Elaine Thompson-Herrah waits in the tunnel of Hayward Field to walk out to the medal stand after finishing third in the 100-meters at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22. Photo by Mercedes Oliver

In honor of Women’s History Month, we are recognizing and celebrating the accomplishments of inspirational women in track and field history.

We sat down with Mercedes Oliver, a talented photographer and a member of the 2023 Prefontaine Classic media team. She has been documenting the sport of track and field for many years and last year took photos for TrackTown USA at the Pre Classic and for World Athletics at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22. She is also a proud member of the Black Women Photographer organization.

To start, tell us about your current career and involvement with track & field

I work full-time as a graphic designer for a sports agency. On the side, I do photo. I really started [photography] in 2020 professionally because I was a creative director at University of Alabama at Birmingham and I wore a lot of hats. We needed some photos done, I picked up a camera, and found out that I just had a natural knack for it. So I started shooting more pictures. I did track in college, so I’m a huge track fan. I did it for about six years between college and my graduate degree. I’ve always been a fan of the sport. I always wanted to shoot photos for it or do some creative work for it because I think it’s amazing, so that’s how I got started in that realm of life.

You got connected to TrackTown USA through Black Women Photographers, who we had partnered with for some of our 2022 events. How did you get involved with the Black Women Photographers community?

One day I was on social media and people had been sharing [posts]. This was around when Polly [Irungu] had just started to grow BWP, they were sharing some work, and she reached out to me and said “I rarely see Black women in sports. This is kind of crazy, I’m so shocked.” We were just talking about it on social and she ended up nominating me for PhMuseum’s Black female photographers to look out for, and I was the only Black woman sports photographer on the list. That was a really cool moment for me and Polly, and we ended up developing our friendship from there. There’s not many Black women who shoot sports. It’s a very small number. From there I always tag them [BWP] in my pictures if I shoot something and they re-share or re-post. Once she opened the applications for track I was like, “Yeah, I love track. I’d love to bring my eye to the sport,” and she selected me and a few others to be on that photo team.

Only approximately one-third of sports photographers are women, and an even smaller percent are women of color. What are some of the challenges you face as a woman in a male-dominated industry?

You get hit on a lot. It’s a bit uncomfortable, like I’m just trying to get my shots in. I usually wear my hair in braids, and people do touch hair a lot, which is a bit odd. You’ll get people who will touch your hair, or they’ll ask you how long your hair is and that’s a bit awkward also because you like you feel like you stand out a little bit more. I don’t go around asking people about their hair 90% of the time, unless it’s something like, “Oh you got a new haircut.” So that’s a challenge. Sometimes you feel like you have to prove yourself, even if you’re at a certain level. Sometimes it feels like you have to almost give a resume of why or how you got this far. You get challenged a little bit more. You feel like you always have to present a resume. My work should speak for itself; you don’t question everyone else. You feel like you can’t make as many mistakes, like there’s not as much cushion for you as there is for others. You’re under a microscope it feels like, sometimes.

Flip-side to the same question – what are some opportunities you see as a woman in a male-dominated industry?

I think women are naturally more approachable and we make people more comfortable when we’re working with them. We have a level of empathy to help people open up if they are a little more timid in the photos. You want those big, emotional reactions sometimes and I always found that people tend to work better with a woman because we’re able to talk to you and not just treat you like an object being shot. It’s more like we’re working between friends, and not like you know I’m just doing my job and you feel like just a subject like let’s just get this done. That kind of energy.

Track & field is known in the sports industry for having incredibly unique and stellar photography. What is it about the sport that you think primes it to be so engaging via that medium?

Track athletes – there’s a lot of passion in the sport. They’re not millionaires out there. We’re not shooting people who make $5 million for one game no matter if they win or lose. They really have to work for prize money. They really have to show up. It’s real passion, and through the lens – you can see that. The emotional reactions are really genuine. Sadness, anger, happiness, you can see that and capture that because it’s so powerful in that space. In other sports, you get a little bit of it sometimes, but in track it’s such authentic emotion. You have to have more than a want of money in track. You really have to enjoy what you do because you have to spend so much time training. The level of what gets poured into it is so beautiful to capture because it’s such raw, authentic emotion and you can really feel and see that passion when you’re in that space.

Who are some of your favorite photographers to follow in the sports industry?

My best friend is Shanna Lockwood, she’s the Falcons photographer. I love her. She is my heartbeat. I love the team that I work with for these track events–Kelcey McKinny, Mikeisha [Kelly], Taylor [Sims]. A lot of them are track fans or old track athletes, so you see the passion and a bit more understanding of the sport come out. When you’ve been in those shoes you know what to capture on a different level. Kate Frese with the Phoenix Suns. She has the best arrival photos – she does this cool double exposure. Brandon Todd, he’s based in New York. He’s fantastic. He shoots literally everything, he’s amazing. I have a long list. There’s a younger guy named Jaden [Powell] who’s amazingly talented coming up. He sometimes works with Getty and he’s fresh out of college. He’s really talented. I could go on for honestly days. Chanelle [Smith-Walker] over at the Panthers is another one, and a Black woman in that space, which is very rare for the NFL. They’re just really great people on top of that. Really welcoming and loving and they’re some of my close friends. They help me and I help them.

What is your favorite photo that you took at Hayward Field this last summer?

Fred Kerley at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22. Photo by Mercedes Oliver

I got this really cool abstract photo of Fred [Kerley] that people have literally DM’d me 100 times about, and I won’t tell anyone [how I did it]. It’s a secret. I gotta keep something to myself. It almost looks blown out, white surrounding him, but you can see on his back it says “USA,” that’s one of my faves. I love the portrait I got of Elaine right before she walked out for the medal ceremony at World Champs. I shot with available light and she was perfectly positioned behind the purplish blue wall so it looks like I shot it in the studio but it was just me standing next to her. She has great cheekbones, she’s very beautiful, so it really worked. She made it very easy. She did all the work, I just turned around and shot it. Those are my two favorites.

What is your bucket-list event to shoot?

Olympics, easy. That’s a huge moment, especially in track. You work four years and you have this one moment. It’s crazy. You train your whole life for it. It’s a hard sport, there’s a lot that goes into it.

Follow Mercedes on Instagram: @mercedesoliver.jpg