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),…

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…

“Someone once said that wherever I am is the perfect picture. I didn’t like the way it sounded but I believe that. It’s not that I’m positive of it deep down inside, it’s that I have to believe it. When you make that decision – ‘This is the place to go’ – you’ve got to live with it. There’s no alternative.”

That’s what Walter Iooss said when he was asked about his long, successful career. And true enough, the perfect shot always seem to follow Walter, wherever he may be—the fact that more than 300 of his shots were used as covers for Sports Illustrated magazines is more than enough proof.

Decades ago, when Walter was a teen, he couldn’t imagine life beyond the playground games he used to play–not knowing that someday he will photograph kids who also can’t (or simply don’t) imagine life beyond the street games they play.

Walter was born in Temple, Texas, but moved to East…