In this third installment of our four part series on Neil Leifer, we will feature an exhibit at the Annenberg Foundation in Los Angeles, California. Neil shares the limelight with a colleague. The exhibit honours and showcases the achievements of probably the two best sports photographers of all time, Neil Leifer and Walter Iooss, Jr. The name of the exhibit is ‘Sport: Iooss and Leifer.’ It runs from 12 November 2009 to 7 March 2010.

Being honoured is not something new to Neil. Honour comes with being good at what he does and for having done it for so long. It must be wonderful for one to love doing what one is so good at. Such a combination can only lead to greatness. We can only wonder if Neil knew that he was on to something when he started in sports photography as a teenager. Neil must have realized that people were responding positively to his images. But…

After 40 years of taking photos of the biggest names in sports, Walter Iooss surely has a lot of things he can publish.

And publish he did. By now, Walter already has several photography books, most of which showcase the fruits of his hard work and perseverance over the years, and some are collaborative works with some sports legends (like his work with Michael Jordan on the book Rare Air: Michael on Michael). Here’s a few of Walter’s books:

Classic Baseball – The Photographs of Walter Iooss Jr. – 40 years’ worth of classic baseball images, with commentary of Pulitzer Prize winner, Dave Anderson.

Sporting Life – bits and pieces of Walter’s journal, which chronicles his life as a photographer, collage-style. It contains an assortment of knick-knacks he has gathered from his profession over the years ( 150 photos and illustrations, various newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, etc.). Photos of his most famous subjects like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant,…

You know you’re good at what you do (in this case, taking photos) when well-known publications like Sports Illustrated (SI) trust you to take pictures of big-shot sports superstars (Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan among some).

Walter worked for SI for more than 20 years. From that, we can deduce that Walter truly has the talent and passion for what he does; because you can’t shoot the same athletes and same kind of events for more than two decades, and still be able to produce out-of-the-ordinary results every single time, if you don’t have the skill, and more importantly, the heart to do the job. Walter is so good at what he does that more than 300 of his photos were used as SI covers.

One of his most remarkable photos that he took for Michael Jordan, where the legendary basketball hero was dunking a ball amidst…