Behind The Digital camera with Daniel Oren ’27

Over the previous two years, Brandeis Athletics’ images has gotten a severe improve due to the efforts of Daniel Oren ‘27. Since his arrival as a first-year photographer, Daniel has made his services available to the Judges’ sports activities info and advertising departments, attending almost each dwelling contest and bonding with our student-athletes within the course of. 

Brandeis was a spot that checked all of the bins for Daniel – a University in an excellent location, with its distinct Jewish background, that enables its college students to place of their work and simply be themselves. In addition to his sports activities images, Daniel has been concerned with campus radio station WBRS and as a employee within the University’s Media Lab. 

But it’s behind the lens that he has at all times felt most comfy. Growing up in Florida and Connecticut, he was in a position to make use of images as an escape. Starting with a GoPro Hero 6 as a nonetheless digital camera, “I would go outside and take photos of anything I could,” Daniel mentioned. “Leaves, or whatever, but that camera was still better than what I had on my phone.”

Eventually, he upgraded to a Nikon E3 100, and that’s when his images began to blossom. An avid tennis and soccer participant when he was youthful, Daniel gravitated in the direction of sports activities images over nature pictures. “Where I grew up, there were pretty much only street signs to shoot in terms of landscape,” he joked. “But sports were available, always part of school, so I could always find something to shoot there.

From humble beginnings at his high school, Daniel took on as much as he could handle. He eventually earned a spot shooting the Connecticut Open tennis tournament and picking up occasional credentials at Fenway Park to shoot the Red Sox, in addition to his assignments for the Judges. 

Soccer and tennis remain his two loves to shoot, dating back to his time as a player. He’s looking to improve his soccer shooting with a longer, more powerful lens, so for now, tennis remains his sweet spot. “I know so much about tennis, having played and shot it professionally,” he mentioned. 

Much just like the athletes he shoots can get into “the zone” to play their finest video games, Daniel mentioned he experiences one thing related. “I have so much experience, I can get into this flow state, this rhythm where I can take the photos almost like second nature. I almost don’t even have to think about it,” he mentioned.

Photography has modified drastically within the final 25 years, each in the best way that pictures have been produced and in the best way they’ve been consumed. Daniel has skilled taking pictures on movie, profiting from the Photography Club’s darkish room (he’s president of the membership, naturally). It was once that taking a photograph was a valuable use of a useful resource, the movie within the digital camera. Now, that useful resource turn into just about infinite, due to digital cameras. Images had been consumed in albums or framed and held on the wall. Now, we scroll by way of our telephones, see our output instantaneously, and share it with the world simply as shortly. 

Daniel says that his expertise taking pictures on movie has taught him to decelerate. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he mentioned. “It makes you think about every different thing that you’re doing. When I’ve shot with film, I only take one roll with me, and I try to take a shot that I’ve never taken before. I try and only take the same photo once. Even with digital, I don’t necessarily fire off a burst of shots. I take one shot at a time, trying to capture the image I want, not just get lucky in a burst.”

Here are a number of the finest pictures that Daniel captured over the course of the 2024-25 college yr.