During Panthers’ photogenic Super Bowl run, she was the woman behind their camera
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Super Men: The inside story of the 2015 Carolina Panthers
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As a professional photographer (and, currently, a staff photographer for The Charlotte Observer), Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez knows a little something about the importance of being in the right place at the right time.
And as it just so happened, timing was everything when it came to how she wound up being hired as the first female team photographer in the NFL — in this case for the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte ahead of the 2015 season, arguably the most exciting in the organization’s history.
The role for her was two years in the making:
In 2013, while working as a photography intern in her hometown at the Winston-Salem Journal, Melissa got a tip from a Charlotte-based photographer-friend that the Panthers were looking to hire an intern to shoot photos for the team. She initially balked, having been pretty set on daily newspaper journalism at the time. But colleagues convinced her to at least apply.
Despite the fact that Melissa didn’t know much at all about the NFL back then, the Panthers gave her a tryout that she aced thanks to her ability to capture images of the players that felt fresh, unique and surprising; and despite some significant misgivings about leaving journalism, she took the leap.
It was an adjustment for everyone, initially.
“I think it took them a little bit to get used to me,” she says, “because ... just a woman with a camera following them around ... there was an adjustment period for everybody. But eventually, I felt accepted and like part of the team.”
After a year as an intern, she got a promotion of sorts, becoming a contract photographer with the team for 2014. Following that season, thanks in large part to the Panthers having won the NFC South division for the second straight year, the Panthers were able to create some new positions — including one for a team photographer.
They offered the job to Melissa. “And I didn’t even have to think about it,” she says. “I immediately accepted, because at that point, I felt really (connected to) that community.
“So, yeah, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made that I almost didn’t make.”
For our series looking back on the Carolina Panthers’ run to the Super Bowl in 2015, we spoke with Melissa about her time with the team. Here are highlights from that conversation, in her own words, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Amid ‘fun,’ ‘fantastic’ season, a painful fall
When I first started, in 2013, the areas in which I was able to shoot practice were extremely limited. But in 2015, I was allowed to roam freely wherever I wanted, as long as I wasn’t in the way or being a distraction. They were doing more shows and more productions, more behind-the-scenes stories, and it was really great because the players were in a great mood, too — so they were willing to participate. The players were a little more playful with us, to the camera. And throughout the season, we were able to latch on to that.
We weren’t discouraged by Coach (Ron Rivera), whereas sometimes in the past, it would be a case of, you know, “Don’t point the camera at the players, because they’re gonna play to the camera and they need to focus on practice.” But in 2015, they were playing to the camera a lot more, which was great.
I think a lot of that was due to Coach Rivera encouraging them to be themselves, have fun. You know, “Come in with a mindset to work. But there’s also some play. There’s some fun. Let yourself be yourself.”
I liked Cam a lot. Aside from the talent, he just had such a charismatic personality. He was a photographer’s dream, because everything that he did, it was photograph-able. He was so photogenic. He loved to play to the camera. He knew if he played to the camera, I would get a shot and it would do well on social media, it would do well on the web.
I know that there were usually either people who loved him or hated him. And I got a lot of people asking me, “What do you think of Cam?”
I always thought they were asking me not because they really wanted to know, but they were hoping that I would say something negative, and then they could latch on and be like, “I knew it. Ugh, I knew it.” They almost seemed disappointed every time I said like, “Oh, he’s great. He’s fantastic. No qualms.” They would be like, “Oh, he just seems really arrogant.” I’m like, “Wouldn’t you be?”
With the 2015 season, it was just kind of like you were hanging out with your friends as they were winning all these games, and you were just having fun and along for the ride. It was fantastic.
I think before they even started that game against the Saints (in New Orleans, on Dec. 6), the Panthers had already won the NFC South title — a third in a row — and then they ended up winning that game. So it was a lot of celebrating. That’s also when Jerry Richardson was in the locker room and he dabbed. So I was trying to get a picture of that. And I saw one of the video guys on the other side of the room, and he was standing on a chair, and I thought, Oh, I’m gonna do that. So I went over there and I just stepped with my left foot onto a folding chair, but I stepped too close to the back of it — and it just collapsed. My right leg is what I landed on, and it was a spiral fracture in my tibia. I also tore my ACL and MCL, and I broke my thumb.
When I was at home letting it heal, at one point one of my co-workers brought over this huge card, and it was just a piece of poster board that was folded in half, and it said, “Get well soon.” And on the inside, the team had all signed it. My favorite comment — the one that I always remember — is Ryan Kalil said, “Get back soon! My mom needs more pictures of me and no one makes me look better than you!” But every player put something really nice in there, and just the fact that they took the time to send that, or to do that, meant a lot, and made me feel even more like I was part of the team.
Super Bowl tears, but still a ‘magical’ 2015
When you are injured, everything goes on. They don’t stop and wait for you. They just keep moving. So I could see how Kelvin Benjamin felt having to sit out that whole season (after tearing his ACL in training camp) and watch everything from the sidelines. It’s not easy. Like, I don’t have any game photos from the NFC Championship Game. I was able to watch it, which was nice, but I would much rather have been down there with a camera, getting all the action.
I was healthy enough to go to the Super Bowl, though. I was out there a day or two before the team flew in, and there was a big thing about how Bose was the sponsored headphone company for the players that year, and Cam always wore Beats. And so they were just like, “Get the team coming off the plane. But don’t photograph Cam, because Bose is angry that he’s wearing Beats.” But I wasn’t gonna not photograph the quarterback arriving in San Jose for the Super Bowl. Also, he had on these really cool paisley black and gold pants. He had such a unique sense of style. So I wasn’t gonna just leave him out of the photos.
Everyone felt that we had a good chance to win the Super Bowl. Of course, it wasn’t a given, but we felt that we had pretty good odds.
Honestly, it didn’t shift until we were nearing the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, because the team had come back from deficits sometimes in the last moment, and they would win. But they were starting to realize that they weren’t gonna win. And Josh Norman, when the game had ended, he had taken off his jersey and pads, and ... he was sitting on the top of the player bench, and I saw him start to break down and cry — so then tears started coming out of my eyes, because I felt that pain.
It’s not even just sorrow; like, it hurt. It seemed more surreal to lose the Super Bowl than it did to make it to the Super Bowl. I think everyone was trying to process, you know, How are we not the ones out on the field getting that trophy?
And yet I always think back on the 2015 season as one of the best years of my life. That was such a unique opportunity and such a unique position to view that season from. The people that I worked with, just everyone coming together to make things work, all of us having fun, the team having fun. The only thing that I would change about that season is, of course, the Panthers winning. But everything else, not at all. I would go through it again — minus me falling and hurting myself.
It was magical. That’s really the word that keeps coming to me when people ask me about that season. It was just pure magic. I don’t know that anything like that will ever be re-created.
But if it does, then I hope that they are able to take it all the way.
This story was originally published July 16, 2025 at 5:05 AM.
