In praise of the camera shutter button
And knowing where to sit, stand, or lie down.
The big news from Apple’s recent unveiling of the iPhone 16 was the inclusion of a physical Camera Control button—no need to open the camera app, just press the button and take a picture. I think it’s safe to say that the iPhone is now what many of us have been saying for years: It’s a fully-fledged camera, and unlike many of the cameras I’ve used in my time, it’s one where my entire history of photos is available instantaneously, with just a few search terms and some scrolling.
I’ve been thinking about the various different shutter buttons I’ve pressed over the years while unpacking more of the boxes of belongings shipped from the UK that have been sitting in my garage for the last year.
Amongst my old-school exercise books and the few paintings I kept from my time working as an illustrator in my 20s are files full of negatives, contact sheets, prints, and boxes of transparencies; my entire analog photographic archive. As I switched to shooting digitally around 2002, everything here is at least 22 years old (some of it a lot older), including prints from West End shows (some of which I shared in my previous essay) and boxes of transparencies from my time working as a sports photographer.
Sports photography is not only about when to press the shutter and what lens to use; choosing where to sit, stand, or lie down is often the difference between a decent image and an iconic one.
It’s strange to come across images I haven’t seen for literally decades. I found photographs from the early 90s of windsurfers riding massive surf in Hawaii taken from low-flying helicopters, a sea of F1 fans in the stands at the Hockenheim Grand Prix, and photos of the Ferrari F1 cars in Monaco. And I found a photo that really took me back: a horse flipped upside down and a falling rider from the Badminton Horse Trials sometime in the early 1990s. A split-second shutter button moment, if ever there was one.
I began my career as a sports photographer, taking photos at horse trails and three-day events in the west country of England. Yes, I quite liked horses. But the reason I began photographing them was because I could. The hardest thing about trying to become a sports photographer is gaining access to the events. There was no way I was getting a pass to football matches or motor racing. But at horse events, I was welcome.
It turned out to be fantastic training because photographing jumping horses is a lot harder than it looks—come to think of it, the same can be said of sports photography in general. Sports photography is not only about when to press the shutter and what lens to use; choosing where to sit, stand, or lie down is often the difference between a decent image and an iconic one.
I wasn’t in the best spot when I took this falling horse photo. How do I know? Because there were other photographers around me at the time, and when I saw some of their photographs printed in the newspapers, I realized I should have sat lower and used a longer lens (this was taken on a 300mm f2.8, and it would have been so much better on a 400mm—not that I had one, they cost an absolute fortune). It was also clear that I had pressed the shutter a split second too soon—I got the shot, but it was not quite as dramatic as what my fellow photographers got.
One of my inspirations for becoming a sports photographer was the work of Bob Martin, an absolute legend. Years later, I got to sit near him courtside at Wimbledon. We both photographed the same tennis match, but our pictures couldn’t have been more different: The decisions he made on the choice of lens, exposure, and, most importantly, the moment he pushed the shutter button made his photographs infinitely better than mine. He also knew exactly where to sit. Position is everything.
The same can be said of motor racing. I’m a lifelong motor racing fan. In the 1970s, my dad smuggled me and my friends into the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on the top deck of a double-decker restaurant bus with mirror windows on the top deck—security at race tracks was very different in those days. Being given the opportunity to photograph F1 races trackside years later was, clichéd as it may sound, a dream come true. And especially at Monaco, the greatest grand prix of them all—this is a statement of fact, and I will not be taking questions at this time.
I was in Monaco to photograph portraits of some of the drivers and team principals for F1 Racing Magazine. I was not there to shoot action because, well, frankly, I wasn’t good enough. Shooting great F1 action is phenomenally difficult. It takes years of experience to know where to position yourself on the circuit to get the right angles, and autofocus, at least back in the early 2000s, won’t help you; you have to press the shutter before the right moment. If you press the shutter when the driver's helmet is in focus, you’ll miss it; the car is going too fast.
But undeterred, I had an all-access pass and was free to shoot the race so off I went. For some reason, I thought it would be fun to spend some time in the tunnel. It is difficult to convey how incredibly exhilarating it is to stand in the tunnel at Monaco as an F1 car passes a few feet away, traveling at over 170 mph. As it passes, you’re hit by a pressure wave that moves through you like the undead through Aragorn in the battle of Minas Tirith. It was so forceful that it pushed snot out of my nose. And the sound! Deafening is too small a word, the scream of the V10 engines reverberating off the tiled tunnel wall is seismic. I pushed my earplugs so deep into my ears that I couldn't get one out until later that evening.
As an experience, it was incredible. As a place to take great pictures, it was not—at least not for me; I simply didn’t have the experience. But I will never forget the thrill of standing behind the Armco as Michael Schumacher's Ferrari F2002 passed only a few feet from me.
The sport I became most experienced at photographing was windsurfing. The reason I became a windsurfing photographer? I took pictures of horses. Bear with me; I’ll explain.
Back when I was photographing horses, I met a man at the Gatcombe Horse Trials (Princess Anne’s estate in Gloucestershire) who had a small sports photographic agency and offered me the opportunity to work there. He photographed windsurfing for the Professional Boardsailors Association (PBA), and I got to tag along to an event in the south of France. The following year, he became the press office for the world tour and offered me the role as photographer.
For three years, I traveled the world photographing windsurfing events in France, Germany, Spain, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, Japan, the South Pacific, and Australia. But the Monaco of Windsurfing was the Aloha Classic in Maui, Hawaii (again, I will not be taking questions). I came to adore Maui and loved the events at Ho’okipa Beach outside Paia on Maui’s north shore more than any other.
Windsurfing photography, just like any other sports photography, is knowing what equipment to use, when to press the shutter button, and, of course, where to position yourself. There are great surf and windsurf photographers who go in the water. I was not one of them. I tried it once at Ho’okipa and got trashed by the first wave, raked across the coral and washed onto the rocks. After that, I stayed on the cliff with a 600 mm f4 lens and a big sunhat. But I also got to spend time photographing the action from helicopters.
During my time on the windsurfing tour, I probably spent 20 or 30 hours a year in helicopters, maybe more. I shot with long lenses, sometimes using gyroscopes to steady the camera, and learned how to direct the pilot to position the helicopter to get the best shots without flattening the sailors with the rotor wash. Flying in a helicopter a few 100 feet over breaking surf, low enough to feel the spray of the waves on your face, is one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I was fortunate to fly with incredibly accomplished (and brave) pilots and also extremely lucky never to experience an incident in all those hours of flying.
But the reason I got quite good at taking pictures of windsurfing is that I literally spent years doing it. Yes, taking great sports photos is about pressing the shutter at exactly the right moment, choosing the right lens and vantage point, and, of course, a little bit of luck. But, like developing any skills, the only way to get better is lots of practice.
Looking through the collections of incredible sports images from this summer’s Paris Olympics, I was reminded of how, in many ways, the photographers have been training and practicing as much as the athletes they are photographing. Not in the physical sense, I know, but it takes years of practice to get lucky and capture those iconic moments in sports history.
In the words of golfer Gary Player, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”
Well said Sir James. Practice makes….better. Perfect? That is practice and a little bit of luck.