EIIIEEEEARRRRGGGHHHH!

GEERRRRRGGGGHHHHH!

JEEEAARRRRRKKK!

These are the sounds of sports photography. They are raw passion, embodied in eloquent onomatopoeia. They represent pure competitive oomph, the simultaneous strain of all the muscles of the human body, including the ones that look stupid when you strain them.

Sports photography, you have long been the underdog. You remind me that we’re all ridiculous. Some of us realize it, and some of us don’t. But either way, rob a man of his self-conscious identity preservation, and he’s nothing more than a funny-looking mound of flesh and bones with his mouth wide open. Today, sports photography, you assume your rightful place as an artistic medium, not just a vehicle for ever-more-absurd faces to grace the front pages of our morning newspapers.

I should note here that I am in no way belittling the admirable power of athletes. I stand in awe of athletes and their physical prowess. My love of sports photography does not hinge on some prejudiced idea that athletes are stupid. This is clearly not true, least of all at Stanford. Nor am I saying that athletes are unattractive. This is even more obviously not true. Instead, I love this underappreciated art because it gives a window into a side of human nature not often witnessed, least of all from the point of view of a camera lens.

Ordinarily, a photographer for a given publication will carefully comb through a set of pictures he has taken, weeding out those that are unbecoming. With sports photographers, however, based on the pictures we see every day in the newspaper, it seems the opposite may be the case.

This is raw, uncensored photography. Sports photography represents the death of the voluntary photo op. This is the farthest possible cry from the photobooth in the mall. Take away the girlish cutesy peace signs and the masculine sense of smug satisfaction. What is important now is not the person, per se, but the act. The slam dunk is supposed to be what I’m looking at, not the guy below the hoop with his eyes popping out and his “it kind of looks like I’ve got a gumball in my mouth” cheeks.

Accidentally closed eyes, bitten lips, impassioned teeth clenching. These are the staples of the rough-and-ready sports photographer diet, which is of course supplemented by Wheaties brand breakfast cereal — the breakfast of champions.

In the interest of capturing “the moment,” any and all other significant features of photography fall to the wayside. A photo may very well manage to capture that short two-second interlude between the rise of the golf club and the contact with the ball. The sun may very well be shining at just the right angle, illuminating the white ball and all of its contours. The bottom line, however, is that none of this can hide the fact that the golfer herself looks a little bit like an oompa loompa who is currently experiencing brain hemorrhaging.

I must say, though, that the unfortunate fact of sports photography is that the people who view these photographs in their daily newspapers don’t notice the ridiculousness. They’re caught up in the moment, too. They know of but one equation: Power serve = RAW POWER! EEEIIIRRRGGHHHHH!. The fact that power serve also equals “Louis Armstrong passionately making love to his trumpet” face does not even enter into their conceptual framework. This is a wholly different style of photography, the rules and regulations of which are alien to the ordinary photographic connoisseur.

Doubtless, there has to be a sports photographer out there who knows what he’s doing. This man snaps his camera shutter with a wry sense of self-deprecating humor. Perhaps this phantom sports photographer doesn’t like sports at all, but merely likes to look at people with funny faces at the peak of physical exertion but seemingly unaware of the probing aesthetic eye of the camera.

If the sports staff of a newspaper were to replace the serious sports photographer with this man, we honestly wouldn’t know the difference. We might very well even praise him for his ability to capture The Moment.

But we shouldn’t forget that the most important subject of this picture is not the fluidity of the quarterback’s spiral or the mastery of the wrestling grapple. It is the human beings themselves, caught in a candid and often embarrassing display of what human beings look like when they’re not trying to look cool or to show off. And yeah, it’s pretty silly.

Nat’s sole sporting experience was a four week bout on the track team in high school. He wasn’t good enough to have his picture taken while running with his mouth open. Email him with funny sports pics of your own at nat.hillard@stanford.edu.