UltiCards have been all over the ultimate universe lately. Their recent partnership with growing photography staple, UltiPhotos, marks the creation of our sport’s first ultimate-centric playing card deck. The deck features some beautifully colorful and action-oriented photography from UltiPhotos’ collection of shooters, including UltiPhotos founder Kevin Leclaire. The deck highlights images from the recent 2012 Club season, and has every team immortalized in skies, layouts, d’s and incredible grabs from the everywhere Kevin’s crew was this year — looking at their galleries, they’ve been to essentially every major event.
In addition to being incredibly pleased with the design results of his UltiCards partnership, Leclaire, of UltiPhotos, simply loves the deck. “The intensity on the player’s faces is fantastic,” said Leclaire. “The photo on each card will make every Ultimate player think, ‘I want to make that play!'”
Produced and sold by UltiCards, who have created numerous education decks with partners like the NexGen Tour, see this as not only a great testament to the 2012 Club season but also a great gift for any ultimate player interested in seeing a true showcase of the sport.
Leclaire and his crew reviewed hundreds of shots from the season to select pieces for this deck. They took shots from the US Open, Chesapeake Invite, Labor Day, Regionals and the Club Championships. “A lot of things had to align for a photo to be a candidate,” said Leclaire. “Not only did it have to be one of the sickest skies, layouts, D’s, or grabs by a team, but it had to be a technically excellent photo. It had to be sharp, well composed, with great exposure and no background distractions. Since we were featuring teams, we wanted the team uniforms to be recognizable where possible. It all had to fit in the frame of a playing card, ruling out most layout photos. Finally, I wanted a diversity of types of plays and angles, so you’ll see a fantastic medley of interesting shots.”
When asked what his favorite shot from the deck was, Leclaire quickly pointed out one by Jeff Bell. “The cover photo taken by Jeff Bell is the very embodiment of elite Ultimate and features the very recognizable first pass layout D play from the Open Championship game. There is an equally sick photo from every other division’s Championship game. I could go on and on, but after winnowing down hundreds of candidates, we have the best work of nine different UltiPhotos photographers represented and just about every photo in the deck is a favorite.”
UltiCards is currently taking pre-orders for the deck and will ship worldwide starting November 26.
Though, according to Leclaire, putting together ultimate trading cards made be a task better set for future consideration, he noted that he’d love to partner with anyone interested in pursing it.
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