Five Celebrated Sports Photographers to Inspire You Click Better

Published 8 years ago

We love taking photos because it gives us a lot of memories. Today, it has become so easy for people to take photos of top quality due to the advancement in camera and its technology. Photography is a well-established medium for preserving our memories. Photography lets people to communicate what is vital to them, aids to protect history, makes communication easy, inspire or evoke inspiration among others, allow people to develop into great artists and motivates people in ways that words at times cannot.

Photography is an art and it has been with our culture for a very long time. We have witnessed a lot of great photographers who could inspire the world in many ways. In sports photography field, we can see many photographers and gave us a lot of memories regarding players, historical games, coaches, and great moments in a cricket, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, etc., ground. Many of the professional photographers were able to capture significant events for future references. Here is a look at five celebrated sports photographers to inspire you click better:

1. Walter Iooss Jr.

Walter Iooss Jr is an American photographer. He was born on September 15, 1943 in Temple, Texas. He started his career shooting for Sports Illustrated for more than 50 years. Walter Iooss well recognized for his award-winning images of sports’ greatest athletes, including Michael Jordan, Kelly Slater, Tiger Woods, Scottie Pippen, and Muhammad Ali. He is famously called as the poet laureate of sports.

Being an award winning sports photographer, Walter Iooss focuses on sports and beauty. It is generally said that he was an ardent sports fan during his childhood days which directed him to capture it through photography. He has over 300 shots featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which guaranteed him the place as one of the most illustrious sports photographers of all time. In 2004, he could achieve Lucie award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports Photography.

2. Max Rossi

Max Rossi was born in Rome, Italy. He started his career in photography for Italian papers in 1990. He joined Reuters in 2003. He could capture innumerable but marvelous images of spots events worldwide. Max Rossi has taken memorable and award winning pictures of Formula One races, Italian football matches and events from the Athens Olympic Games.

Max Rossi presently works as a photographer for Reuters. At present, he focus on taking photos from events in the Vatican to Olympic sports. He became a professional in photography by reading technical guidebooks and other photography. He could cover things for Pope Paul II for 10 years and he covered Pope Paul II until he died. He also covered Pope’s funeral.

3. Neil Leifer

Neil Leifer was born on December 28, 1942. He is an American photographer and filmmaker. He is chiefly recognized for his work in the Time Inc. family of magazines. Neil Leifer is certainly one of the well-known photographers of all time. Leifer has offered some of the sport’s most iconic, classic and memorable images in Sports Illustrated’s 60-year history.

Neil Leifer is the acknowledged champion of boxing photography. Leifer could take a lot of iconic and terrific shots of sportspeople. His amazing capture of Ali looming over the KO’d Sonny Liston secured him a status as one of the most renowned sports photographers of all time.

4. Charles M. Conlon

Charles M. Conlon was born in 1868 and died in 1945. He was an American photographer and he was considered to be an unbelievable photographer of the early great baseball players. He could capture the faces of several great baseball players of the time and took thousands of portraits of major league baseball players.

Charles M. Conlon is best known for his fluky action shot of Ty Cobb sliding into third base at Hilltop Park in 1910, turning over the fielder, Jimmy Austin. He is well known as a photographer who could capture a lot of the giants of baseball’s golden years. He has a collection of photos that consists of 7,462 negatives and many of them were famous names in baseball history like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.

5. Erik Refner

Erik Refner was born on 1971 in Denmark. He is presently working as a staff photographer at the newspaper, Berlingske, in Denmark. He started working in photography whilst a photographer he was modeling for required a helper. In 2003, he took part in World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass.

As a photographer, Refner has got many professional honors, including five World Press Photo awards and the World Press Photo of the Year 2002. Erik Refner was an athlete and he represented his national pentathlon team. He is popularly known for his picture that he took during the Copenhagen marathon in 2001. It was an extraordinary shot of one of the runners at the finishing line being sprayed with water to rejuvenate him.