In this second installment of our four part series on Neil Leifer, we will explore the factors that have contributed to Neil’s success as a photographer. It is hardly ever just one thing. It is almost always a combination of things. The rules are hardly ever hard and fast. We can only try our best to capture as much of the reason for Neil’s success as we can. If we had to sum it all up in two things, it could very well be these two:

1. Being at the right place at the right time.

We know it only too well. Timing is everything for a sports photographer. It is the stuff of which great sports photography is made. Timing is something that Neil had going for him all those decades. Neil had to be at the perfect place to take his photograph. He had to be there at the perfect time. There and then, he had to be ready…

We have the honour to feature a legendary sports photographer in a four part series on his life and photography. We are talking about no other than Neil Leifer. His photographs have graced the covers of Sports Illustrated magazine, Time magazine, Life magazine and People magazine. He has devoted no less than five decades of his life to his photography that has largely been sports photography. On the list of top sports photographers of all time, Neil figures at nothing less than the apex along with his colleague Walter Iooss, Jr. whom we have covered quite a bit on our blog.

We have charted Neil’s journey as a photographer. Neil started his extraordinarily distinguished career as a professional photographer in his teens during the 1960s. Neil began as a freelancer and eventually became a staff photographer of Sports Illustrated magazine and then Time magazine as well as a contributing photographer of Life magazine. Neil presently holds the record as…