A moment within a competitive sport can pass quicker than in most settings. The racing feet, snap actions and pivotal decisions that so often decide contests can be as transient as they are influential. So take a picture. It’ll last longer, especially given the chaos and emotion of experiencing the unexpected take place, first-hand purely through the unreliable witnesses of your own vision.



A goal, a drive, a try, a stroke; all can flash before the eyes of a spectator without them truly comprehending the totality of what they saw. Yet for sports photographers, it’s their job to trap these happenings in the lightning bottling click of their cameras and commit these pockets of time-space stasis to film.

“A writer once said to me, ‘I can’t believe you guys. We’re there watching the game and looking again for the action replays on the monitors. You get no action replay!’ It’s great to hear an experienced writer appreciate what you do and there is no action replay. You’ve just got to be there, concentrating and composing it. And when it comes right, it’s there forever,” says Mark Leech, the recipient of the Barclays Photographer Of The 20 Seasons award for his work shooting football throughout the Premier League era.



A David Beckham free-kick, against Ukraine at Wembley. Photograph: Mark Leech/Rex Features

The self-taught freelancer, Ryu Voelkel, agrees: “In sport, once you miss it, it’s gone. There are no do-overs like in a studio and that’s what is exciting about it rather than it being a concern.”

The human mind is at best a permeable archive of half-interpreted memories, prone to the nostalgia creep of elaboration and revisionism, whereas a photograph is a permanent, recorded account of a moment that may have otherwise been diminished or distorted by our fragile grey matter. They are slices of reality permanently frozen for posterity, but that doesn’t necessarily deaden them.

Stuart Roy Clarke, the creator of the critically acclaimed Homes of Football collection, has spent his career compiling alternative views on the game that can be found in the stands, on the field and beyond the confines of the sport itself. “I believe that the moment most worthy is the one where I pull back the curtains on what was always going to be there. It just took my little bit of genius, my little bit of vision, my little bit of determination to see it and make it into a photograph. Some photographs of course aren’t this magnificent, but hey, take the picture anyway. Everyone else is! I want to show the hours and moments beyond the orchestration when the mass of humanity – or the lone, forgotten, unimportant figure – casts his or her shadow or smile.”

The Kop in Anfield, Liverpool, in 1992. Photograph: Stuart Roy Clarke

Images, and those who shoot them, can unearth new life from within the tapestry of a sporting event, bringing attention to curiosities, contexts and hidden details that may have been lost in the melange of the action, or overlooked for more obvious, immediate highlights. To David Cannon from Getty Images, renowned for his work shooting football, golf and current affairs, his job is to provide depth and context as well as capturing the action: “Going for specific shots or looking to find an image that captures more than the moment, but sums up the emotions of an event. It’s a combination of all these factors. If you can combine all these into one image then I think you will have captured a great sports image.”

It’s more than just photojournalism or the construction of a pictorial, factual history of a sport. After all, the context of an image can often be massaged by a useful angle to play with the subjective foibles of perceptions and memories. The image of Diego Maradona facing down six Belgium defenders is iconic but it’s ultimately a famous manipulation, having been taken after a set-piece rather than in the middle of a dribble. For Mark, its faked legend says much about the more abstract values of sports photography.

Diego Maradona against Belgium in the 1982 World Cup. Photograph: Steve Powell/Allsport

“It wouldn’t be a great picture if it was taken at Colchester United v Rotherham, but it’s Maradona, and it’s everyone looking at him. Nobody watched that game on TV and went up to the pub afterwards and said, ‘Do you remember that moment where the ball came back to Maradona in front of all those defender?’ They’d have talked about the Belgium goal or the other moments, but that moment has grown and grown. It’s somehow got bigger, because there arguably hasn’t been a bigger player since 1982, and everybody now will get Messi on the ball, and they will wait for four or five people to get around him and then, ‘There you go. I’ve done that!’ Whoever took the Maradona picture, it’s flattering in its sincerest form.”

To throw in the inevitable paraphrasing of Pablo Picasso: “Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth that is given us to understand. The artist must convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” And just as the feints, trickery and slalom runs of Maradona eventually enabled him to outfox his markers for real, conjuring up numerous classic goals and moments, photographers too must sometimes deceive their audience in order to unveil something more fundamental or obscure. Pictures do not always have to offer three chords and the truth, but there is a certain je ne sais quoi at the heart of a great image that all the photographers who contributed to this piece identified yet struggled to define.

“Only by seeing those who don’t get it do you realise, possibly, I’ve got something here, because I do get ‘it’. There is something to it. I don’t set out with cravat and easel and go, ‘I’m going to draw light today, luvvie!’ But actually, maybe I do have an artistic eye,” says Mark. “The art is a bit of decisiveness, anticipation, to make up your mind, stick to your guns and accept that you could be wrong. If you want to sit in a place that covers every incident – got that, got that, got that – then you’ll have it all, and I’d probably mark all the pictures six out of 10 each. But if you want to be more, you have to gamble.”

An Argentina player kicks the ball in frustration after Rudi Völler scores West Germany’s second goal in the 1986 World Cup final at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Photograph: David Cannon/Getty Images

For Ryu, “The aim is to create something beautiful in a subject which is already littered with images that tell you who scored and who won and who lost. Why can’t I just shoot an image that has nothing to do with the outcome of the match? I just shoot what I find interesting. Beauty can come from anything in sports. You just have to find it, but to have an eye for it is not easy. Some people do, some people don’t. I don’t think it’s something you can learn.”



So how did he learn the craft to turn his instincts into exposures? “I learned it by taking pictures. Photography is very easy. If you can read an instruction manual, you can operate a camera. There are plenty of resources on the net. If you are considering taking up sports photography as a career, I’d save all that money on school and use it for your equipment. I did learn very early that if I was to become a successful freelance sports photographer, I have to do things differently so, I started shooting differently to others. I had to make sure that my photos stood out. That’s how I came to my current style.”

Germany’s Thomas Müller. Photograph: Ryu Voelkel

Stuart took a more intimate approach to getting under the skin of his subjects. “I had to walk the streets, talk the many talks. Humility is brought on by blistered feet and the feeling that you can only see the tip of the iceberg. Humanity is everywhere; so many stories, angles. Photography as I see it is about conviction, empathy, humility, perception, anticipation.

“To capture the decisive moment, or even the in-between moments – I love both – one has to do a bit of prep. One observes and, when you see something that captures your eye, you have to realise that the eye is caught for a good reason; that the computer-sized brain – rather than pure instinct – is pointing you in this direction based on millions of prompts from your life and experience. You then have a second before the moment to compose. I set out to reduce photography to pure seeing. Of course, I need a light box to blink-into and transfer my vision. That’s what I have: a box camera. I use no lenses or bag of tricks to see. I travel light and move fast. I get close to the subject: I have no zoom. I don’t get too close. That would be impolite. I have no wide.”

Passion and an insight into the sport being shot is everything when it comes to turning these gifts of vision into a capacity to read the opportunity for a shot before it arrives. David’s knowledge of bunkers and greenways has helped his work. “In golf there is a huge amount of walking and a lot of knowledge of the sport is a massive help. As Gary Player said, ‘The harder I practice the luckier I get.’ This is so true of golf and all types of sports photography.”

Paul Gascoigne celebrates during England’s match against Belgium in the 1990 World Cup. Photograph: David Cannon/Getty Images

Likewise, Stuart is in no doubt about where his focus lies, and the important role his natural enthusiasm and curiosity for football have played in his work. “I am not a sports photographer, but a football-only photographer. I love many sports – and athletics moves me to tears – but it’s the social phenomenon with its twist of fantasy which is my artistic territory. Football surrounded me in my youth and the disasters of the 1980s, culminating in Hillsborough, were my perfect storm. I was looking for the one subject to make my own, that I didn’t become a jack of all photographic trades. Game on, for me, I told myself in the 1989-1990 season.”

It was a similar story with Mark, whose love of the game was the driving force behind his desire to become a photographer. “I bought every Beatles album there was and every Beatles record up to the age of nine, and then England won the World Cup and I realised there was a gap in my record collection. I didn’t buy another record until I was in work. I spent every penny I could going to football matches. The smells and the sounds and everything about a ground is fantastic. Talk about coming alive. From the first minute I’ve sat down and been told, ‘Oi, we’ve paid to get in mate. Can’t see here!’ I’ve appreciated the people, the money they’ve spent, and that they’ve been looking forward to this all week.



Eden Hazard of Chelsea. Photograph: Mark Leech/Getty Images

“It might be the fourth game I’ve gone to that week, whether it’s Ipswich Town or Wigan Athletic, but those people may have been looking forward to a fixture for maybe a fortnight, because they haven’t travelled away. I don’t think I want to lose touch with that: the fans. Now, with telephoto lenses, you think you can shoot incidents that are happening at the other end of the pitch, 110 yards away, but when there’s some fans going absolutely crazy behind you, 10 feet away, that’s a better picture for me than the telephoto back view of a goal.”

Which raises the question: with all this energy in the air, how do you achieve a great image? “You have to work on it all the time,” says Ryu. “Once you think you’re good, that is when your downfall starts. We see so many artists out there taking the foot off the gas once they become famous. They think they can stop innovating once they become famous. That they can get by because they are famous. I don’t want to be that guy. My biggest fear is that I don’t want to be a has-been. I always want to be on the cutting edge: always improving. The moment I manage to get a ‘perfect moment’, I’ll quit this job and do something else, because everything else after that will be less than perfect. I believe that my career is a journey to get that perfect picture. Am I close? No, not at all.”

• This article first appeared in Spiel magazine

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• Photos: Mark Leech, David Cannon, Ryu Voelkel and Stuart Roy Clarke