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07/09/2020 12:00 AMAs a kid growing up in Branford, John Steady spent a lot of time outside playing sports in his neighborhood. The neighborhood kids were always playing some kind of game, and John’s love for athletics came from the fun times that he had with them.
John wanted to stay involved in sports when he started at Branford High School and wound up competing for the Hornets’ cross country, track, and baseball teams. While he enjoyed being an athlete, John would soon discover that his passion for sports went much deeper than competing on the field.
During his sophomore year, John was approached by Branford sports legend the late Jim MacVeigh, who was writing sports columns for the Branford Review at the time, about covering a football game for the newspaper. John agreed and was assigned to cover the Hornets’ home game against Derby. John handwrote the article before it was picked up from his house and typed up at the Review. John says it was “the most painful” experience of his life and he swore that he would never write another article. However, writing that story was what led John on his journey of working in sports journalism.
“It was a huge moment in my life. I was lucky enough that Jim MacVeigh asked me to cover that game. It just put me on a perfect path to be involved in sports in a totally different way,” John says. “Everything that has kind of led up to me doing what I do now started on that particular day. I can almost connect the dots of every single point of my life tracing back to that first article I wrote in the newspaper.”
John has been a sports journalist and sports photographer throughout the past three decades. He was a staff correspondent at the Review for 15 years and also worked as the assistant sports editor at The Sound during the early days of its sports section.
In 2004, John founded his own business, Steady Photography, which specializes in taking senior, school, and business portraits. John is also the official photographer for Branford High School, a role he has held for the last 15 years, and has taken thousands upon thousands of photos of Hornets’ teams and members of the Branford Sports Hall of Fame.
For his dedication to documenting sports in town, John joined many of the same athletes that he’s photographed when he was inducted into the Branford Sports Hall of Fame as part of its Class of 2019.
“It’s a great honor. I’ve been around Branford my entire life, and there are tons of great athletes and human beings in the Branford Sports Hall of Fame,” says John. “To be included in that group is an absolute honor. It was a little overwhelming at the time to even be included in that group.”
After graduating from Branford in 1989, John enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was assigned to the First Marine Division Combat Camera Unit at Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California. That was where John got introduced to photography.
“I had never been involved in photography. To be honest, I never put two and two together that this could help my love of sports journalism,” John says. “Never in a million years did I think sports journalists would have to take their own pictures, but as we know now, that’s more the norm than anything. I enjoyed it. I tinkered more with photography, got to learn more about photography, and met some great people. The Marine Corps was a great experience for me.”
During his time at Camp Pendleton, John was a coach and board member for the base’s Little League baseball team and also proved instrumental in creating a softball league for the wives of the Marine Corps’ members. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps in 1995, John returned to Branford in 2000. He started writing for the Review and, eventually, The Sound.
“There was something about local sports journalism that I always loved. I thought it was very cool to see your name in the newspaper,” says John. “MacVeigh used to write an article called the ‘Sports Shorts’ in the Review. It was a news and notes column, and he always made sure everybody was recognized. Every sport, every kid got covered. Covering everybody and recognizing the kids was a great thing.”
John started taking his own photos for his stories as a writer for The Sound. John says that experience led him into the business that would become an essential part of his life. As John began focusing on photography, more and more people started asking to purchase his pictures.
When John opened up Steady Photography, his first job was taking pictures for the Branford Youth Lacrosse program. Since then, he has photographed 25 different state champion teams in Branford. John says that he “loves going to work” and being around the athletes and teams his hometown.
Among all the great moments that’s seen through the lens, John says there are two that stand out from his career in sports photography. In 2004, John went to South Dakota to take photos of the Branford Senior American Legion baseball team during its first trip to the World Series. Then in 2010, John covered the Branford girls’ basketball team, which included his stepdaughters Brittney and Kaitlin, when the Hornets defeated Hillhouse to win the SCC Tournament. John says that capturing both events played a major role in both his life and his career.
Sports have been a huge part of John’s life for a long time. After competing as an athlete, John transitioned into sports media and continues to follow his passion to this day. Now a member of Branford Sports Hall of Fame, John is hoping that his photographs will allow people to look back and remember many of the notable moments in Branford sports history for years to come.
“It’s great being able to document these things. I hope 100 years from now there’s still going to be pictures that people look back on that were documented by me,” John says. “We as photographers and journalists are able to document something that maybe people 200 years from now look back on. When was Branford last in the American Legion World Series? If someone were to ask that question 100 years from now, they’d come up on some photos that I took. That’s pretty cool.”