement, likes, impressions, saved, post shares, follows generated from the post.
Game attendance: 5,108 (2nd highest attendance during the season, 11th highest all-time for MBB).
The commemorative pregame shootaround shirt is used by our players and sold in the College's bookstore. The photos helped capture the on-court stature it holds in effort to drive sales for the product.
Key was to utilize the CofC250 banner to tie together the whole theme for the special event.
UNISWAG is an outlet that covers and highlights new uniform announcements/releases, and our throwbacks earned a spot on their platform, receiving some of the best interaction numbers of any of their other posts at the time. SportsLogos.net, the go-to resource for uniform- and logo-related content, wrote an article with these photos to showcase the retro threads.
The phones to the right include graphics that used photos from the shoot for both Grant Riller's birthday and to celebrate the game being a soldout contest! (Designs by Marlene Navor).
A variety of poses and zooms were used for each player to maximize the versatility of the content produced for any situation that may come about.
Overall, this was a fun photoshoot to lead for the first time! I like the way they turned out and came away with ideas/lessons for the next one. Our players enjoyed the new threads and the interaction on social was sublime!
BONUS CONTENT:
See the uniforms in game action vs. Elon to complete the circle of the throwback threads:
Thank you for taking the time view this project! Go Cougs!
