Position of Influence

Bill Sallaz is a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens.

One of the first things he mentioned to us years ago when we first interviewed him was geometry. William R. Sallaz told us he saw the geometry of a scene—its lines and shapes—before he saw the color, texture or even the emotional content. He said it had to do with his education—he studied engineering in school—and his early career as a draftsman. Next he looked at the light: "I'm drawn to dramatic light. I like to shoot back-lit or side-lit. I'd be happy making pretty pictures of nothing as long as they had strong geometry and dramatic lighting." For 30 years Bill's advertising, commercial and editorial photographs have featured shape and light as signature elements of the images he's made for major international companies and ad agencies as well as magazines like Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and People.

He doesn't classify himself as anything other than a generalist. "I lived in Montana for a decade," he says, "and when you live in a state where cows outnumber people six to one, you learn to shoot a little bit of everything. I ran a studio up there and also did commercial photography, shot portraits and weddings, shot for local colleges and covered news and sports for AP as a stringer." There's no denying, though, that sports have been his specialty, from auto racing to baseball, tennis to fencing, football (he's covered four Super Bowls) to the mixed bag that six Olympics offered up.

He doesn't claim equal familiarity with all sports—and that can be a plus. When you photograph a sport you're not that familiar with, he told us, you'll probably look at it with a fresh eye. "A photographer who shoots that sport week in and week out has kind of locked himself into doing the same pictures over and over, so coming to the sport fresh is a good thing." Familiar or not, you have to come to the event armed: "I'm not really a fan of auto racing, but I've paid enough attention to...know who the top ten people in [the] sport are. If you haven't got any understanding of the sport and haven't done any research, you're not going to be able to take advantage of, say, the veteran driver talking to the rookie. Chances are you won't even recognize them."

What he learned in one field, he often applies in another. "I've always told people that being a portrait photographer made me a better sports photographer, and vice versa. With a hinky portrait subject you might get one opportunity to tweak a real smile, and if you're not ready to jump all over that moment, you'll miss the shot. Sports photography made me better at portraits because I was quick and observant. On the other side, by controlling the light and the setup for a portrait, I could walk into a sports stadium, look around and decide where I wanted to be in relation to the angle of the light and what backgrounds I wanted to shoot into." No matter the subject or the assignment, Bill always has a clear idea of what he wants. "I previsualize things very well, and I have a pretty good sense of how everything's going to look in the photograph. I'm seldom surprised."