As Camp Tecumseh celebrates a century of sun-soaked adventures, we sat down with Marketing Director Sam Hirt to discuss the visual history of this camp. Beyond the rustic cabins and laughter, Hirt shares insights behind immortalizing Camp Tecumseh's spirit—unveiling the transformative power of photography and videography, and SmugMug’s role in creating a digital haven where each canoe ride and campfire flicker can be preserved. 

Tell me a little about Camp Tecumseh.

Camp Tecumseh is celebrating its 100th year now in 2024. The camp started in 1924, and we’re about 25 minutes from West Lafayette, where Purdue University is, on the Tippecanoe River. When people think of summer camp, that’s Camp Tecumseh: canoeing, swimming, singing songs, making friends, hanging out in cabins together, looking up to camp counselors. We serve between 5,000 and 6,000 kids every summer, and we serve more than 30,000 annually. That includes school field trips, outdoor immersive experiences, and a number of curriculum-based or leadership-based programming for outdoor education. We also have a department for groups and conferences, so anyone who needs a meeting space or a place to have a retreat can also come here.

We have nine week-long sessions of overnight camp and seven weeks of day camp within that same time period during summer. Each Sunday we have a new group of 500 overnight campers, and Monday morning we have a new group of 200 day campers. At the end of the week, they all go home. 

The rest of the year, there could be days where all 600 to 700 beds are full with a variety of schools and retreat groups, or there could be a random day in between those groups where it's empty. It's pretty busy throughout the year with lots of groups coming in and out.

How did you get involved with the camp?

My wife actually grew up at this camp. Her dad worked in the camp industry for 40 years, including at Camp Tecumseh, and she lived on site. So she has it in her blood. I didn't grow up that way, but I did go to camps growing up. When I met her, I learned about Tecumseh, and we worked a summer there together when we were in our early twenties. I was on the media team as a videographer, and I used SmugMug for the first time back then. 

I later got into the camp industry separately, working for the American Camp Association. When a full-time opportunity came about to be the director of marketing at Camp Tecumseh, I took it. I've been here full time since 2019, so this spring will be five years. 

How’d you get into videography?

I was really into camera stuff, but I didn't have any technical training, so I taught myself. Then I started filming friends' weddings, then other people's weddings. That was my introduction to videography, which led me to photography. From a professional standpoint, I do more photography than I do video, but I do both in my job and both on the side. And this job has made me a much better photographer.

How does that translate into telling Camp Tecumseh’s story?

Our priority is to show the magic of camp—what's wonderful about the experience and what it looks and feels like to be a camper or counselor at Camp Tecumseh. I think the photos and videos really help convey those feelings. The goal is to capture as much as possible to show all the activities you can do at Camp Tecumseh in a given week. I really like that parents have to do some gallery searching after their kids attend camp because the parents get to see the whole experience and not only a single photo of their kid. 

Could you tell me a bit about your process?

I have a team of three that work for me; one does video, one does photography for overnight camp, and one does photography for day camp. At any given moment, we've got one person taking photos for 500 campers and one person taking photos for 200 campers.

The media team that works for me in summer focuses only on summer camp. The rest of the year it's just me whenever I have time. So in summer, my team will look at the schedule for the day and make a list of the activities they want to capture, whether it be horseback riding, canoeing, pickleball, swimming, or whatever. Then they'll go out with a golf cart and some Fuji camera gear to capture as much as they can. 

Once they've shot a decent amount, or filled a memory card—we shoot RAW so they fill up fast—they'll come back, offload the card onto a Mac, and sort to find good photos. We don't look for the perfect photo; we look for clear, appropriate photos that help tell the story of the day. Then they edit in Lightroom, export, and upload to a new gallery on SmugMug.

Any event that's happening at camp on a given day ends up being a gallery for us. On a good day, for example, we'll create a folder for Monday. Within Monday we've got galleries for chapel, Newdls (where kids learn a new skill and use their brain—their noodle), afternoon activities, and lake time. It helps us create a folder full of galleries, which really is a day full of events.

Part of what I do is oversee the process and make sure things are looking okay. As the week goes on, I challenge my team to seek out shots they might not have gotten yet. Have you made it to archery? Have you made it to the River Village? 

How does this work help the camp?

As far as marketing, word of mouth has been the best thing for us. Like when parents share our photos with new neighbors who moved into the neighborhood: "Here's where our kids go, and here's a link to their photos. See how great it looks." Also every Saturday, when a given session is over, all our summer staff will find photos of themselves and go to Instagram to make a post. We have hundreds of notifications each weekend. It's free, organic marketing that’s a gift that keeps on giving because we have high-quality images at the volume we do.

Also, everything we upload can be purchased by the parents. But we explicitly tell them on the site they can download images for free. We don't make a ton of money off that, but we do get 50 million hits in the summer, which is a really high amount for a nonprofit like us. 

The benefit we get from people saving the photos is they share them on their own social media or with their neighbors, which outweighs any kind of money we could make from them in my eyes. And everything is password protected for the high-resolution downloads.

How does SmugMug factor into your work? What got you started?

My predecessor, who's a friend of mine and a great photographer, chose SmugMug for the camp ten years ago. Then I've ushered it forward. 

SmugMug does a great job of handling our volume because we take lots and lots of photos, and I like how quickly it uploads everything. We upload anywhere from a couple hundred to a thousand images in a single day, so parents have to look through a lot to find their child, which is their number-one priority when they're looking at the photos. And I want them to do that. I think that's great. 

I also like that our SmugMug site can seamlessly tie in to our own site and branding, which has been crucial. I would hate for parents to be taken somewhere else and think, "What is this? It looks so different." Right now they can go to our SmugMug site and think it’s just part of our main site, which is great. I want it to look less like SmugMug and more like our own thing, and so far that's working the way we want it to.

Gallery presets are really handy for what we do, too. At the start of each summer, I can show all three of my staff at once how we set up a gallery, save it as a preset, then give them instructions on how to use that preset when creating a new gallery. Then the rest of the summer they can do it without me overseeing it.

Any tips for new SmugMug users?

If you're a camp, or some other organization that posts galleries based events, take advantage of SmugMug’s folders for organization. You could look at how we do it to get an idea of how useful they are. For example, we might create a folder for week one of 2024 overnight camp,  then within week one, there's folders for each day of the week. Within each day, there are galleries for events. That's a really clear way parents, staff, or visitors can see the whole experience. 

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We really value photography and videography here at Camp Tecumseh. It's not just me as the marketing director or even just the media team. It's all my coworkers. They talk it up to other people and say, "Check out our photos." We take pride in our hard work and the output we have, and I’ve always liked that SmugMug has been a good place to host our photos.