Simon Bruty's Favorite Shots

SIMON SAYS: "Unlike event or competition photography, I have complete control when I set up a shoot. I was standing on a chair in the pool so I could photograph Michael Phelps at water level. I made him repeat the butterfly stroke a number of times, so much so that he said this was worse than his training sessions." Shot with a Canon EOS-1Ds, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

SIMON SAYS: "For our Olympic preview issue we wanted something different on Michael Phelps, so I came up with the 'big fish in the water tank' idea. Baltimore has a cool aquarium, and Phelps is from Baltimore, so easily done. After four separate visits and tests plus months of organizing on the phone, we got everybody on board, except the fish. The fish would not swim around Phelps. But after plenty of food and a little encouragement from the divers, we got the photograph." Shot with a Canon EOS-1Ds, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "This is five years ago at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia. It was a beautiful day and I knew the action would be at the finish line. They have steep stands there so I was leaning over the balustrade, looking down on the finish. I was shooting the baton exchange at a slow shutter speed when the runner passed the baton, tripped and fell." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "Before the 2004 Kentucky Derby, there was a huge rainstorm--an absolute monsoon. It got to the point where it was just about survival and making sure the camera gear made it to the race. When you're on the final turn you don't know which of the 15-plus horses is going to win. So to pick out Smarty Jones--and then to have Smarty's jockey, Stewart Elliott, poke his head out from behind the horse--made surviving the rainstorm worth it." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 600mm f/4L IS USM

SIMON SAYS: "This is at the world swimming and diving championships in 2003, and it's shot at 1/15th of a second--a very slow shutter speed. The technique is called panning. You follow the diver from the top of the board and as he comes down, you pan with him, trying to keep his body in focus. Obviously divers move very quickly and there's a lot of jerky movement, and that's why his legs have kind of disappeared. At this shutter speed you throw 99 percent of the images away, so I was happy to wind up with this shot." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D, EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

SIMON SAYS: "We went to Tehran to do a story about soccer because Iran was going to be playing the U.S. in the 1998 World Cup. I was walking the city streets, looking for images that would give the story some flavor. I ran across this great little scene with these guys knocking the ball about--just a classic soccer scene. With the mural of Ayatollah Khomeini behind them--he's such a dominating religious figure in that country and the world--it was the picture for me. This sport cuts across all kinds of barriers. No one's going to stop it. That's what I took from it." Shot with a Canon EOS-1v (film camera), EF 50mm f/1.2L USM

SIMON SAYS: "I was courtside here at the ladies' Wimbledon final in 2005. No one had expected Venus Williams to get to the final, let alone to win it. (She beat Lindsay Davenport in three sets.) Raw emotion is what you're looking for at these big finals, and Venus's reaction typified what you're after." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM

SIMON SAYS: "I love this picture. This is Phil Mickelson at Shinnecock on Sunday at the 2004 U.S. Open (Retief Goosen won it that year). I just remember following him, and for some bizarre reason, there weren't many people around when I shot this. With golf, you always have to determine where their ball has gone, then get there to set up. So I walked around and saw where Phil's ball was resting. I just love the isolation of it, the clouds and the shadow. For me, it was my best picture of the tournament." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM

SIMON SAYS: "This is the U.S. vs. the Czech Republic in the 2006 World Cup Soccer. I've been to a lot of World Cups, done a lot of games, and I have taken remote cameras to almost every game I've shot. This is probably the first decent remote photograph I have gotten from a soccer game. I tell people that remote cameras are great when they work, but you pour so much into getting them to work, you tend to forget about the camera that you have in your hands. You keep thinking that the remote's going to be the one, but it's actually the one in your hands that you control. There's a good photographic lesson there." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye

SIMON SAYS: "This was last year's Kentucky Derby, shot from the MetLife blimp. It's Barbaro pulling away on the finishing stretch. It's a great angle. Problem is, the MetLife blimp isn't there for me: it's there for TV. The TV setup has this incredible lens and zoom on the front of the blimp, and it's remote-controlled by a guy in the back. I was sitting with him in the back, trying to squeeze over the pilot's shoulders to shoot where and when I can out of a small window. I shot this with a 500mm lens with a 1.4x converter, making it a 700mm lens. It's definitely hit-or-miss at this height with this long lens on a horserace, and I was lucky enough to get this photograph out of it." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM with a 1.4x converter (to 700mm) f5.6

SIMON SAYS: "This portrait of Lance Armstrong captures his intensity, his desire to win. He was training in the south of France prior to his last Tour de France. This is one of three setups we did, and it turned out to be the best photograph. It's on a simple white background, which put all the emphasis on the subject." Shot with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

SIMON SAYS: "This is a feature story we were doing on Division II football at Pittsburg State. I went to the university a couple of times. The access was great-- so different from the NFL and Division I-A football. The players met outside a building before a game; they were stretching and getting themselves mentally prepared. The composition of the photograph, with the player stretching and the lines of the building, made the photograph." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "The story was about Tony Stewart and his purchase of Eldora Speedway in Ohio. He was racing in Martinsville. Between the final practice and the race we flew up to see the track. He was great, so laid back. We squeezed in on his plane, and he went to sleep straight away. I thought the dog was hilarious. It was just a fun picture." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "The story was about how sport was helping the wounded soldiers back from Iraq. The soldiers were in Colorado on an Outward Bound course, climbing and rafting. All the soldiers were incredibly positive, even though they all had lost limbs. This photograph of Aaron Rice was at the end of the rafting trip. He jumped off the boat and into the water." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "This wound up being a cover shot during the Salt Lake City Olympics. It was taken with film. I was sitting at ice level, shooting with a number of other photographers. I noticed that I was changing film when the rest of the photographers were shooting digital. Since I was the only one changing film, it meant I was missing parts of the long program. And that hastened SI Photo's move to digital soon after the Olympics. ... When shooting events, it is not always possible to sense what is happening because you are so isolated looking through a long lens. But this is one of the rare occasions when you did realize something special was happening." Shot with a Canon EOS-1v (film camera) EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM

SIMON SAYS: "This was Maradona's last game, and the passion and hysteria the fans had for him was amazing. I've been to many big soccer rivalries, Celtic-Rangers, Barcelona-Real Madrid, Holland-Germany. None of them compared to this game. The crowd was scaling this massive fence behind me and security would come to the photographers and say, 'The fence is going to come down. You need to move out of the way.'" Shot with a Canon EOS-1v (film camera), EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "This was the AFC Championship Game in January 2004, Colts at the Patriots. I shot it with a long lens, and it's just a classic image of the pocket collapsing around the quarterback. It's also something that you're actually looking for as a photographer. I was just following Manning for most of the game." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM

SIMON SAYS: "It's great to photograph Bode Miller skiing because you don't know what will happen when he gets to your spot--or if he'll get to your spot. Skiing is tough because you have to physically get to a position, which means you have to ski the course. You then have to find a spot and visualize what the action picture is going to look like before the skier comes down. You get one shot at these guys, and they're skiing at 90 mph. If you don't get the winner, you've kind of wasted your day." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM with a 1.4x converter (to 700mm) f5.6

SIMON SAYS: "This is Bode Miller at his dad's farm in New Hampshire. I'd been up there for a couple of days, scouting for a place to shoot. I saw this rope swing over a pond and thought this would be an excellent `Bode being adventurous' photograph. When we did the shoot there were several people there watching, including Bode's agents, handlers, family members, Nike people. So he swings out a couple times, but he has his hand across his face. I say, `Hey, Bode, you've got to be a bit more adventurous.' On this photograph, he swings out and I take the picture. Next thing I know, Bode's coming straight at me, so I fall on the ground and he hits the oak tree behind me. There's silence. But he was fine. In fact he got back out there and did it a couple more times." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

SIMON SAYS: "The classic ski-jump image is when the skier is in the air. I wanted to pan the skier on the runway down the jump. At the Torino Winter Games I found a hill from which I could shoot down on the runway. And because of the light/color at this slow shutter speed, you had this monochromatic feel. I love this picture." Shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM