With William Lewis graduating (@capturedbysquilly on Instagram), senior Jack Bates (@bates.visuals on Instagram) is carrying on his legacy. Over the past years, Bates has captured high quality content for numerous teams and events here at St. X. His work consists of promotional edits, commitment edits, and action shots of all our athletes. Below is a Q/A with the senior photographer and artist behind Bates Visuals:
What made you want to be a photographer?
I’ve always admired photographers, ever since I got my photo taken during a travel baseball game. One guy that really made me want to start doing it was William Lewis, a 2024 graduate. My guy consistently put out professional pictures week after week.
How did you get started?
So a couple years ago my mom got a camera with some kit lenses, but she never really used it other than a couple of my middle school basketball games. I found that camera again and I went outside to take pictures of just random things: my dog, flowers, literally anything I could find. After that, I just kind of walked onto the football field, took some really bad photos, and ever since then I’ve been hooked.
What all does Bates Visuals do here at St. X?
So basically I provide photos to Xavier News of all types of school events. This year I’m on the Student Activities Council, so I’ll be taking photos and videos for that, and designing game day graphics for the school. For all the St. X athletes, I take photos and upload them for completely free for everyone to use, no watermarks or nothing. Nearly all other photographers have watermarks, but I feel like all St. X athletes should get photos, it’s my version of thanking the school for everything they’ve done for me.
How do you produce such quality content?
Honestly it just took a lot of practice. My first ever photos were absolutely terrible. As I went to more and more games, you slowly figure out what’s a good picture and how to predict where they are going to be. Not only that, but I’ve continued to improve in editing, and I think that’s what makes my pictures stand out. The more time I spent editing, the more the quality improved. I also got a Christmas/Birthday combined gift for a new professional style lens, which is what I nearly exclusively use now. Other than that, my setup is nearly identical. It really just shows you that you don’t need thousands of dollars or the newest things, anyone can take great photos with work and passion.
What does your process consist of?
After I get home, I normally start right away with deleting all the blurry and bad photos. After that, I use a couple of keybinds to set the general exposure (how bright the images are) to around the same. I’ve been using this recently and it saves so much time. After that, I use one of my preset to start off this picture. This is only the beginning because each photo needs a couple minutes of work. I change all kinds of settings, color grade, and use masks to get image where I want (in total taking like 5-8 minutes). Then, we do that for the other 150 pictures. The good news is I can copy some of the settings, but the masks I have to do each time. Then after that I download, save to the drives, and post my favorite ones.
What are your looking forward to this year?
Definitely the St. X vs Shelbyville Road at UofL, I’ve done an event in the stadium, but never done anything on the field. I’m looking forward to more bookings, paid gigs I do for other schools or just athletes in general. Not only that, but I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a new camera body, something better than I have. I’m also excited to go to Lexington and take pictures for all of our future state winning teams!
