Another View
I do admire photographers because of their canny ability to capture a moment in time with pictures. This is what Jalen Logan-Redding has self-taught himself to be—a photographer, first on a small camera, then upgraded to a better one.
Logan-Redding is a fifth-year senior defensive lineman at Minnesota. His plans include playing one day in the NFL. But on a hot, sunny August day after practice, he and I talked more about taking pictures than taking down ball carriers and quarterbacks.
“I believe I should be doing [photography] not only to help me and my family, but to build more skills so that I could be marketable,” the 6’4” player from Columbia, MO pointed out. A couple of years ago “I just started shooting. Got experimental with it… Now I’m really heavy into it.
“I’m very visual,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of things I think I would be very interested in—production and directing, photography and videography, and all the stuff that comes into directing, producing and content creation—this is very inspiring to me because I’m truly passionate about it. I plan on starting my own photography business,” said Logan-Redding.
A recent internship at a local automotive dealer served two purposes for Logan-Redding. “I was really interested in the automotive field, and I plan on owning my own business related to that,” he continued. “They needed some help when it comes to social media.”
As a result, Logan-Redding created images for the car dealer through his photography and videography, “not only for myself, but I was doing it for them.”
Right now some of his photography is hanging in Minnesota Defensive Line Coach Winston DeLattiboudere III’s office.
Logan-Redding also took a photography class and had to complete a photo project: “I took the project and thought of it like a photography book,” he explained. “I already thought of a project that I wanted to do for my own portfolio. I called it “The Dinkytown Chronicles.”
Through his lens, he documented “what life is in Dinkytown, what I see Dinkytown being like, the state of what it is going through… We got construction everywhere. You see streets closed off. You see traffic being diverted.
“It was a lot of time lapsing [photography] during the daytime, and then shifted to the nighttime to see the light rail run, see the liquor stores around here, people moving around, and people being outside,” he said. “I did that in the spring of this year,” Logan-Redding said proudly.
He also embarked on a second project using a drone. “I think drone shots make things a lot more unconventional,” he said.
We did get around to talk about football. What brought him to Minnesota?
“Coach [P.J.] Fleck was the only head coach to visit me at my high school… He truly meant what he said. I was super excited. This is a program that’s about me. It fits me.”
Logan-Redding says he is determined to play pro football. But first the three-time Academic All-Big Ten (2021, 2022, 2023) player is working hard to help Minnesota be successful on the field this season, his last as a collegiate.
Minnesota opens its 2024 season on August 29 at home against North Carolina.
But besides football, he pretty much has his post-college life mapped out: “I want to be a multi-businessman.”