It was perhaps assumed, as images of Griffey popped up across social media last year, that his photography work was some kind of novelty act. He is, after all, Ken Griffey Jr. The Kid. The upright swing. The one-handed finish. The fitted backwards hat. The signature Nikes. The NES video game. The Upper Deck rookie card. The impossibly cool version in the amber of the 1990s; the one that, by God, those of us of a certain age will never let go of because those were better times and A Tribe Called Quest is still playing in these headphones.<\/p>\n
That is, except characters in sports are not characters in life. Ken Griffey Jr. was never particularly interested in growing old as The Kid. Or at least everyone else\u2019s version of The Kid.<\/p>\n
Now a 56-year-old father of three adult children, Griffey has spent the entirety of his non-baseball life wanting to find the next thing and do the next thing. In the late \u201890s, at the peak of his powers, with his world changing amid a trade from Seattle to his hometown of Cincinnati, he bought scuba lessons. This isn\u2019t to say Griffey merely made a few dives and explored a coral reef. No, he made 60 dives in 60 days with the best instructors he could find. Years later, in his mid-30s, while living in Orlando amid a fading career, Griffey realized his two oldest children would likely land at Florida\u2019s scattered in-state schools \u2014 Florida State or Miami or UF \u2014 to play their respective sports (Trey in football, Taryn in basketball), and he imagined travel for games being a nightmare from Orlando. His solution? A pilot\u2019s license.<\/p>\n
(In a twist, both Trey and Taryn landed at the University of Arizona, while Tevin Griffey, the family\u2019s youngest by seven years, later played football at Florida A&M and Boise State. Nevertheless, today Griffey owns and flies a personal jet.)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2210437753-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Ken Griffey Jr.\u2019s challenge at the Masters was to produce work good enough to be published regardless of his name. (Andrew Redington \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s photography. Coming up in the big leagues, Griffey traveled with an old Sony point-and-click film camera. Boxes of curling old photos exist as proof. In time, he moved to a Nikon digital camera. As the kids got older, Griffey found he could attend their games in peace if he did so from behind a camera. He graduated to more professional equipment and asked photographer friends from ESPN for some tips. Soon, whatever exists inside Griffey \u2014 apparently a kerosene canister of competitive instincts \u2014 found an open flame.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s all about getting better and trying to learn things,\u201d Griffey said on a call last week. \u201cI feel like if you get stuck or you only do one thing, your mind is going to die. You can always get better and learn different things. I like taking pictures. So why not learn to take better pictures?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s hard to argue. However, there\u2019s a difference between taking some photo lessons, or maybe signing up for a MasterClass, and working as a staff photographer at the Masters. That is, unless you\u2019re Griffey. In which case, a simple hobby turns into him being introduced to a room full of world-class photographers in Augusta.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a young photographer in the corner, new to this, coming to join us today,\u201d Bob Martin, the managing editor of Masters photography, is shown announcing in \u201cPhotographer 24.\u201d \u201cAnything you can tell him \u2014 help him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin meant it. Not one to suffer timidity, Martin is a large man with a large personality and a large British accent. His week with Griffey began with him eyeballing some photos taken during Tuesday\u2019s practice round and calling one \u201cdreadful,\u201d another a \u201cwaste of time,\u201d and later saying in an interview that Griffey lacked a \u201crefined eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first heard Ken Griffey was coming, I was like, well, why?\u201d Martin says in the film. \u201cWhy is this man coming here and ruining my day? I\u2019m stressed enough as it is without having him here.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was not shtick for the camera. Martin is a legend in the field and a recipient of all imaginable sports photography awards. In pointing out the obvious \u2014 that the Masters is not a place to cut your teeth \u2014 he added that Griffey\u2019s photos would only be published if they met a standard. After all, not only was Griffey shooting key assignments like Bernhard Langer\u2019s final Masters round on Friday, but he was doing so beside the best competition imaginable. The same way Junior\u2019s swing was so sweet the ball seemed to want to find the gaps; the best photographers at the Masters are so good the dogwoods lean to get in their shot.<\/p>\n
Some will be quick to say Griffey can only land a gig like the Masters because he\u2019s Ken Griffey Jr.<\/p>\n
Thing is, Griffey will agree. But then he\u2019ll add: \u201cYeah, I\u2019m the most high-profile person in that room, but I\u2019m the low man on the totem pole. I\u2019m there to soak up as much as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
And how\u2019d that go?<\/p>\n
Turns out, the man pictured on 24 different Sports Illustrated covers is getting a different view on the other side of the camera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe learning curve is massive,\u201d Griffey told me. \u201cThere\u2019s that old saying, be comfortable being uncomfortable. That was that whole week at Augusta. I was uncomfortable the whole time, but also understood certain things in the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2209624005-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Ken Griffey Jr.\u2019s eye caught this frame of Rory McIlroy\u2019s post-win celebration. (Ken Griffey Jr. \/ Augusta National via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that picture where Griffey\u2019s perspective resides, and what makes this venture all the more interesting and all the more valuable. He does not see himself as a professional photographer. Nor does he ever intend to see himself as a professional photographer. He is, as he sees it, still a professional athlete. That\u2019s the view.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m taking a picture of another athlete,\u201d he said. \u201cNot a subject, not a character. To me, that\u2019s a normal person who happens to be at the top 1 percent of his or her sport. All I want is to get a great shot of that person doing something spectacular.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter how good the writer, or how good the photographer, that\u2019s a vantage point that can\u2019t be found on most sidelines.<\/p>\n
Like from the 18th green at the 2025 Masters. As everyone in the Press Building that day raced to finish our stories and file our pictures, Griffey sat with Martin and sorted through a collection of photos that, upon seeing on a computer screen, Martin pushed Griffey aside to take over, publishing as many as he could as fast as he could. The difference between Griffey\u2019s photos of the moment and everyone else\u2019s was that Griffey didn\u2019t see those pictures as his. He saw them as McIlroy\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story in those pictures came from him,\u201d Griffey continued. \u201cThat\u2019s what he did. Not what I did. I just happened to capture one moment in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe a lesson for the rest of us.<\/p>\n
Three months after Griffey\u2019s work at Augusta, I glanced up in the Ryder Cup Media Center to see Griffey walking across the front of the room, sweating, hat backward, a giant 600mm lens drooped over his shoulder. And there he was at last year\u2019s MLB All-Star Game, and at this past winter\u2019s World Baseball Classic. This summer, he\u2019s planning to work World Cup matches in Seattle and a handful of other events. Long days. Hard work.<\/p>\n
The Kid better be careful.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, the difference between a hobby and a job is how you view it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Griffey Jr. couldn\u2019t have asked for a better view. A 6-foot-3 action hero, he had a clear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,569,622,462,82,575],"class_list":{"0":"post-582423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}