University Times

Pitt’s senior administration grabs most of the headlines. The faculty here get noticed when they bring in research dollars, win teaching awards or publish in their fields.

But behind the scenes, University staff, some 7,000 strong across five campuses, often toil in jobs ranging from the mundane to the esoteric.

From mailroom workers to data entry specialists, costume designers to biosafety officers, cashiers to accountants, staff at Pitt perform tasks great and small, year-in and year-out, for the greater good of the University.

This is one in an occasional series profiling University staff, providing a glimpse of some of the less recognized employees whose primary business is making Pitt work.

Mike Drazdzinski may have seen more Pitt athletics contests than even the most rabid Panther fan. In any given year, he catches as many as 100 contests of the 19 Pitt NCAA teams — and not all in Pittsburgh.

From San Jose to Boston, Detroit to Orlando and many cities in between, Pitt photographer Drazdzinski for a dozen years has documented the football and men’s basketball teams.

Football regular season games and bowl games, and Big East and NCAA tournament games have taken Drazdzinski to more than 20 sites across the country traveling with the teams.

As one of the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education’s four-member photography staff, Drazdzinski also handles more traditional on-campus assignments, such as shooting events like Arrival Survival and commencement, taking grip-and-grin shots of visiting dignitaries and lecturers and capturing ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

He also documented the razing of Pitt Stadium and the raising of its successor, the Petersen Events Center.

But he is more or less the University’s sports shutterbug, each year taking team pictures and headshots of the players, shooting most of the non-revenue-generating sports as well as covering football and men’s basketball up close and personal.

“I’m not an athlete myself,” he says. “I played some street ball and pick-up games, but it seems like I was always the last one cut from the basketball team.”

Drazdzinski is, however, a sports enthusiast, especially when it comes to Pitt athletics, making his assignments at once gratifying and challenging.

“I live my love for sports vicariously through my job. But it’s hard sometimes to separate being a fan from work. I want to cheer for Pitt, but I have to concentrate on what I’m doing. So the etiquette is not to cheer,” he says of his game assignments.

Like the proverbial mail carrier, neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays him from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

“When you shoot sports, you have to be able to produce in all kinds of weather,” he says, adding that it also requires a decidedly atypical schedule.

“For the NCAA basketball tournament, I was out here on campus at 4:30 in the morning, when the team bus left,” Drazdzinski says.

“I’ve shot 7 a.m. scholar-athlete breakfasts, and we also have sporting events that are late, that get done at 11 at night, and I might come back to work till midnight downloading the images.”

Bowl games for Drazdzinski mean week-long excursions out of town, covering the football team as it practices at the bowl site, shooting the game itself and documenting everything in between.

“Both in Orlando and in Arizona, the team visited a children’s hospital,” he recounts. “They bring some hats and shirts and they pose for pictures with the kids and talk to them. The kids were great, they laugh and you capture the smiles on the kids’ faces. That was a great experience.”

In Arizona the team also visited a dude ranch and in Orlando they took in Universal Studios. Drazdzinski documented those events as well.

Away regular season football games are 30-hour marathons for Drazdzinski as well as the team. “You leave here one day, stay overnight, photograph the game and come right back,” Drazdzinski says.

But with the travel and the variety of assignments, the job never gets stale. “I like the variety of meeting people. I’ve always liked to travel. I like seeing the various stadiums and arenas, like Boston Garden and Rupp Arena in Kentucky. I got to go to the Mall of America when I was in Minneapolis, and that was fun.”

In general, he’s treated with respect by the coaches and players he covers. “The coaches allow me to tell the athletes how I want to set them up, so I have their support for group shots and things of that nature,” Drazdzinski says. “There are times when I’m not allowed in the locker room, for example when a coach addresses the team, and that’s totally fair. But coaches and players recognize me and allow me to do my job. Players, generally, are very complimentary.”

His path to his current position was somewhat circuitous.

Following graduation from high school, he earned an associate’s degree at Triangle Tech in architectural construction and technology and started working locally as a draftsman.

In the early 1980s, Drazdzinski started teaching himself photography, mostly through a lot of trial and error. When he wanted to try out his new skills at a Pitt game, then-sports information director Jim O’Brien agreed to give him a chance at a Pitt-Syracuse football game.

“I used my own equipment. The images were just all right, nothing great,” Drazdzinski says.

But O’Brien saw potential in those shots.

“Jim said, ‘You got lots of good stuff, but I know you can do better.’ He showed me which shots he thought were better, and said, ‘This is what I expect out of you. Do you want to try it again?’”

So began a long-standing arrangement. “I started freelancing. Jim let me in to shoot basketball. I got paid as I produced. If they liked what I had on the contact sheets, they paid me,” Drazdzinski  says.

His Pitt ties were strengthened when he enrolled in a computer-aided drafting program here. “I learned the basics, but never finished,” he says.

Out of financial necessity, he took a part-time position as a student custodian in Facilities Management in 1984, and the following year he converted to full-time custodian, stationed in the Cathedral of Learning. There he met his future wife, Diane, a long-time employee in the Management Information and Analysis office.

For five years Drazdzinski manned an elevator in the Cathedral, earning the nickname Mike the Elevator Man. All the while he continued shooting Pitt sports. In 1997, a photography spot opened in CIDDE and Drazdzinski gave up the elevator for his dream job.

“When I first started out shooting basketball games, I was just sitting in one space, like a bump on a log,” Drazdzinski  says. “Then, as I learned, I figured out that you need a variety, even though I always have a Pitt perspective for what I’m shooting.”

He might shoot half the game from the floor and then move to higher elevations.

“I’ve gone up on the cat walk in the Petersen Center and shot down over the hoop. That was cool,” he says. “I tend to be on the side where Pitt is shooting. Sometimes, I’ll move to the defensive side, because I’m always trying to shoot a variety of images. You want to get the shot of a player shooting or dunking, but then turn quickly to the bench for a reaction shot of the players who may not get the playing time but work just as hard for the team, cheering on the other guys,” Drazdzinski says.

Stoic coaches also occasionally betray emotions, and Drazdzinski looks for those moments as well.

In addition to game action, Drazdzinski tries to capture the collegiate atmosphere with shots that can be used in promotional and student recruitment publications.

At a typical basketball game he might shoot 500-600 images, and for the usually much longer football games, as many as 800-1,000.

“You want to have on hand all kinds of images, in case there’s a need. At basketball home games, you’re shooting the Oakland Zoo, with their shirts and their hats. You shoot overall shots, some isolated students, but also the general feel of what’s going on,” he says.

CIDDE converted from film to digital photography five or six years ago, Drazdzinski notes. “It’s not quicker using digital; the process is just as long. You used to shoot film, send it to the lab, get the contact sheet back and send the negatives to get prints. Now, we’re doing all that work ourselves,” he says. “That was an adjustment. By now we’re used to it. We helped each other learn, and we took a couple classes. Most of it’s been trial and error and reading up on things.”

Many of Drazdzinski’s images have been reprinted in national publications, including his photograph of basketball star Jerome Lane dunking so hard the backboard shattered. Street & Smith’s pro basketball preview issue  used the shot when Lane went to Denver in the NBA draft.

“I have done photos as a University employee for Sports Illustrated and ESPN, the Magazine, People Magazine, DownBeat Jazz Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and many billboards in the Pittsburgh area,” he notes. Pitt receives the payment from the publications and maintains the copyright on all the images Drazdzinski shoots as an employee.

Even on his own time, Drazdzinski is rarely far from his camera. He has his own business — MD Photography — a true mom-and-pop organization with his wife Diane handling the business end.

“I have photographed literally hundreds of weddings over the past 25 years including those all around the Pittsburgh area, the United States and even in Ireland,” he says.

He also has photographed three Super Bowls as assistant to the Pittsburgh Steelers team photographer, and several musical performers, including the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride and Fleetwood Mac.

His images have won several awards, including twice being honored in the Triangle Photographers Association print competition.

But Pitt sports photography fans needn’t worry about Drazdzinski leaving his Pitt job any time soon.

“My daughters are 9 and 11. I’m staying long enough to get them through Pitt,” he says. “We started brainwashing them when they were about 4. We’d put them in little Panther outfits, and take to them to sports events and tell them this is where Daddy works, this is what we do: We bleed blue and gold.”

—Peter Hart