Matt Dirksen on Photographing the Chicago Cubs and Pete Crow-Armstrong's Historic Season

In a PetaPixel feature, Chicago Cubs team photographer Matt Dirksen recounts his 2026 season, his 14th in Major League Baseball and fifth at Wrigley Field, where he succeeded Steve Green at the end of 2021. Dirksen describes capturing Pete Crow-Armstrong, the National League MVP front-runner, in a narrow band of golden September light at a 6:15 p.m. game, using a Sony A1 II with a 50-150mm F2 GM lens. He explains his backlighting technique, learned during six seasons with the Colorado Rockies, and his 'two eyes, two ears' composition rule. On Aug. 17, Crow-Armstrong hit a two-run walk-off home run against the White Sox for a 7-5 win, reaching the 30-30 club for the second straight year; Dirksen had texted his social team to prepare the graphic. On Sept. 24, Crow-Armstrong stole his 40th base, becoming the seventh player in MLB history with 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a season, as the Cubs won 2-1 and clinched a playoff berth. Dirksen shoots with three Sony A1 II bodies and ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type A cards, sending JPEGs via Wi-Fi FTP within 30 seconds and editing RAWs in Adobe Lightroom. He filled 10 4TB SSDs, about 560,000 frames, and notes the Cubs' photographic lineage from George Burke and George Brace in the late 1920s to Barney Sterling in the 1960s and Steve Green in 1982.