Walter Iooss Jr., Reflections on Michael Jordan, Tiger & more.

Michael Jordan's is the Walter Yose of basketball. Yos has been taking pictures professionally for fifty nine years. He has shot every Super Bowl. He has over three covers of Sports Illustrated, which includes action, portrait and Swimsuit. His versatility, personality, and talent, along with the trust and respect of his subjects, plus his passion for sports and his craft, have earned him a spot in the International Hall of Fame of Photography.

I've done several stories on Yos through the years. I was lucky enough to edit some of his images. I carried cameras for him at a Super Bowl I've played golf with him and his two home courses, mon Talk Downs on Long Island and Crandon Park on Key Biscaine. His swing, like his iconic career, is one long exposure.

Today he tells the story of chasing Tiger to recreate Peskin, almost botching a portrait session with Jack and Arnie, arguably the most famous image in NFL history, and he shares several stories about a special relationship with MJ to offer some perspective and insight into the photographer and the man we've called upon. Neil Lifer Yos's counterparted Sports Illustrated, going back to when they were teenagers, where Lifer has Ali

over Liston Yos has Dwight Clark over Everson Wolves. Walter and I were fanatical about covering every big event we could cover, and each one of us, like I say, wanted You wanted to get to cover of the magazine, which essentially was the gold medal. Uh. You wanted to get the opening spread in the magazine, which was always a big picture, and unlike I think most of the other guys, Walter I wanted to get both every time. The other voice you'll hear throughout is Christian Yos the

oldest of Eva and Walter's two sons. Christian is a photographer, a photo editor, and is currently the executive producer of video at Discovery Golf. You know, they're always talked about this Yos luck and I've never said that it's luck. I mean, this is a guy that has grown up obsessed with sports. You know, he was a great athlete in his own right. Um, And it's just fascinated with the game and the movement and knowing where to be and with the plays that are going to happen. Come

from like this life of just living sports. Um. And I've always attested his luck to just knowledge, you know, like that's it. I mean, has there been some luck involved, probably, but you know, no one where to be on the field, and no one which way a ball is. You know a throw is going to go. Is comes from a

life of just obsessed with sports. Born in nine, Walter A. Yos Jr. Grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, the son of a decorated jazz musician and the grandson of Nimble Fingers, a ragtime piano player, and, as Walter puts it, the pride of Brooklyn. I'd see my father on Sunday, and as a musician, a lot of musicians life photography,

and that was his hobby throughout his life. And he got me interested, and we went to a New York Giants football game in n bought season tickets, and he bought a F four tackym or lens and the Sahi Pentax camera on the Upper West Side where all the camera stores were back in the fifties, and he used to go on there. I'd go in with him and you know, talk cameras by didn't know. So a six game season, then at home, you know, twelve game regular season, so a game four, I finally got the nerve to

take this hammer. You know, fans were hitting their heads banging into it, and I said, I didn't want any part of this. I don't like confrontation like that. And I shot, you know, ten pictures or something. We went back. He started where my home was, process that role of film and held it up to the light. As my former managing editor Terry McDonald said, my future was unlocked.

While in high school and if he wasn't playing stickball or football in the streets, Yose attended the Germaine School of Photography in New York and then I graduated me starr Inch High School, and you know, late June, and on July six, I got called from my first assignment and was paid a hundred dollars. I mean that's a lot of money. And they want to go to football games. Okay, we want to go to the giant game on the sidelines. Really, And then I get back to my friends. They're paying

to go on the sidelines and take pictures. You're like a thief. I mean, who wouldn't want to do this. I mean we're all children at that point, just a kid in a man's world. Young Yosts called Sports Illustrated and convinced George blood Good, the magazine's deputy picture of her at the time, to review his portfolio. Blood Good agreed to provide Young Yos with film and processing for select assignments. He sent me to Buffalo, like nine sixty two. So this is when I started. It's the first plane

I ever took. Remember getting air sick on the plane. I was a nervous wreck. And I went to Buffalo and shot Boston versus Buffalo the American Football League. And there was a running back on Buffalo. His name was Albert Golden Wheels Dubini and he ran a kickoff back a hundred and five yards and I had the whole sequence. And apparently during the meeting with the manage entitor, Andre Laguerre,

he said, who took these pictures? He says, Oh, that's my guy, Walter Ryos, And then I was in the lineup. Never know Golden Wheels do Benny and did it for me. Yos would ride the heels of Golden Wheels to the arm of Johnny You. I got my first pass to go to Baltimore in San Francisco in Baltimore game a

Memorial Stadium. I guess I'm eighteen. With a minute left in the game, United strows his past to Jimmy Yord and he makes his bobbling catch with his pinkie down in one frame with a back up and shoot it and on the train like and everyone's onm me. You get that picture, kid, I said, I don't think so, you know, oh, how can you miss it? Like you get home and you develop it and it's a shark. There's any picture I've ever taken. And that was my

first action shot. Back in the sixties, there was no such thing as auto focus Neo Lifer remembers the ore image and Walter did this beautiful picture just as the ball is going in his hands. I know how hard that is to do. If you did that once or twice a season, that was you had a pretty good season.

It was easy to get a running back going through the line, or getting the quarterback getting sacked, but to get a receiver running at you or away from you, or whichever thing and get the ball just Walter did that all the time. Proper focus is only one of the key ingredients to a memorable image. The picture is sort of simple to me a good background, good life, and then make something good happen in front of it. Because if your background stinks, you've got a bad picture.

I mean, you've edited my picture. I'm possessed with backgrounds. To me, it starts with where am I shooting this person. I can make the light happen, but it has to start with that. And you think of like great photographers use up every millimeter of the frame perfectly. And the greatest is Jim Knockway. He never crops a picture. Every speck in that picture is there for a reason, and that's what a great picture gives you. As the golf photo entered Sports Illustrated, I would try to hire Yos

to shoot the majors. He had no interest. He had hoofted around enough courses, covering legends like Palmer, Nicholas, Player and Watson. But then a long came, a kid named Woods. The first time I photographed Tiger, it was two thousand. I wanted to recreate the famous Ben Hogan one iron shot that high Peskin took. So I went out with a speed graphic camera, four by five camera with my assistant Tom and the chum bucket where you take peel

up the polaroids. Well, the problem with that cameras you have to get close because it's sort of a wide angle, normal lens. You never met Tiger. You didn't introduce yourself, You didn't try to tell him what you were trying to do. You didn't he didn't know who you were. No, you didn'tmont talked to me. I can be aggressive this way, and you know golfers hate for Tiger. Was getting too close to him, and there's one spot they really detest behind him. So I'm I'm around him. I don't know

what hole around maybe sixty. He's already I can see him getting a cheat. I said to my assistant Tom, let's get out of here. Let's go. Let's go over on the fairway, put on your sunglasses. So as we're standing there, and I must have been ten fifteen feet behind him, and I could Steve Steve Williams is they're talking like, oh ship, Steve sauncers over and he goes, excuse me, Mike, have you ever covered of golf tournament before? I said, oh, yes, sir, and so I continued my

relentless pursuit of Tiger with wide angle lens. Is I was in his nostrils. I've been trying to have so many golf tournaments. That's why I told my sister. I said, no, time we get the shot and we get thrown out, who gives a crap? Throw me out? I'd be happy. Two months later, Sports Illustrated signs me to do a cover of Tiger at Ailesworth, the one in the Adirondack chair. So we go to Lake Windermere and put him in

the Adirondack chair. And now I'm being introduced to Tiger, and I mean great admirer of obviously, I said Tiger on Walter Yos. I said, you know, I covered you with LaCosta. I don't know if you've noticed me, he says, every whole bingo. But we kept became friends after the photograph for Nike. I photographed him for Golf Digus in December, and uh, you know, we go back twenty years and

it's really a nice relationship. Walter always seems to get what he's looking for, creates the image he envisions, which isn't to say there have been some hiccups. Christian Yos explains he shows up a daily to shoot a portrait of Jack Nicholas and Oura Palmer and I was there and he didn't show and I was like, oh my god, you know what am I gonna do? You know, it's freaking Jack and Arnie and you know there's agents involved. And I'm in mont Talk and Christian Colton he says,

where are you? I said, my mom Talk. He says, the shoots today. I said what? So I flee out of there. I drive down to Philly. You know, I'm like a day late. So I get to the press tentp and I see Jack. I find Jack. Will you do it today? Okay? After a munch, no problem. Arnie had just left. It was raining that day. He left the pudding green and I said, whoever the running the press desk? I said, you have to get me in touch with the Arnold so I can't. I can't give

you any numbers. I said, please, this is I'll dial is home number for you. Rings and rings and rings and rings, and just let it hang up. He goes hello, I said, Arnold. Hey, it's Walter Goes. I said, I'm sorry being a day late. I said, and you possibly do it today. Yeah, sure, I'll come over. And I brought the two them into this hotel room impose them together. This was special it. But with the end of the day I walk out of here. You know, it was at a golf course and the most famous golfers of

all time being together. And this woman goes up to her husband because you're not gonna believe her. I just saw. I just saw Arnie and Jack. He said, I was stop it, and he walked out. Did you ever have the sense that between Jack and Arnie they knew what they were doing, they knew they needed each other. That's what makes sports great. You know, you need somebody out there.

If Jack, we're all alone out there I'm sorry. Jack was Jack, and then Arnie the most personable, charming, charismatic one of them, right up there with Alli of all time, run around hat list, the cigarette, the swagger, Arnie's armies, all the women, the men. Everyone wanted to be with Arnie. I mean, he's one of the great people I've ever met. And you know the picture of them at the table, I took him sixty five Arnie and Jack. There's three

signed images by both of them and myself. I gave one to Jack, gave one to Arnie, and I have one. And the last time I went to Latrobe and went down the staircase downstairs, that picture was on the wall. It was like hamnt a lot, Arnie, Jack and Tiger. That was obviously Yoss, big three in golf. But I asked him for his three most memorable images Slam Dunk at eight in Chicago, the Blue Dunk in eighties seven Mile, Illinois, and January two, Dwight Clark's catch the story with the catches.

In July, I was up by sports illustrator to spend the season with the Cowboys, So I started in Thousand Oaks, California. Every game I'm with, I'm in with the team. It's like family. Now. I've seen all kinds of things you would even imagine. I'm not gonna talk about in the locker room. Give us, give us something, give us something you saw because you're embedded with This is Tom Landry. I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you one thing.

This is Tom Landry Tom Lantry. Basically he said alone on me once and we never said another word for the entire season. You couldn't have cared less if I was in there, but I was, and that was it. I you know what, I'm not gonna talk to him. I posed him once on the field with the gil Brand and the other owners. That was it. Stayed away from you stayed away from people like Landry or Lombardi. Stay away. So there was a player on the team and this was like week two, and you know, you

start with a team, you stay back. You don't start putting your camera and pay people's faces. And this guy comes up with me, does I want to take a picture. I want you to take a picture of me being shot up? You know, I look around. Okay, they're testing me. I said, why would you want me to do that? He says, so I can give it to my son so he never plays pro football. I still do it on one condition, I'll give you the role of film. So I wanted the trainer's room. You got shot up.

I shot it, and I gave him a roll of film, and he became my best friend on the team. I'm not mentioning any names. So we go to San Francisco and you know, teams passing out these energy bill black take breaks down, lack take acid. I mean everyone's taking pr guys, give me six of those things. Almost took the field. I was so wired up my games going for you. Well, you know, next game is the Super Bowl.

And then with what fifty eight seconds left in the game, Joe Montana rolls right lucky lucky, drawing an anzine WHI throws it pass to only one person the whole stand could catch the fingertips of Dwight Clark, a moment that reversed the course for not only Dwayne Clark, but for the forty Niners franchise and for a season long project

on the Cowboys. So I pressed Jos for more details as to why he was ready with the short legs sports lustrand the cover either the year before Dave Logan Cleveland making it one hand and catch on the sidelines, and when Montana roll right, I was with a zoom, like a zoom, I have that picture, big lenses down and I got the fifty ready and I shoot the sequence of the past and I dropped it and I'm pre focused, like twelve ft so i just picked up the camera and I see some players coming out with

the right corner of my eye and he just it's it just to catch. It's like, that's all the same chance. Favors were prepared, man, So you know I was thinking ahead. You just never expected a play of that significance to happen. But that's why you gotta be ready. And the season is over and it's like, I mean, catch didn't exist at that point. This was just a touchdown. And I went into the locker room, the single saddest place I've

ever been outside a funeral of personal friends. The silence was definite, as they say, And that was it for the season, and the magazine ran all of John Underwood's texting almost none of my pictures, which really pissed me off. But that cover came out next week, which I didn't even know I was on the road again called the catch. So suddenly, over you know, forty years, this has become

arguably the most famous picture in Propobal history. And oddly enough I never met Dwight Clark, but we were always connected by a five of a second, and you know, obviously I'm happy I took that picture. Now for more on this memorable moment, once again we hear from Lifer and Christian Yos the catch. I like to say, what separates the average sports attag from the truly great ones is there so much luck involved in sports. She got to be in the right position. The catch happened right

in front of Walter. It could have happened that the other corner of the end zone, and you're not in the position. What separates the really great ones from the ordinary photographers is when you're in the right position, you don't miss. And Walter was clearly in the lucky seat and he didn't miss. My favorite party in My favorite antidote about the catch is not so much like what

went into it, what happened. My favorite part of this at some point, like when you watch the footage, the camera you know hands and follows Dwight Cark and that it goes up and when you look in the background at all the photographers and media and they're all like looking in amazement about what's happening, and there's one guy with a camera up to his face and it's my dad.

Jose's greatness is not just capturing an image, it's also conceptualizing. Walter, let you go to Chicago and shoot Michael Jordan's So they sent me to lys Illinois had a kid's camp and his brother was there. I did some portraits of him, and I had the idea for the Shadow of the Dunk. Did you know him at that time? No, I never meant, but he was so charming as you can see from t V. I mean, there is no doubt, no doubt who the greatest, coolest, most dominating, meanest basketball player was

at all time. No one more beautiful than Michael. I'm Jesus. So there was a huge parking lot at this school of college or something. So I painted one section read not me. I had someone to it in another section blue because I wasn't sure which uniform he was gonna show up. And if he sho showed up him the white uniform, we would have come with a red. Then I go out Up says you can't have a stationary basket to create the up for shadow line and angle. I brought in a basket I called the NBA. I

called someone in Chicago. The only place I could get an NBA basket was trucked in from St. Louis. Back in those days. Who cared about money. So a guy trucked in an NBA basket which you could lower and then said it any angle so you get shadow in the right spot. Then you have to do it as a specific time of the day. It can't be too early or too late. Their clouds. You've got a problem. So Michael comes out and his red we go blue. I go up the cherry picker. Maybe there's ten dunks

and the blue dunk came to be. You painted the asphalt and depart from that. Did you have to repaint it afterwards? You just hell no, I left town. I got out of this bast like good again. As Christian Jose explains as it relates to m J and other megastars, timing is always a factor. Think about like my dad's career and it you know, like there's this roller coaster peak and think about the athletes that he had access to,

you know, Michael Tiger, Montana, Ripken, Kobe Slater. I mean, here's a guy who's really good at what he does and has access to incredible athletes pre Internet age, right, So they need the media, you know, like magazines and newspapers and TV are important, and you know, like here's a guy, here's a photographer who they can request. I mean, Cheater, you name it. I mean they wanted to work with him because they trusted him, and they know that they

needed their name. The pictures uh in these media outlets and um kind of frtuitous timing on some of it. The slam dunk contest in the late eighties mattered thanks in large part the little guys like Spud Webb. Then there's Clyde the Glide, Drexler, the Human Highlight Film, Dominique Wilkins, and in in Chicago Michael air Jordan's was the defending champion. Yet again, Yes, had a plan. I got the slam dunk causes in eight seven Seattle and lit it theatrical.

That's some nice pictures, but I understood if you can't see the player's face, the dunk doesn't matter. And guys coming backwards and dunk. So I either asked Michael the gummest or smartest question, since I said, you can always get no. He's sitting there before the game, and I'm there like a four hour before because I've strokes like the arena. I say, Michaels Walters. He said a little cold,

I said, Michael. I explained the situation about Seattle, and I said, well, is there anyone you could tell me which way you're gonna take off from? He looks out of him. He goes sure, And I said, well, how are you gonna do that? He says, I'll put my finger down on my knee and I'll point. I said, you can remember this, He says, watch me, because everything

is a game. Here's the story. Wilkins finishays with a h. Michael Jordan's needs a forty in to tie forty nine to win creativity and imagine ation to the key rust. He's gotta make the dunk to look over the bench finger. Okay, I'm moving to the right side. So it comes down to the last two dunks. One that proceeded mine, which looked like slammed up. So the next to last dunk, I'm right at the Stanton, I'm like close up like that at the hustle blout of the super Wide. He

dunks and he lands in my lap. Last dunk, he goes in the same spot, and I'm in the same spot again, like my position, and he looks at me. He goes like the and I moved over three ft one frame. That's the slam dun Jourdan the fifty feet of friends. This championship in the Chicago Bulls won their first of six NBA titles. Jordan had averaged over thirty points per game, six rebounds, five and a half assists, and had been awarded his second of four NBA m v P s. Again, Yos was conceptualizing it was a

bad year two. I was having a really bad year. There were no jobs, and I was like, I've got to get some work, man. And there was a book of Elvis Presley shot in fifty six behind the scenes by Albert Wertheimer. Was great photo diaries of all time. So I flew to Chicago. I had a job in Hawaii, actually, and on the way in I stopped in Chicago. I just waited for the locker room to clear out. He walked out and said, hey, Walter, what are you doing here? I said, I've got an idea. He said, your idea

is usually mean work. As we walked out to the edge of the stadium, we're still indoors and these guys with Eric Gus and I pitched him on this idea that this would be your photo album for the rest of the life. Look, you already got the NBA, your ring, your m v P, you got your children, you get your family, pretty much done it already. Why don't we document one year? I like this idea, give me a week and I flew back and I said, what do you think? He said, let's do it. We just shook hands.

We have no publisher, no title, and I think I was like thirty thousand into it. Yeah. I spent a lot of time at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago in the winter, flying all over the country. No one's paying anything. And then Mark Vansil, the writer, came up into the picture. Michael introduced us one day soon, Walter, I'm gonna introduce you someone, and we went into the black Hawks locker room. This is Mark Vansil. He's on the book, all right.

So Mark became the writer and came up with the fantastic Tyble rare air, and we couldn't sell the book. We flew to San Francisco. The commons and the people we met with were the last people on earth would ever buy a book on an athlete. I remember we left her like, gosh, there's a long trip for nothing. They bought the book. So the book is published, no one cares about it, and then Michael's father's murdered, Michael retires there forgets on the live Ponds and Noble on

Columbus Avenue. The book went from the basement to the front of the window, m and number one on the New York Times Bestseller others. That's sold better than any other prints. That book, eight hundred thousand books. So that was that's to me, Like, you know how much music means to me. That's like having one record that everyone knows. I always compare it to ize I left my art in San Francisco. Yeah, everyone knows that song. So you can think of Tony and one song and he's got it.

How many people have one one thing that goes to number one like that, So that's very special to me. Michael Jordan's once said about Walter, he's fast and he's good lifer and Christian yoes reflect on rare Air. Walter's genius photographer was going to produce brilliant pictures if you have access and the ability to have the time to do it right. And obviously Michael gave Walter the time.

I mean there were pictures and rare air. It's a picture in the bathtub I think, with him and his and his little kids as I remember, and I haven't looked at rare air for a while. I mean, how can you miss. It's incredible to think about the access that he had during that run. I mean, here is the the greatest team in sports, the biggest athlete on the face of the planet, and he's got the unlimited access.

He's on the team buses, he's in he's in Michael's hotel room, he's in the trainers room, which you know, as we've learned, was like the inner sanctum. I mean, nobody was allowed in there. You're gonna keep doing it until you die, I hope. So I never want to retire. I love taking pictures. That's what I do best. I still there are gonna take him. Not a lot of jobs out there right now, but I'm not done. Yeah, what's one picture that Walter shot that you wish you

would have shot? I love to have gotten the first Super Bowl cover, and uh, you know because it was the first and I'm saying that now in two thousand and twenty. I don't think I felt that strongly about it that year. And of the two, I got the second Super Bowl cover of Lombardi being carried off the field, but Walter got the first one, and he got the third one that Joe name is I would have liked. I've had all three. What are you most proud of of your dad? The thing I'm most proud of my

father is the way that he's carried himself. You know he's always treated you know, his his big thing is the Golden Rule, and you know he's always wanted his reputation to procede him and I think it has. And you know, he treats people well, he cares about people. He's a family guy. I mean, he loves his grandkids. I mean, he's he's he's just I think, gone about his career and his personal life in the right way. Um. And for me, that's something I really look up to.

It's a tradition on the fire Pit. We ask our guests, do you have a favorite fire pit that's a happy place point? Yeah, our pool in the summer in montok that's the pit. That's where the good stuff goes down. Well, that's what the kids are you know, it's hell, the grandkids, all families there. The pool be open in July. Hi,

I'm Matt Janella, your host of the fire Pit. As a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth and Jeff Cunningham at Link Soul in Oceanside, California are offering you a discount on all future orders of what I consider the best golf and lifestyle apparel. Whenever you go to link soul dot com, use promo code Matty. In the meantime, make park not war, and stay safe out there. Thank you for listening to the fire Pit. This podcast is produced by Alex and Peggy, edited by Rex Lint.

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