Signature artist of the month

As the gun blasts, the runners explode off their starting blocks and a wave of electricity pulses through the crowd. It’s this captivating, thrilling experience of watching sports that iStock by Getty Images photographer Pali Rao so brilliantly embodies in his powerful images.

Using moody, cinematic lighting, the Cambridge, UK-based photographer creates imagery that could be mistaken for a still-frame from a superhero blockbuster.

“What appeals to me is the drama of sports and the excitement that surrounds it,” said Pali, who surprisingly doesn’t consider himself a big sports fan. “Every move an athlete makes is incredibly dynamic. They can do amazing things and are very heroic, so it makes sense to me to portray them in that way.”

“I work with sports models so they tend to be professional or semi-professional athletes as well as models. They know exactly what to do in front of the camera and they know their sport intimately, so I try not to get in the way too much when I shoot. I give the athletes rough direction, but often they do stuff that I didn’t plan for— and it looks amazing,” Pali said. “I usually have an idea of what I want to do visually, but I ask them to stop me if something wouldn’t happen in an actual game; I’d rather go with what’s real than the initial vision I have in my head. Because of this, it’s usually a surprise to me how the photo turns out, which I like. If it was like paint by numbers and I knew where everything was going to go it would be very boring. I just go with it and see how it evolves.”

Pali shoots the athletes in a studio, and then uses Photoshop to artificially create the backgrounds, piecing together elements from several different photos. Recently, he has also learned to utilize CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) to bring his ideas to life.

“There are some ideas that I know I can’t realistically capture with my camera, but with CGI, I can actually create things using a computer that I would never be able to shoot in real life,” he said. “Technology is evolving faster and faster; I think we live in amazing times and we’re heading in a really exciting direction. New advancements in photography, like 360˚ imagery and virtual reality provide more opportunities to make things in inventive ways.”

With these advancements in technology, the possibilities of what Pali can create are endless.

“It’s my ultimate dream to get to the point where we can shorten the distance between closing your eyes and imagining a picture in your head and then actually turning that idea into reality,” he said. “Because of these new technologies, this is becoming more and more possible. My only limitation now is my own imagination.”