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…

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…

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…

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,…

Like most boys tend to, Walter Iooss picked up one of his old man’s hobbies—photography.

Not knowing how it’s going to change his life, Walter tagged along his dad at football games. His father, Walter Iooss Sr., who was a “big Brooklyn Dodger fan,” owned a lot of photography equipment back in the ‘50s. One football game was all it took, and Walter was hooked. His father let him photograph a football game one afternoon, processed the film they used (a black-and-white Kodak Tri-X film), and the rest, as they say, was history. Or in Walter’s words: “And it was epiphany.”

His father was quick to realize that Walter had a real knack for photography. Noticing that his son really enjoyed taking photos, he encouraged him, and before long, Walter went from taking photos of his friends playing baseball and football to photographing his sports heroes: Mickey Mantle (New York Yankees),…