We do our best to share as many photography tips as we can with you for a good reason. To a fair degree, photography is a science. It involves techniques that can be studied and learned. But as our photographers will remind you, photography is more than just about techniques. It likewise involves heaps of judgment as to what exactly to do with the techniques and how and when to apply them. Photography is thus equally an art. It is in that critical interface between science and art where greatness comes and the perfect shot happens.

If there is anybody who understands photography as both a science and an art and can tell us more about it as an authority on the matter, it is a photographer like Walter Iooss Jr. A master of light and composition, Walter is a highly respected and much admired photographer.  As a longtime photographer of Sports Illustrated, Walter enjoys a great deal of artistic freedom on the job. Steve Fine, the director of photography of Sports Illustrated, has called Walter the foremost sports photographer of his generation.

Walter has soared to great heights in his four decades as a photographer. He sums up the attitude that has helped bring him to these heights in these words, ‘…wherever I am is the perfect picture…It’s not that I’m positive of it deep down inside, it’s that I have to believe it…’

We can safely say that, as a photographer, Walter has good instincts or that, at the very least, Walter trusts and believes in his instincts strongly. We feel that there is something to Walter’s attitude. It is important for photographers to have good instincts. We concede that we are born with our instincts. But we do not agree that those of us whose instincts are not readily apparent at the beginning are totally and irreversibly doomed. Rather, we are of the opinion that, in time, through perseverance, we can become better attuned to our instincts that have been there all along. In any case, the real wisdom behind Walter’s attitude could lie in our wholeheartedly trusting and believing in our instincts in whatever shape they might be.

It is difficult for a photographer like Walter to go wrong. Here, Walter reunites two fierce rivals Ali and Frazier long after their last fight.

From the vault of Sports Illustrated by Walter Iooss Jr.

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