Our Campus Celebrity of the week is none other than Tom Horak, a graduating senior at Lasell. Tom is originally from Stanhope, New Jersey and he is majoring in Communications, although he plans to pursue his true passion of photography after walking across the stage on the 14th.
Tom began his work with photography his freshman year of high school after getting a Canon Rebel T3i for Christmas. He fell in love with photography while on vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine after taking a picture of the sunset. Starting out he focused mainly on landscapes and sunsets, it wasn’t until his freshman year at Lasell that he started doing sports. He started taking pictures at baseball games because his roommates were on the team, but as the year went on he started going and taking pictures of other teams games as well. During his sophomore year Tom started working with the 1851 Chronicle going to any games he could, and when he was hired by Laser Pride he started going to every sports team’s games. Once his photography became more serious, he upgraded his camera to a Canon 70D with a 70-200mm F/2.8 lens which is standard for sports photography.
He’s come a long way since beginning and now has experience both in sports and fashion photography, thanks to Polished Magazine. Tom was first asked last semester to shoot the Fall/Winter 2015 Issue of Polished and was asked again this semester to shoot their Spring/Summer Issue’s underwater feature. He is now paid for certain events he shoots on campus, and he also interns with the Boston Breakers Women’s Soccer team. In the future, Tom would love to work for a photo distribution company or become the photographer for a national sports team. As for combining sports and fashion photography, Tom also would like to shoot for Nike or Sports Illustrated. His number one goal for photography though is to shoot the U.S. Men’s National team in the World Cup. On his photography career, Tom said “I can’t think of anything cooler than getting paid to attend a sporting event and do what I love.”
Aside from photography, Tom’s favorite food is pizza and his favorite movie is a toss up between Never Back Down or Miracle. He has a Siberian husky named Riley who likes to talk and howl at him and his family. A huge sports fan, Tom states “I’m a die hard New Jersey Devils fan.” He also played soccer for 15 years but had to stop after a few too many concussions and a case of PCS (post-concussion syndrome). Congratulations on graduating Tom, we at Her Campus Lasell wish you nothing but the best for the future!
Follow Tom’s photography pages on social media to see his work!
Instagram: @THorakPhotography
Facebook: T.Horak Photography
Website: http://www.thorakphotography.com