Mike Bennett: forty years at the stadium rail

1974–2019 — Professional Photographic Services and Notre Dame athletics

The freelancer who became the institution: Mike Bennett (c. 1950 – 5 August 2019) was raised in South Bend and came to Notre Dame photography through the stadium gate: he began as a stadium usher in 1966, took a tool-and-die apprenticeship, and built a photography career from 1974, managing a commercial studio before going freelance in 1982. His first Notre Dame football game as a photographer, at Pittsburgh that year, put his pictures in the Tribune — "that's how I got my break," he said. In 1986 he founded Professional Photographic Services, the firm that survives as Lighthouse Imaging, and for nearly forty years he furnished, in Notre Dame Athletics' words at his death, the large majority of the department's photography. The obituary the department published on 6 August 2019 is the record of a working photographer's life entire: usher, apprentice, studio manager, freelancer, founder — and the man whose camera stood at the rail for two generations of the university's athletes, in the community across the city line, as the preceding entries' boundary states.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame Athletics (fightingirish.com), 6 August 2019 — the obituary of Mike Bennett: South Bend-raised; stadium usher from 1966; tool-and-die apprenticeship; photography from 1974; commercial studio manager; freelance from 1982 and the Pittsburgh game in the Tribune; founded Professional Photographic Services in 1986 (now Lighthouse Imaging); furnished the large majority of Notre Dame athletics' photography for nearly forty years; died 5 August 2019, aged 69.