I had an enjoyable day last Friday photographing at The Open golf tournament held at Royal Birkdale in Southport. Not being a golf player or follower, it was fascinating to witness the passion with which the sport instills in its legions of fans. Just over 50,000 had turned out to brave torrential rain and gale force winds to follow some of their favourite players around the course.

Given the popularity of the sport, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the media centre (where I collected my accreditation), which was the size of an aircraft hanger. Along with the photographers and camera crews, there were literally hundreds of journalists sat behind computer screens tapping out up to the minute stories.

It was amusing walking around the course with my 5×4 camera and being greeted with perplexed glances by the golfing photography community. I was certainly the only one still using film.

I’ve always had a great deal of respect for sports photographers. I even spent a few days doing work experience alongside the talented Sports Illustrated photographer Bob Martin after winning a competition to spend two weeks photographing at Wimbledon.

Two of my favourite sport photographs are by another Sports Illustrated photographer, Neil Leifer. Both photographs are of Muhammad Ali from the 1960s and the first was taken during Ali’s bout against Cleveland Williams at the Houston Astrodome on November 14, 1966.

 

© Neil Leifer

 

The second was taken on May 25, 1965, when Ali stopped Sonny Liston with one punch in the first round of their heavyweight championship fight in Lewiston, Maine.

 

© Neil Leifer

 

They are both extraordinary images. One of the things that strikes me most looking at them over forty years later is the absence of any advertising branding, which gives the photographs such purity.

Here is a quote from Leifer taken from Digital Journalist where he describes both pictures-

“Part of being a great photographer is being lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time like I was, but a more important part is not missing when you’re in that spot. I got very lucky at the Ali-Liston fight, but what I’m proudest of is that I didn’t miss. It’s always assumed that the Ali-Liston picture is my favorite. Not so–I took my all-time favorite picture at another Ali fight one and a half years later. Photographers had mounted cameras on the light rigging above the ring before, only they had pointed them down, from the corners, so that they could capture the fighters’ facial expressions. Because the lighting rig was usually only about 20 feet above the canvas, even the widest of wide-angle lenses wouldn’t allow you to capture the whole ring. But the Ali-Cleveland Williams fight was in the Astrodome, where for the first time, the rig would be about 80 feet up, so it wouldn’t block the sightlines of spectators in the upper deck. I realized at that height, you could get the entire ring in the picture, and that it would be perfectly square. Ali-Williams is my personal favorite picture, but I know that 100 years from now, Ali-Liston is the one picture that everybody will remember me by.”

You can read a longer interview with Leifer written in 2002 here. 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under EVENTS & PASTIMES, MISCELLANEOUS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.