Through his love of photography and storytelling, 2025 Souderton alumni Christian Gresko earned the first-place gold photo on January 15 for American football in the annual World Sports Photography Awards.
The World Sports Photography Awards, the largest and most prestigious awards of their kind, were created in 2020, based in London and were made to judge and award photos from 24 different categories.
This year a record 23,130 photos were submitted to the awards, including Gresko’s gold-winning American Football photo entitled “One player, 110,000 screaming fans.”
According to Gresko, when he initially submitted the gold photo, no part of him expected it to even come close to winning.
“Before the awards came out, I was talking to my dad, and I think he started talking about [the award], and I said, ‘Dad, there’s literally no way that anything comes of this,’” Gresko said. “I totally forgot about it, and then one morning, I got a DM from one of my friends congratulating me, and I just couldn’t believe it.”
When Greko took the photo, he was attempting to lower his shutter speed and create a wall effect with the Penn State White Out crowd.
“I have done slow shutter speed photos millions of times, randomly, and this one originally didn’t stand out to me that much,” Gresko said. “I enjoyed it, but I never thought it was anything too special until it came out that I won and looked at it a little less critically.”
According to Gresko, his love for photography and getting to go to all of the sports games that he photographs has allowed him to become incredibly grateful for the possibilities that he has been given.
“I’m so grateful for this and to even have the opportunity to be in this position. It’s just insane, and I still don’t really know how to talk about it,” Gresko said.
Looking toward his future in photography, Gresko attributes his success to having the consistency to go out and take photos every day.
“I think people look into their photography a little too hard. What really separates the good photographers from the great ones is literally just putting in the reps,” Gresko said. “You’ll get the variety you want and the emotion that makes photos so good if you just go out and photograph.