 Hi everybody. Welcome to another roundtable discussion at the Brooklyn Museum. My name is Hailey Graham and I'm a fellow in the public programs department here. Tonight's talk is being live streamed with the very generous support of the photo brigade in Adorama. So thank you to them. We host these roundtable talks as a spotlight to our special exhibitions and tonight our focus is who shot sports of photographic history 1843 to the present. This show has been guest curated by the fabulous photographic historian Gail Buckland who also worked with the museum in 2009 on the exhibition who shot rock and roll. Round of applause for Gail. Little one. Who shot sports is coming down very soon on January 8th. So tonight we're going to be hearing from world renowned sports photographers Al Bellow, Walter Yoss, John Hewitt and Simon Brudi, moderated by Gail herself. The panel tonight will be followed by Q&A session and afterward we welcome you to enjoy the exhibition on the fourth floor for free by the generous courtesy of Canon and we're very lucky that they did that for us. So round of applause for Canon. Seriously. And then after that please join us at 8.30 in the Who Shot Sports gift shop also on the fourth floor for a book signing with Gail and it looked like a lot of people signed the raffle out front but I just wanted to remind you that there is a raffle going on for a really nice tenba bag by the auditorium entrance if you want to sign your name and your email. So without further ado I want to thank you all for coming and I'm going to hand it over to Gail. Thank you. I want to double that thank you in this cold weather. Thank you so much for coming out but it's going to be really warm and friendly and terrific and I especially want to thank these men on the panel. When the athletes on the field or on the court are taking their shots, the photographers are taking theirs to play and to watch and to photograph sports to be fully in the moment and still photographers these guys are masters of moments and when the action stops the image remains the finest sports photographers and sitting on the stage tonight are four of the world's finest sports photographers. You could not get a better group. I am so honored that they came and I'm so delighted you've come to hear them. They're documenting the front lines of human drama, preserving bodies in motion, giving shape to victory and defeat and capturing the spirit, the nobility of sports. Their pictures are so beautiful, so worthy of being in a museum that I, as a photo historian, I recognize there was a great gap in my field because you didn't find their work in the histories of photography. Their work is part of cultural history, art history, as well as sports history. It's not easy to hear them talk. They're all telling their stories, but they've been doing this for a long time and it isn't an accident when they take one of these great pictures. They're professionals. They're as competitive as the athletes. They photograph people of every gender, every race, every nationality. I mean, they've covered the world because sports is universal and they have given an image to sports. On my right is Walter Yos, next to him is Al Bellow, Simon Brutey, John Hewitt. They all shoot sports and they're all very different in many ways. They overlap in some. Tonight we could, each of them, could captivate you for a whole evening. Their pictures are so, yeah, you could. You could just show your pictures and tell some stories. But I want to do more than just show their pictures. I want to have a dialogue. I want them to speak about their field, about their pictures, to engage in dialogue. And we will have questions and answers afterwards and then you'll be able to address your questions to them. So to begin with, even the cover of my book was a competition. He won. Who's he? Walter Yos. And I had so many photographers tell me, yeah, yeah, he got the cover again, like 300 SI covers. It's just too cool that I am sitting next to the great Walter Yos, who started in 1959. I'm probably the second oldest, I am definitely the second oldest one on this panel. Who's first? You have to beat up. You can go to their websites. They have fabulous websites. Walter's website has so many pictures, even once he's taking now. It's constantly being updated. In 1963, at the age of 19, he was on the Sports Illustrated Mass Pet and had a cover. I mean, he actually shot for them when he graduated high school. That's pretty impressive. We were talking about 68 to 72. We photographed at Atlantic Records, but I guess you got out just in time. I mean, every Super Bowl since the first one, and so much more. Okay, this is Walter. How old were you? This was taken last year. Hey, I just want to thank everybody for braving the trip to Brooklyn tonight and coming here to let us talk to you and share our stories. We don't have all the answers, believe me. Our son was in the front row, looks exactly like us here. I think this was in 1963. It was taken by a life photographer named Bob Peterson. Most of these cameras don't exist. The old Photon, the old Nikon Fs. Was it a problem buying them? No, it wasn't a problem. You had to pay for them. They were the best cameras in the world, and it was a long time ago. You look more like your son than this one. Well, this was taken in Los Angeles. That monster round lens is a thousand millimeter lens. This was probably the greatest lens of all time because what it did was isolate everything. A thousand millimeter depth of field is maybe an inch. So everything's out of focus behind or in front except what you shoot. So you're either in focus or 90% of the time you're out of focus. But this is the way we operated back then. Spot meters, a bunch of cameras, a lot of film laying around, boxes all over the sidelines. It really is a historic picture. Notice the film guys, notice the light meters. Who uses a light meter anymore? You use a light meter? I don't know. This isn't Walter photographing. It's a character study. Let's take it on a swimsuit issue. So this was a plastic wave on the North Shore of Hawaii that we had posed the model in and to make it look like water, we took a hose to spray water over the plastic wave. So it looked like there was actually water dripping now. So that's my Kelly Slater imitation. We'll be looking at his pictures very soon, but I want to introduce Al Bello. He has his fan group from Getty in the audience. There's an old expression by way of Canarsie. He's by way of Canarsie. He is the only born and bred Brooklynite on the panel. And he's really happy to be at the Brooklyn Museum. Okay, here's another one. He went to South Shore High School. Anybody? He doesn't have a beard. How can you be from Brooklyn? He also went to Stony Brook. Anybody graduated from Stony Brook? How did Long Island? Long Island? It used to be a really popular school. Everybody went there. Alice City next to Simon. They both have similar histories and quite different stories. Here's a Brooklyn guy. He was born in England. They both worked for a phenomenal agency called All Sport. And I hope they'll be talking a little bit about just what that type of experience meant for them. But Al came to Getty via one course. At Stony Brook, a lot of perseverance, doing odd jobs and shooting for Ring Magazine. Then he went to All Sport, which was at the time, perhaps the world's greatest photo sports agency. The only one. It was really, really good. And now Al is chief sports photographer for Getting North America. That's pretty prestigious. And honestly, getting them, I mean, each of them flew in or was busy, except for some of the more elderly people who pick and choose. But you were photographing this weekend, right? You said this past weekend? I was in Florida too. I miss it. So was I. I was in Florida too. But they were working. They were working. Simon wanted to be a cricket tour. He wanted to play professional cricket. He didn't. And as he said, he'd probably be serving coffee. Now if he had gone the route of being an athlete, he wanted to be a gym teacher. That didn't happen because he had a summer job and he discovered All Sport. And when you were what, about 19, you started working for All Sport in London. And really, there was a discussion about, you know, having an assistant. These guys made tea and coffee and filed negatives and looked at transparencies and were allowed to take pictures and learn from the best. And that's the way they got to their eminent positions. John came from a different route. He wanted to be an art photographer as far as I could make out, but that was after he didn't know what he was going to do. And he saw the local photographer in his small town driving a Corvette. And he thought, yeah, that's a good reason. I'll be a photographer and drive a Corvette. He also now does incredible work both for the IOC, the Olympic Committee, and also does a lot of commercial work, which he's going to be talking about. What he said to me when I interviewed him is, you know, Nike doesn't ask for much. They just want one photograph to sell a million shoes and his long list of clients. Okay. We are going to now, oh, you know something? I want to show the photographs because I forgot. This is, wait a second. Let me just go back. Okay. Ow. That's you. Who are you photographing? That's me and my friend's pool, who's also a photographer, Bruce Bennett. He let me go in his backyard. And I was just experimenting as an up-and-coming boxer that I had some couple ideas swirling in my head. And yeah, he gave me an afternoon. So it was, you know, it was free. So I took advantage of it. Just a couple of years ago, just working on some pictures of this young guy underwater and out of the water. Just testing out new housing. Normally he's like in full scuba gear, but not in this picture. No, no. It's a pool. Oh, up there? No, that's a different story. That's in the Middle East somewhere. Qatar, I believe. And yeah, just one of those things where I didn't want to be where everyone was. So I just climbed on the light pole. And there I am. Yeah, just in the middle of the world. You're crazy. Fiddling around. Fiddling around. Yeah. And how many rules in Qatar you could do for all you aspiring sport? Well, depends what time and how you do it. Well, this photograph is by Simon. But when I saw it, I thought, this is a brilliant photograph. So I'm going to let Simon talk about it. But see if you can find Al. He's in the picture. He's in the yellow. This is a great picture. Oh, thanks, girl. Yeah, I took this as the end of the Mayweather Pacquiao fight. And I got terrible photographs all through the fight. Because I was in the wrong position. But I thought this one really summed it up because I spent a week with each of these boxes before this fight. And, you know, they're just going behind the scenes. You know, that's one thing a sports photographer gets to do. And it's always amazing. We always see them in the, you know, on the stage earning all the hundreds of millions of dollars, but all the hard work that goes on behind. That's for me where the real photographs are taking place. And I was with Pacquiao. And they were very nice, super respectful of me as a photographer. I went to Mayweather's gym. First, they wouldn't let me in the gym. And as I'm sitting there waiting to get permission to go inside the gym without any cameras, I hear this commotion. And running past me is a guy being chased. Another guy's chasing me with a large knife. That basically summed up how it was going to go with Mayweather. And that's it. That's why I have this picture. Did you have better luck, Al? Me? No, it was a boring as hell fight. I'm in the back over there. In the back over there, bald guy up there, looking at the back of his camera as we all do. Oh, there you are. There's Beck. Yeah, Robert. And yeah, it was just a tough fight. They just didn't fight really. I mean, one of the biggest pay-per-view fights of all time. And it was a bomb of a fight. So yeah, not so great. Not so great. I also put this in just to show the scrum. I mean, how the photographers have to fight for positions. And no matter how famous you are, you're still... Yeah, I was at another Pacquiao fight where he got knocked out. And his corner was devastated. And as I was taking pictures, they attacked me. They jumped over the ring and punched and kicked and ripped my shirt and had to jump off the ring. It was a whole scene. I should have showed you those pictures. Did you earn money? I earned my money that day. Yeah, that was a tough day. But that's how it goes. It's just one day you're out of the action and one day you're right in the middle of it. So you can't avoid it sometimes. I think it's an important... The other thing about it is what Al is mentioning. If the event... Sometimes you don't get any great action photograph just because... Not because of your own fault as a photographer, but sometimes the event doesn't lend itself for you to actually make a wonderful action photograph. You know, you always expect... And the lead up to this fight was huge and everybody was expecting a great fight and it turned out to be a complete dud as the photographs were as well. You're all invited to see the exhibition afterwards and what you're going to see are not the most famous photographs in sports history. You know, the greatest touchdown or the amazing dunk, but you'll see more pictures like this, things that give the flavor. I mean, there are plenty of famous athletes in the show, but I just respect the other view of sports that doesn't always get published, doesn't always get appreciated. And here's Simon working. Sorry, it's a little... I think this was Instagram, off Instagram or something, but... It was, yeah. Yeah, it's a me... Okay, sorry. That's me again. Yeah. That's Michael Phelps. I did a portrait shoot with the three athletes in Rio. You know, what else can I tell you? It was quick. That's me getting in the way of the remote cameras and me being in-field at the Olympics. You know, working in-field at the Olympics is really actually a special position. There are only 16 photographers allowed in the infield. I've got to tell you, I have a love-hate relationship with it. You know, it's great in one way, a lot of freedom, but there's a lot going on and you can get hit by the discus and the javelin. Those things make it a really bad day. I don't think I said that for many, many years. Simon, just like Walter, photographed for Sports Illustrated and we have a nice contingent from Sports Illustrated here. So I guess you got this position because you're a Sports Illustrated photographer, right? No. Oh, no? Yeah, I did. Oh, okay. I'm still learning, folks. Okay. Here it could be Al, but it happens to be John shooting underwater. Was it a commercial shoot? It's the hairline that confuses everybody. Yeah, this was a shoot for Powerade before the London Olympics. This is a Canadian swimmer. I'm shooting in conjunction with television. So above the water, there's 90 people with television cameras and everything else. And usually what happens on TV shoots... I'm coming from a completely different angle than these gentlemen because I'm in the commercial world and I once in a while I play in this world. But we get maybe at the end of the day or when they're changing a lens, you might get two minutes to work with the athlete or you get 15 minutes at the end of the day. So in the meantime, instead of me sitting around, I try to get as much photography done as I possibly can. And then all of a sudden there's an underwater microphone there and a speaker and I'll hear John back up. And then the motion camera comes into the water and I have to stop. That's what that was from. And this is from... This is from last week. Last week on a shoot. Yeah, this is again... This is in Vancouver. Why somebody wants to shoot surfing in Vancouver at this time of the year. I'm not sure. But this is also in conjunction with the television shoot. And the reason I sent this picture is because we had only about seven hours of daylight from sunset to sunrise. Sunrise to sunset. And the television crew had everything. They were in control of the shoot. So we had to go and surf right here. And the second that this... It was a beautiful sunny day, but the second the sun disappeared behind the cloud, which looked like for the day. There's, okay, sprint's turn. Go ahead, we're done. So I have no sun. It's going down. I have about an hour before there's no sun at all. And I have a $4,000 a day drone team who... Drone. Drone. A helicopter thing who can't get at the work. And I have a client staring at me saying, we need this overhead shot. So this is my handheld drone shot. This is like, come up with something fast, put a 14 millimeter lens on, and start walking as deep as I can into the water. Okay. Can I add something about TV and still shoots? Sure. Since you do both, the still photographer is always like the bastard child on these shoots. Yeah, you're the second one. You are... You might as well be in a corner, because they really don't want you there, but they have to have you there. And you get no time except when they don't need it. So it's a very hard job to do in many ways, because you get no time, and you're a step child. And the agency doesn't look at you any differently. I mean, it's... I've been on jobs where it's $14 or $15 million media buy for the print ad that I'm supposed to get in a minute and a half when they're deemed me socially accessible to go out there. Yeah, John. I think we should discuss that people think you have a lot more time. When you look at pictures, you look at pictures, it's nice and slow, everything's stopped here. But, I mean, for instance, with Phelps at the Olympics, to get three people gold medalists, how much time do you have? They're whisked in, everything's like this. I mean, you happen to have a relationship with Phelps, but everything's like this. It's just in and out. People think you have an hour with someone, maybe you have five minutes. I've had two minutes on a stopwatch. I've had 60 seconds on a stopwatch with athletes. But that's almost part of the fun. Can you do it in 60 seconds, or can you do it in seven minutes? And can you do something that's going to be better than anybody else's photo? I'm more memorable. Part of the way, I think it's almost part of the game. Right. I sort of enjoy it. Like, if you get an athlete and you've got seven minutes, seven and a half minutes with Tiger in three poses. I'm on the clock. I'm out of there in seven minutes because you always want to beat them. It's a game. So it's a game between the athlete and the photographer. And once with Tiger, everything's fast. It's seven and a half minutes. So how do you slow a situation down? So when Tiger arrived, the hug, how are you doing? And I started to talk very slowly and bring it down. Then I said, I want to show you what we're going to do. And instead of showing him some tests we did the day before, I showed him some swimsuit pictures. So I took him off his game. It was something like, oh, do you know so-and-so? So now I knew I had him. He shoots the swimsuit issues. That's a good card for the athlete. OK. And now we're going to take a look at some photographs that probably took less than seven seconds to take. These are, I'm going to ask the three of them. After Walter talks briefly about each picture and tells you what they are, which ones they wish they had taken. What an embarrassing question. And later we're going to see Walter's, Michael Jordan, I've grouped those later on in the series. So Walter, I love it, but what is it? Well, this is basketball in the 60s. This is, I mean, maybe the greatest rivalry in the history of basketball. As teams in Celtics versus the Philadelphia 76ers, that's Bill Russell and Will Chamberlain. This is 1967. This is a long time ago. But this is the Mecca for basketball. Boston, I think, has always been a very special place for sport. You know, it's a very small city, possessed with its teams in New England, in the Sox. Very special town. This is what they call a tip-off. This is the beginning of a game in 1967. And it's gorgeous. And I just respond to these as pictures because I don't know very much about sports, but it's gorgeous. And I love this one. It's the cover of my book. Well, there's one thing that, you know, makes these interesting outside of the moment. This is a long time ago also. And I know a friend of ours has talked about this. When you used to go to arenas, smoking was allowed. So the whole arena was full of smoke. So it's now in TV. You see smoke machines creating this hazy light. This was the light you had all the time. And you used to put your strobes not in the ceiling. I used to bring them myself. And you put them in the mezzanine so they were low. So it was more theatrical lighting than this overhead light that you're forced to do in a lot of arenas now. And this was taken with a Hasselblad on Kodachrome, I guess. Ectachrome, I imagine. Wow. Celestial. I paired these together. These are both in the 60s, 67. And this is the first game I ever went on the sidelines of a football game. My team was Baltimore. I didn't grow up in Baltimore, but I grew up in the Colts. And I was very nervous. And there used to be a program on TV called Pro Football Highlights every Thursday that I watched religiously. And so I wore all khaki clothes in case I could see myself on the replays on Pro Football Highlights on Thursday at 7.30. So after he made this catch, which was maybe as far as John and I are away, I jumped up in the air and leaped on his back because of the cold thin. And of course, next week, they showed it and as soon as I came off his back, they edited it out. So I succeeded in a strange way. And the reason he bobbled the ball is his pinky fell under the ball. Aren't you glad he came out on a cold night? And, well... Well, this was in the World Series in 67. One of these things that you never see happen again. A guy sliding, that's Kurt, Kurt Flood in the background. He's going back to first base. This is a slide into home where you see the ball coming out of the outfield. You talk about milliseconds. Maybe this was four frames a second. The odds of four frames getting the ball on these two guys on a motor is minuscule. But this is how pictures are taken. I mean, you're not planning this to happen. Things happen. All of us just work in the moment most of the time. It's not like you're planning ahead for five years from now. The next job is always what's most important, right, guys? Sports photographers are very in the moment. Well, anyone recognize this guy? O.J. Simpson. This is his last college game. He was retiring his jersey. USC, UCLA in California. So the jersey in his hand was being retired. This was his last college game in 1967 when he was still a god. I see these incredible contributions to the history of photojournalism. I mentioned before, cultural history. I mean, they're so rich as images. And yes, they're also about sports, but they're about so much more. Well, these are certainly two of my favorite athletes of all time. I'm going to say Jack, I love, but Arnold Palmer, who recently passed away, and Joe Namath. Let's start with Namath here. Once again, if he had lost the Super Bowl, this picture would have meant nothing. Another photographer, Neil Leifer, who's a friend of ours in a photographer for years, was given the best assignment. He was assigned to the Baltimore Colts, which they were supposed to win the Super Bowl. I was assigned to the Jets, so like a bad assignment. So Joe would hold court at the pool. This picture would have meant nothing if they lost. You know, no one plans this. I didn't even remember shooting it, actually. And Palmer Nicholas, I was invited into the clubhouse. Half a roll of film. I was just led in there. I was following Palmer around. They sat down. They were smoking. I took 20 pictures and it was over. I mean, I didn't plan on going this room. Both of them have become iconic, and maybe we'll talk about what that means later. Well, this was taken in Miami. I always think of Miami as colorful. This is the great Dan Marino. One of the great quarterbacks came out of Pennsylvania playing for the Miami Dolphins. I mean, now you see a lot more color because of digital. I mean, this must have been quite remarkable when you did it. Well, the sign behind me was remarkable. I was very concerned with backgrounds in any picture I take. This was taken with that massive thousand millimeter. So I stationed myself in the end zone and shot hoping I could get something to take place in front of that sign. So you're going to throw away 90% of the game. Maybe something happens in front of it. So I think you have to take chances to take pictures. I mean, you go to a game, you're going to throw away 50% of your take. Maybe more if you go to a game. Maybe 90%. You're looking for one picture. I mean, that's the way I always think of a job, to get one good picture out of there. It really doesn't matter. If you could take one great picture, that's a success. But I've always felt that way when you go into jobs. Well, maybe I'm going to move a little quicker because I want to make sure everybody gets a chance. One of the things Walter always says is, he loves photographing kids playing, and he loved playing stickball by himself. Here you have Cuba, and I'm not sure where... Brazil. Brazil. That's where we all came from. Anyone like sports started with those kids. I mean, that's the first people I photographed. I was so young. Who else was I going to shoot with my friends? So, yeah. Total access with kids. This isn't upside down. He wants it this way. We finally have Serena. I want to see quite a few of her. And who's on the left? Cristiano Ronaldo. It took him about four seconds to take his shirt off. This was taken on the giant 20 by 24 inch Polaroid camera. Oh, beautiful. I mean, the greatest camera of all time. Walter likes Polaroids at any size, he was telling me. At any size Polaroid. This was part of the seven minutes and 30 seconds, by the way, with Tiger Woods. It's monumental. This was a situation two. Really good. And... Kobe and Jack. You can see they're really enthused about the shoot, as most athletes are. Okay, John, which one do you wish you had taken? All of them? If I leave one out, I don't want to insult them. No, no, no. I just want one. And why? You have to go back through them all over again. Okay, Simon. I think all of them. I mean, you know, I think Walter had a style, and that's the way he dealt with the athletes. It wasn't just the photographs he was taking. I mean, these three gentlemen right here, I've been following their work forever. I mean, I've been following Walter because I got my first sports illustrated when I was probably six. And he's already in it. So this is, to me, I'm sort of like everybody here with a better seat. So I'm just... Wait till you see some of his photographs. It's undue modesty. So all of these... Well, again, and once in a while, Walter and I would bid on jobs together, against each other. And I would get a couple, he would get a couple. And I know that I always would look at it and be like, damn, I wish I got that job. And it's that way with any photographer I've known, is I see photographs. I wish I could get them, but that's not my vision either. So it's like, I love all these photographs. And they're Walter's photographs. And I would probably go into that room and take those... If I was asked to do the same thing right after Walter, with the same thing, same background, same camera, mine would be different. I don't know if it would be better or worse, but it would be different. You guys are very practical. This is an imaginary owl. Do you wish that one of these was in your court? There's actually a series you didn't show. I would take your series on Cuba when you went to shoot the Cuban athletes, not just that one picture, but that whole series was one of my favorite series of photos I've ever seen. And you didn't show any of the Thai kickboxing. He sent them. I didn't put them there. Yeah, I did it out. I mean, that's opinions, right? But you didn't show it, but I would have said those two things would have been two things I would have loved to have had a crack at, for sure. And then one singular photo, you didn't show it either, but Jordan with the towel, I just think that's one of my favorite portraits of all time. But probably not with the towel, I don't think. So that's my true honest. Okay, well, here's something to compare. In my research, they're both called the catch. Does that, can there be two catches? So Al and Walter talk about what makes for an iconic picture, and these are both really iconic. You really showing those side by side? Yeah. I'll tell you a story. I was 11, maybe. I was just telling Walter this, and I was, you know, like John getting sports illustrated, and I remember when that happened, and I was a kid. I was like 81, maybe, right? I saw that on the cover, and I went, I just saw that on TV. It's inspiration right there, you know. And all these years later, look, I mean, we're sitting here talking about the picture on the right, the picture on the left. It's just, it's a little too crazy for me right now. Isn't it nice to see grown men act like little kids? 2014. Yeah. Your picture's pretty good. It's really good. I put it in my heart. Whatever, I'm just, you know, having a lot of time right now. But it's, yeah. Go ahead, Walter. Well. What do you see? Well, I mean, I saw this game on TV. I mean, I love watching pro football, and there were a hell of a lot more photographers at this game than the San Francisco Dallas game in 82, with a lot of cameras. But, I mean, you talk about milliseconds and focus and where you are and how things happen to come in front of you. I mean, you could have been somewhere else than pictures and happened. This is the luck of the draw. Yeah, it's funny. The old saying, chance favors the prepared man. So he was ready for this, and then it happened. Yeah. Well, the thing was, I mean, the only reason I was there in that position was because at Giant Stadium, I mean, a lot of people here in New York, anyone who's gone photograph there, MetLife Stadium is probably one of the worst stadiums to try and take pictures in, for a lot of reasons. Two being that on each side of the sidelines, there are scoreboards that run from the 30 to the 30, and they're bright and they're neon, and it's almost impossible to shoot side to side on that field without getting this massive LED scoreboard in the background that runs across your picture. So I tend to spend a lot of my time in the end zone. It's one of the cleanest spots to work with background-wise, where there aren't yellow-coded security guards or other photographers or, you know, random hangers on just being on the sideline. And as Walter said, these days, we were talking before, when you got that picture in the late 60s, when your first game, how many people was on the sideline? Think about it. Not too many, right? Nowadays, it's just... It was like an empty sideline. It's an empty sideline. So it's... That was the reason I was in that corner. It was clean. I knew Beckham was up and coming. They were having a hard time keeping up with Dallas. They went to their passing game. I stayed in the end zone at the 50, and he launched a bomb to Odell Beckham. And he had just started coming on in his rookie year making some nice catches. And, you know, like Walter said, right place, right time. So there we were. Okay. A few... Three photographs now that you shot of Serena. I think I've told you this before, but, I mean, I don't know if you guys agree with me, but she is one of the greatest athletes to photograph on this planet Earth. You know, regardless of what you think of our off the court, I mean people out in the audience who have photographed us up here, there is nobody who is as emotionally wonderful who spreads the court like she does that can stretch from side to side in beautiful hair and backlit pictures and expressions and tantrums and action and dives and screaming and yelling and it's endless. Oh, there. See? Yeah. It's every time almost. You know, it could be a first round match. It could be the Grand Slam Final. Serena Williams is spectacular and I'll really be sad when she leaves tennis. But these are so sculptural, the light on her. I mean, as we move into like, I'm sitting between, you know, two people who I looked up to and learned from, you know, Simon especially just watching his work and the way his style and the style how I grew up in sports photography is how I try to apply it to this day. They're beautiful. Thanks. And here, just... Oh, that. That was my night off at the Olympics. I... I just finished swimming. I was doing eight days of swimming and I think I had to do something. Oh, we did Phelps. We had to do a portrait shoot with Michael Phelps, I think. He's doing it for Sports Illustrator, did it for Getty. And then I had the time to myself and I thought, well, I haven't seen the track yet. Let me just go see what it's all about. And I just worked my way around the finish and I knew there was a lot of celebrations just past the finish and these just had the four by 100s and the girls beat the Jamaicans and it was one of those moments, you know, where I was just looking again, I was just looking for a clean spot to shoot into and they stopped and looked at the scoreboard and there's been a lot of those kind of photos but I was pretty happy it was kind of clean and it was a nice little moment. It was there and then it was gone, it was just like that. You can see I'm pushing women athletes right now and they're four guys and that's also a question you can ask later. But here we have John Photograph. John did a very beautiful book and exhibition on street basketball all in black and white and he shoots color too, obviously but he has a great affinity for black and white and Simon's picture is so much about color. Also, I normally don't like when you decapitate a woman but there's just there's a lot of history. Edward Weston did it all the time, lots of photographers did but there's so much expression in her hands I actually don't mind but here you have the same subject and maybe Simon tell me why you photographed in this way and John why you photographed in that way same same athlete, amazing for me it was Walter talked about it earlier trying to figure out I was trying to get all three athletes Phelps Ledecky and Biles together and we were waiting on Phelps to show up so I was just trying to I was just trying to keep everybody busy that's really what it came down to. But you're happy with it, I mean it's a great picture yes I mean the one thing as a photography it doesn't matter if you shoot white black, orange, you don't ever think of any of that in your photograph female, male, I mean I never it doesn't cross my mind I'm just looking for one great photograph Does it cross your mind John if you're photographing a woman athlete or a male athlete well no I mean it's not that I treat anybody differently I think that female athletes to me have there's a deepers sort of feeling to them that you don't get from men men tend to be a little more guarded and the women seem to be a little more emotional and I think if you can drag that out of them that's great the thing with this photograph this was for Kellogg's this was for a cereal box not that photograph I had the luxury of spending four hours with her doing all this stuff but the one thing especially nowadays athletes are really guarded they try not to show themselves they'll come and they'll do what you want to do and smile and you want them to smile but to try to get sort of something that's a little more real it's tougher but in between takes this is when the agency is looking at the monitor and deciding which one they like the actual shot is her jumping on the balance beam and this is so the two of us are sitting there the monitors behind me and I'm just waiting for them to say shoot more, shoot less and same with her and this is when I took the picture because again this was a very unguarded moment I think I'm quite as concerned that's when I'm doing my edit my retouching this just I think felt so much better in black and white because there was so much color around her uniform is that bright? is red is the one over there on the other picture thanks okay here's two I mean one of the sections in my exhibition is called Vantage Point it seems to be a critical issue in sports photography where you physically stand where you have your camera and these are I think these are pretty self-explanatory so I think we'll move on Simon's on the left from the which Olympics? which Olympics? it's from Sochi first women's ski jump and this is also women's Canadian hockey Vancouver but the one thing I want to say about that particular photo is the first day that I shot hockey I put in the remotes over top of both goals went down and shot the game at the beginning both teams were huddled around their goal so I shot that and then for the rest of the game every time there was action near the goal I shot it as much as I could and hockey is a constant movement when you're shooting it it's so fast so when I was very excited to see what I got and in the time I put them up I went and sat in my position I misjudged which remote was firing so I have this photograph right here and I have the other team around their goal and I have about 600 photographs of a goal they standing by themselves watching what's going on at the other end oops sometimes it's luck we could call that luck or bad luck but I do want to say Simon there are art photographers big name art photographers who have photographed a picture very similar to yours but their intention was the museum wall their intention was a gallery they shot thinking about how to hang that picture and I assume more or less all of you shoot maybe John not so much always for the magazine page or for what Al calls the machine but aesthetically I mean these are right up to what I see in museums but I think that all of us whoever we're working for you have to shoot for yourselves and no matter what assignments being given to you, people hire you to do a certain thing if you get there they want something else and I think it's always important you know I've told our son as a photographer you have to shoot for yourself if you take a picture that you think is good then you may have done something and that's what they really want in the end is for any photographer to bring what you can give to a situation to that final set of pictures remember that yeah I mean the thing is you know I worked at sports for a while and there's two director of photographers from the magazine in the crowd there and they were always they understood how you worked as a photographer the art department didn't they wanted to sort of formulate the photograph before you actually got there and so they had these great ideas and you'd get there and there'd be no room to shoot anything so I mean I think you always listen to what as Walter said the client wants and you should be shooting for yourself I think 90% of the time what they expect never takes place and I'm glad when a client is on the shoot to see the disaster that's taking place in front of your eyes because you know what they don't want to hear it I mean we could go on all day they don't want excuses but they're very happy to have great photos there is no excuse that's the bomb on you have to show up with a picture John these are just a series from your extensive shooting and it's just maybe it's the antithesis of the swimsuit issue John, you photograph very kind of direct you know behind the scenes pictures well this is a Canadian speed skater this is in Sochi my job at IOC is a little bit different than what Simon does at the Olympics is that I have to along with capturing whatever action I can do I need to capture sort of the whole environment so you see the whole world of the Olympics so I get access to go into some training areas that other people don't get allowed to or I have other connections to go through the Canadian Olympic Committee because the short track speed skaters to me are fascinating and so I got to spend a little time during their practice and then afterwards they sat for me and again this was all of three or four minutes so you don't have really time to kind of think about like maybe if I moved her to a slightly different spot this is where she was taking off her shoes so I have to kind of work with what that was but again I didn't want her to sit there and smile at me because the strength in her eyes to me is what says everything about the photograph I mean the other thing I want to say is that you know I myself and Walter you know have incredible luxury just wandering around trying to come up with a different photograph I mean if you're working for a newspaper I mean you've got to come up with a very different photograph you know it's kind of I don't know if I could do that you know I wanted to try and shoot from a different angle and Sports Illustrated always wanted you to sort of pursue that and sometimes you'd miss a great action photograph somebody crossing the line because I was wandering around keep that thought Al we'll be asking you about so it's a whole party I get it here there's a one of your Olympic photographs on the left and I'm going to show these two and then I'm going to also show these two and just I'm going to just ask one question John the shooting sports you know for the Olympics does that how does that inform your commercial work I mean well actually let me back up tell us about your first use of real athletes in commercial work because this is important because before John started shooting for Reebok yeah a lot of different brands but that story is probably better with the game photos but the thing about me is that my commercial work affects what I shoot at the Olympics not the other way around I gain a lot of knowledge about myself from shooting at the Olympics because you 28 days of non-stop shooting all day long you learn about what you can do what you can't do what to look at what you see but I try to bring what I do commercially into that world not the other way around okay this is a series that really knocked me out I hadn't seen it before these are Simon's photographs from the Paralympics I think Simon I'm just going to go through them and then go back so people get a feeling for this body of work I'm going to go back now talk about it a little bit I think they're remarkable yeah the one's a studio portrait obviously I did a series of images earlier in the year and it was USOC to bring the Paralympians together and also the Olympians together in like a media scrum Sports Illustrated has its own little studio where I was shooting from and so I had a mix I had the able-bodied and then I'd have the Paralympians the Paralympians were much better the photograph they were into being photographed way more enthusiasm and you know it was all of them across the board were interesting to photograph and then I went to the Paralympics at the end of the year and I'd never been to a Paralympics before I'd been to the Rio game so I was going back so it was great to have the knowledge of the same stadiums and where not to get mugged but again the enthusiasm for the Paralympians is pretty amazing to see the one thing I didn't think about there are so many different categories for everything just to give you an example the 100 meters in the Olympics men's and women's there's probably 7 or 8 races Paralympics there's about 300 100 meter races lots of different categories and it was an experience powerful yeah I mean it's certainly you know if I had a hangover there was people that had it worse that day than me so I was definitely I was focused well I just chose these two but one of the things I keep on seeing whether it's Walter or John or Simon or Al's pictures the way they use shadows I mean really dramatically and these are just really good examples of you know I mean I wrote about one of Walter's pictures his famous blue dunk as if you know it's assisting Chapel that Jordan seems to be playing with his shadow but certainly aesthetically I think all of you have mastered the order of shadows as you know better than any you know other group that I know of Al here's a series of your pictures selected just because I like them so much but do you want to how many frames did you get like this I mean what are the odds of this yeah that's the one it doesn't even look real it was a remote but I set it up one of those things we were talking about before we almost want to go back to smaller events we don't have any more down in Florida and it's low-key real low-key but still world-class divers come and we'd love to go down and I get down there and just every idea in my head I would try and implement and so just set up a remote on a 10 meter board and had them this is part of the event and I had a lot of people spin through but these guys just spun the right way and the clouds helped clouds, weather, sun the shapes what great sports photography does also shows us what we could never see with our naked eye especially when you're doing remotes you know in John's picture and Simon's done a billion remotes and we've all done it but you have to see it in your head first what you think is going to happen and hope it happens and a billion things could go wrong remote stone fire, television interference you forget to turn the camera off I'm not the one to remote on I've done it, I've shot on the wrong channel you buffer your disc when in film days you run out of film it's just anything can go wrong but it didn't have to so thank goodness for that that's one of many head-ons of Michael that I've done over the years the difference is it's the first heat must have been a semi or a final because that's when the water is most still and that's what you really need when you shoot and head-on stuff the water is like glass when you're going through all the heats the water turns up and it doesn't have that sheen like it does before a final or a semi so that's the idea behind trying to get that so I just learned from watching and observing a lot of the time that was a picture of the Jets won a big game and they were interviewing Fitzpatrick and all the photographers were in the front and I actually learned from a lot of things from Simon one of the things he always told me was walk away from the pack see what you can do away from everybody else you know and I think you told me don't be a sheep, be the wolf something like that I remember it like yesterday oh other thing he told me I don't need to embarrass you too bad I'm doing it anyway six peas proper preparation prevents piss poor performance he told me that you have to say it with a British accent proper preparation sorry Dick Van Dyke proper preparation proper preparation prevents piss poor performance proper preparation prevents piss poor performance you have to have alliteration thanks man yeah that's when Jita broke his ankle in the playoff it was a big deal the Yankees went right down after that it was a big play it was one of those things that you just you're on it, you know it was a grounder, he stepped wrong he still tried to make the play as he would do because he's such a great player but he broke his leg that day he broke his ankle actually I just like the angle so much I didn't know the story oh that was here at the Barclay Center maybe a year or so ago I just noticed both fighters were in fighting and you know when fighters put their heads on each other's shoulder they're susceptible to getting hit with uppercuts so I just stayed on, I just kept focusing on their heads and watching watching for uppercuts and sure enough this guy's head popped up from doing a lot of they sit down on their punches and they just they just put their head on their shoulders and you just know to look for that I guess you just learned to look for that kind of stuff and I guess you only see that in photographs that face right or could you actually see it yeah he was beat up, that guy well I hate to ask tactical questions what do you think your shutter speed was? yeah I know what it was 2500 at f3.2 and we couldn't do that in the film days but now you could really get away with it definitely ASA 4000 yeah I'm pretty sure ASA doesn't matter anymore no but it works the cameras we use now that's just after a MMA fight the guy had a rough night I guess at this stage I should say they all use cannons am I allowed to say that yes cameras are awesome oh this was a it's a spot at the US Open it's a special spot it's going to go away unfortunately because they're rebuilding the whole area of the US Open with domes and everything else but I noticed Arani, every tennis player serves a certain way whether they bring the racket in front of their head behind their head everybody has a way of where they put their hand and I always notice she served with her mouth open and this goes back to just shooting tennis and I thought oh she's on grandstand oh it's sunny out oh she's going to look up in the sky and she's going to open her mouth I said if I can just time it right I might get something out of it and it worked and it worked and it worked and I didn't get it the first day I couldn't do it and I was very upset because I didn't think she'd be back on that court sure enough two days later they put it back on the court and I ran over there with just a little more concentration and I kept missing the racket I kept clipping it or I couldn't get it in focus one thing or the other and then finally this one we're going to have to move a little faster because I want to hear some no no no I love every minute of it it's my fault Simon these pictures by you all are incredible vantage points all surprising nothing but you know somebody without your talent and experience could even get in my opinion wow thanks girl I mean look at this you're the first person that said that ever I mean the thing is just quickly they're overheads and you know it's such a different perspective you know very different views and I just got to be up there so you know this is not a great jpeg this anybody could take to it seems to me that you really know how to focus yeah I mean it goes back to that thing I was talking about earlier about sports illustrated you know giving you the latitude or the luxury not just to get the win across in the line Sports Illustrator had a photographer at the finish line and I was basically wandering around trying to figure out what I was going to do and you know they had a new these are things you're just thinking of them on the go and they had a new stand built near the finish near the start line and I snuck up there and decided to use the crowd and get them at the start when they're together yeah and all of you photograph kids playing amateur sports this is particularly lovely your website you chose this to open your website I don't know why I love this photograph it was in Africa this year it was in Zambia and yeah why not I'm photographing for myself so why shouldn't I show what I like and this leads into John's series of street basketball kind of I'll go through them and you talk I mean again beautiful shadows beautiful forms the as we were talking about earlier the whole street basketball that all came from is that when I first started shooting sports for advertising there really wasn't a whole lot of people shooting sports for advertising most of the the stuff you saw was like a basketball player standing still on a basketball court with flames behind him or my first time but my first big name athlete I ever photograph was Larry Byrd standing on a pedestal with his accomplishments and it was a poster for converse so I started doing some work with Reebok and Reebok won a media photograph their catalog of all their different clothing lines and so then Reebok hired models they went to modeling agencies got a couple of people who were fit and put them in their clothes I convinced them that they should use real athletes people who actually run people who actually play basketball and basketball was particularly hard to cast because you can't get high school guys because that will ruin eligibility for college people who are playing in college don't want to do it because that could hurt their in college and that's the age rings they're looking for so the only place that we could find people to cast was street basketball players and at the time my knowledge of street basketball was fairly small I knew about the record tournament every year that people had talked about I've seen some films about it so we bring in the basketball players we shoot was out at Venice Beach was the first one we did at the basketball court at Venice Beach and after it was over the sunlight was so beautiful and I have these incredible athletes in front of me and so I just did some portraits and that I kept doing that I was always doing that and that turned into I won an award in communication arts for it then that turned around Nike saw it and hired me to do the street basketball campaign for New York City and it was the first time that it was a strictly outdoor campaign there was no print in any magazines whatsoever these were in bus shelters on subways and they were only in the areas where kids played street basketball and it was such a successful campaign and the reason we thought it was successful is that it was a honor if you could or I don't know if it's an honor but it would be it was a challenge for somebody to steal all 19 of the different ads like taking them out of the subways or taking them out of the bus places and so then Charlie Meltzer approached me about doing a book and this is how this became what it was and then I became I learned all about street basketball in every city in the country and traveled to all these different cities it took about five years to put it all together well we're going to end with Walter but I'm not going to end with Walter talking because I want to have time for questions but after street basketball I think I really wanted to put this guy with this guy in it's about a relationship it's about trust it's about great photography my chair is collapsing here it's not I guess it means the time is oh my god it really is I got a lot of crackling going on down here then it's best you know we just saw street basketball now we're seeing God's he's falling through we have to end pretty soon or if somebody could get another chair I feel like a warehouse this is terrible and I do want to end because they were dreamers when they were this teenagers and now they're on the stage and they have they're still humble enough to fall through I do want to leave some questions time for questions how do you want to work this in the audience raise your hand if you want to ask a question and then I will formally thank my round table hers who's done such a great job made it so much easier than my nightmares last night is there a question while we're waiting everyone's invited to see the exhibition courtesy of canon we're very appreciative there's normally a small charge and they've bought tickets for all of you and there will be a book signing and I want to do we have a question yet? okay okay thanks so much for doing this I'll admit I had no idea who the four of you were before tonight I'm going to take all of your photos I love sports and I like photography so I thought this would be cool to come to my question is my greatest sports moment is seeing Aaron Boone's 11th inning home run in the game 7 2003 ALCS what's your greatest moment that you ever got to witness if you had to rank any of them? that's a good question they may have seen them so you should be focused really on what's happening in front of you only a few times have I felt something special happening in front of me and realized it maybe at the end of the game I've talked to a writer and asked them that was a really boring game that was the greatest game ever and when you're looking through a long lens you have a very very different perspective to someone sitting in the bleachers with a lot of beer can I add something to that because you don't see the game in many ways a lot of times I had no idea what the score was because your whole life is through a 600mm or 400mm I mean that was my first lens so my whole life was edited out as a kid and that's what you do, you edit out everything else is there I mean for me I'd have to say probably as a New York Giants football fan when they I've never been able to go to having gone to a Super Bowl where they've won or been except 2011 so as a fan and a photographer it was a special moment for me because while they were celebrating I shouldn't say this I was calling my father from the field and just going dad we did it we did it and then what's funny is Victor Cruz did this documentary on Showtime and you could see after he won he was making his way to the podium and there I am in the background on my phone going dad we did it we did it when I should have been taking some pictures but it was quick but I have of the TV because I laughed and I sent it to him it's a bond between father and son I think that at least drew me away from concentrating on the game which Simon is right it's probably the only time I stepped away from myself as a doing a job as opposed to turning into a fan good answers another question I was just going to ask as we look through your your repertoire it strikes me that the photos you take are across of action shots, portraiture photojournalism how do you each balance that when you're at an event these are all different perspectives and have different priorities how are you balancing that when you're on the field well I mean each assignment is different I mean if you're assigned to do action you're not doing portraits if you have a portrait assignment you're not to worry about the action so much we've all done something called the action portrait which it's when you control the athlete my goal was always to get the athlete in a place where you want them in the light where you want them where you have control of what they do for maybe 10 minutes but everything is set up in advance we've all done and this is I mean that's my favorite thing and for me and I won't speak for these gentlemen but the one thing that all those different things have in common is they're all photographs and I don't look at if I'm shooting at the Olympics I'm shooting an action shot but if I see somebody sitting quietly reflecting I'm going to do a portrait of that I always say if I can get the athlete to look at me it's a portrait but it's not something for me that I consciously switch back and forth from I'm a photographer I'm taking pictures that's what it is to me I mean I like the variety I get pretty bored doing the same thing over and over again so the ability to change and do a portrait is a very different skill to actually shooting action on the sideline so I love that variety it keeps me a little bit more in the image shop yeah it's the same for me I feel that I mean who I work for I work for Getty Images you got to wear a lot of hats actually in juggle it's a constant juggling act of keeping clients happy with following a story and you know you might have a list of some things you got to do and then also trying to get these kind of pictures on the screen so it's what presents itself you know a little bit from where I'm coming from if it's a tough game and the quarterback's having a really tough game and he threw three interceptions well part of the story is him being depressed on the sideline or sitting by himself on the bench or you know it's just so that's what drives me a little bit to go from doing action to portraits on the sideline or a commercial job as well it's a nice step on the brakes kind of thing where you can you know if you miss the picture you can go oh could you do that again you know so most of these all these action shots you can't just go oh could you do that again some pictures are repetitive like tennis but you can never get that one shot again you only get one shot when you shoot an action so I have one more question so obviously the athletes and their skills are usually larger than life the situations are also larger than life and so that leads to a lot of very heroic pictures the way the athletes are portrayed but now when you see with the big scandals in sports going on with like the doping and you know there are so many aspects where you can see now a darker side and which is also part of life is there a way that you make your visual approach to portray this complexity when you when you cover these major events I would say not unless you're doing a story if someone sent you out to do drugs and sports what no one's going to send you out to do because no one's going to advertise it I mean listen there's drugs or scandals in every world I mean put yourself in an athlete's shoes you're 23, 24 you've got a $10 million contract everyone's throwing everything at you I mean it's only human you're going to do things when you're young you may regret it 35 and the athletes of 10 or 15 years ago say Jordan before the the internet took over he may have changed the way he lived because everything's public now it's just a different world you have to be very careful I think I'm always sensitive to the athlete I mean part of the reason I'm there is because of the athlete so I mean I'm always aware if they're doing something on the sideline I'm photographing it I'm photographing it if he's injecting himself with a large syringe that's a great photograph really be published I'm not going out of my way I'm never going out of my way to disparage any of the athletes I mean as I said the hard work they put in is pretty amazing to see we probably have time for just one or two more as a photographer what do you call to you guys what is a perfect picture if there's such a thing to you and if there is such a thing to you how do you find in all of your photos let's say you're doing an event how do you find that perfect picture for me the perfect picture is the next one still looking for it I can't answer that still looking for it talk to this guy I think there's one thing that we've sort of glossed over in this whole thing there's wonderful pictures you've seen tonight I deal with light and every great picture starts with light if you have a chance to do it I mean 90% of these pictures with the shadows with the lights have all been special because of what's been brought there whether it's natural light or whether you strove it because it's always about the same thing my question had to do with particularly with boxing and the access and the space that's available and how especially for a high profile event like the Pacquiao fight how the packing order is established and how the boxing management controls it or the publications and if you could speak on that subject and also how you deal with each other if you give somebody space or you elbow somebody out of the way and I guess following up on that the sports where access is very very restricted that you wouldn't think of yeah most definitely it's restricted in pretty much every sport because if they let everybody in there'd be no room it goes according to I guess sort of I guess what's important to how do you say it Simon it's just if it's a small weekly paper whether it's a sports illustrated or a big agency the small paper is going to lose out if it's on a boxing ring let's say there's only so many positions you can get as far as elbowing or pushing people out of the way you want to be treated you treat people the way you want to be treated and of course it's a very physical thing that we do and you do get you bump into each other but as far as I'm concerned unless someone inflicts something upon me which has happened and then you deal with it but my intent and most of my friends who I work with their intent is not to harm the person next to them we need to work together it's a very small circle of sports photographers out there you'll see each other all over the country and all over the world and if you get that reputation kind of a jerk then no one's going to want to help you out if you need that extra battery that ran out your camera went down you're stuck on a ski mountain because if you're a jerk no one's going to want to help you the basic rules you treat people as you want to be treated say please and thank you it's real simple going back to what Walter said on that other question light composition background those are three things that constantly swirl in my head when I'm out there trying to shoot somebody or something I think the boxing is a slightly different game to everything else there's always a way to getting ringside to shoot it there's always a back door the promoter wants the guy somebody knows of somebody else that's how boxing has always been a little bit shady to be honest with you but I mean just to reiterate what Al said I mean working with other sports photographers it gets a little heated but you never know when you need a spare battery as Al said well we're going to have to wrap this up I am so thrilled that we ended by talking about capturing light as well as capturing sports capturing players because these are four amazing photographers at the heart of photography is light and thank you photo brigade for live streaming this and putting it on all kinds of out there so no matter how many people are in the audience you were wonderful thank you again for coming out many many more people will be listening and watching this thank you for Adorama it's a worldwide community of photographers they helped sponsor it and thank you very much to Canon and they do all use Canon for making it possible for everybody in this room to go up and see the exhibition and if you're interested in the book I'm happy to sign it so thank you so much I really appreciate it