Tim Clayton, a well known sports photographer, was born in Leeds, United Kingdom, in 1960. Clayton, started out taking photos in his hometown for the Yorkshire Evening Post. He spent 10 years working in there until he moved to Australia to take a position at the Sydney Morning Herald to become a full time sports photographer. After nearly 18 years with the Sydney Morning Herald, Clayton began to freelance and decided to move to New York in 2008, where he lives now. Since moving to New York, Clayton has had the opportunity to take photos for many major sporting events including 8 Olympics Games, 5 Rugby World Cups, The FIFA World Cup, and The World Series. Tim Clayton uses many techniques to capture his sports pictures. It is very difficult for him to take picture while the players are running around because it could turn out very blurry. However, there are times when Clayton wants his pictures to be blurry. For example, if he is taking a picture of a pitcher, he would want his photo to be blurry to show the speed of the pitching motion. If he is taking photos of a tennis match, Clayton would make sure to get to a good angle so he could get the shadow of the player hitting the ball. He likes to get close to the action to show emotion of the game which brings his photos to a whole new level. Tim Clayton only does sports photography and is neither a political or social photographer. His job as a sports photographer is to capture the “big” moments in a game such as when the pitcher throws the ball, the player serves the ball, the soccer player scores the goal, when he/she wins the race, or when the team celebrates as a whole. He wants to show people the emotion of the game and wants to tell a story with his photos. Tim Clayton has influenced me when I take pictures. His work has showed me that I need to take pictures from different angles to get the right image. He also reminded me that the background of an image can really influence the image and help tell the story the picture is trying to show. Now, every time I go to take pictures, especially sporting events, I try to think how Tim Clayton position himself to take s great photo. Tim Clayton has also taught me that I should get up close to the action so I can capture more details in the photograph.
"The Art of Sports Photography: Shooting the Olympics with Adam Pretty | Fstoppers." Fstoppers Photography News and Community for Creative Professionals RSS. N.p., n.d. Tues. 16 May. 2017. "Exposure: Tim Clayton - CNET." CNET. N.p., n.d. Tues. 16 May. 2017. "An Open Letter to Lars Boering, Managing Director, World Press Photo. Subject: Sports Photography." Tim Clayton Photo. N.p. Tues. 16 May. 2017. "TIM CLAYTON PHOTOGRAPHY." TIM CLAYTON PHOTOGRAPHY. N.p., n.d. Web. Tues. 16 May. 2017.
Compare and Contrast
Tim Clayton has been taking pictures for about 42 years now. That is almost triple my lifetime. The most noticeable difference between the two of us is that I lack the experience and skill that he has. Clayton's technique is was hard to learn for anyone because his pictures are so precise. The pictures I took were very different than the ones he has. I unfortunately did not access to a soccer stadium with 70,000 screaming fans. My goal was to replicate the action shots he gets. It was hard to get the exact motion the players were doing but I tried my best. My pictures were taken on a partly sunny day where as Clayton's pictures were taken on a clear night in a sold out stadium. For my pictures, I used multiple people actually. I asked my teammates on my club soccer team if they could help and they did not hesitate at all to say yes. We had a game the following day so I set up my camera and had my dad take some action shots. They all came out pretty great. We had different lighting to work with than Clayton. In my pictures I tried to replicate the rule of thirds by having the players not look at the camera at all. It was easy for positioning because we were playing so I did not need to position anyone for a picture.