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Craig golding on SportS photography and Beyond
One of the first full-time sport photographers to work for a newspaper group, Craig Golding has covered many of the world’s biggest sporting events from the early 1990s to today, although he now operates as a freelancer. He still thrives on the cut and thrust of competition, but has also found photographic inspiration right on his home doorstep, and his Cronulla project is now over 20 years in the making.
Internationally-awarded sports photographer Craig Golding spent 20 years covering some of the world’s biggest sporting events, but since going freelance, he’s also found inspiration much closer to home.
Sydney’s domestic airport terminal some time in 1987 and press photographer Craig Golding is waiting for a flight to Melbourne. Everyone is on the aircraft except for Craig and the pop star. Craig is hiding around the corner and the gate is now locked off. They bring the pop star out and put him in first class. Craig walks on after him and the airline staff hassle him. “What are you doing?” “Here’s my ticket, I’m on this flight.” Craig has to walk past the pop star who is sitting by a window. He’s got his camera and flash ready, but he didn’t want to just blast him. When he’s level with the pop star’s seat, Craig says, “Hello, Michael”. Michael Jackson replies, “Hi”.
“Look, is it OK if I take a picture?” Craig asks. Michael says, “Sure”.
“It was in the wimpiest voice you have ever heard, whilst giving me a peace sign,” Craig recalls. “He was a completely different person to the Michael Jackson at the Melbourne concert that night, who was screaming, yelling and ripping his shirt off. I went bang, bang and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this gigantic guy running up the aisle towards me. ‘ What are you doing here?’ he demanded and I
replied, ‘Michael said it was all right to take a picture’. Michael said ‘sure’ again, and went back to looking out the window.”
Arriving at Melbourne airport, Craig went and waited in the aircraft’s toilet while they herded everyone off the plane and then closed the main exit so the only way out was down the back stairs that Michael was going to use. Craig comes out of the toilet and the crew panicked and said, “You’ll have to go down the stairs where Michael is walking out”.
Craig remembers all The Age photographers – who were shooting through the terminal windows with their 600mm lens and teleconverters – later saying to him, “The door opened and you came out”.
“At the bottom of the airstairs somebody said to me, ‘ You’re not supposed to be here’, but I told him that I was Michael Jackson’s photographer and the guy goes, ‘Ah, OK’. So I had three minutes with him on the tarmac before he drove away in his limousine.
Dark Ages
Craig’s mother was responsible for getting him interested in photography. As a young girl, she took her Box Brownie everywhere, recording family events. Subsequently, Craig was struck by the history that each photograph represented. “Taking pics of guys sitting on the beach, or getting out of a car. The only thing that interested me was photography.” He applied for a job which required the applicant to have an interest in art and photography, and his mother said, “That sounds like you”. He got the job, but then found out it essentially involved sitting at a table punching holes in circuit boards. “After six months, I’d look out the window, thinking of all my mates who were at Teachers College and going away, or at the beach. It was always Mum… not pushing me, but trying to guide me and she said, ‘Look, tomorrow is the last day of signing up for the TAFE photography certificate course’.” For four nights a week for four years, Craig continued working during the day and then went straight to TAFE. One of Craig’s fellow students was photographer Peter Solness who recalls, “It was like the dark ages. Teachers in grey lab coats dispensing instructions about how to
photograph a block of wood using a 4x5-inch view camera”.
Learning On The Job
Craig tried various jobs after leaving TAFE, but avoided any big commitments so that he could still go surfing in Hawaii or ski-ing in Canada. However, at 25, he decided it was time to do settle down and Mum’s advice this time was, “Go to the papers”.
“I actually thought Craig had chucked photography in,” says Peter Solness. “So I was pleased when, sometime in the mid-1980s, he asked me if there were any jobs going at The Sydney Morning Herald. I’d seen enough of his work to know that he would be a natural fit, so I helped to smooth the way.”
At the time Craig was working in a film processing lab, doing black and white work and assisting on shoots. Finally, he got his print portfolio together and started regularly dropping in to The Sydney Morning Herald until one day he was told, “There’s actually a position going, we will try you out for a week”.
Craig was equipped with a whole lot of 35mm gear, but he had never used flash before, so started asking around the office, “How does this work?” One of the photographers at the Herald then was John O’Gready – best known for his 1963 photograph, The Gladiators, of rugby league footballers Norm Provan and Arthur Summons, and which inspired the NRL’s major trophy.
Craig recalls, “He was a pretty rough sort of a guy. I think photography, for a lot of them then, was more of a job than a passion. I asked him how to use the flash, and he said, ‘Ah, put it on this and fire it’.”
One of Craig’s first assignments was to photograph a demonstration.
“I did the job, and they came around and collected the film, and I thought, ‘ Well, that’s it! They’ll come back and say see you later’.”
Back at the SMH office, Craig is sort of hiding in the darkrooms, doing some printing, when he hears his name being called. The picture editor then says, “Good job, great picture”.
“I was pretty pleased with that,” Craig says laughing, and then reveals that, to this day, he’s never actually seen that photograph.
Darkroom To Digital
Craig says he embarked on a steep learning curve at The Sydney Morning Herald.
“People would run into the darkroom, do a print in two minutes and run out again. I’d been in there and, three hours later, I was still trying to get a good print. But I caught on. I learnt more in a few months shooting every day at the Herald than I did doing four years at TAFE.”
Craig’s four heroes at the paper were Bob Pierce, Rick Stevens, Peter Morris and Paul Matthews, and everyone had to aspire to be like them.
“They were really good photographers, but it was a different mentality then. They were expected to go out and make pictures. If something wasn’t happening, you made it happen. I came in just as this other breed of photographers – who included Peter Solness, Laurie Graham and Peter Rae – were coming through and they believed that we shouldn’t be creating things that aren’t real. We should be only shooting things as they happen. Photography was their passion, but they also had ideas. However, you would get hammered by the picture editor if you came back with nothing.”
Craig’s first big sports assignment was the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. The team took along a crate about as big as a room so they could set up their one darkroom. After the film was processed, the negs were put on a drum scanner and the files sent back to Sydney via an analog line.
“After the games, looking at the photos back in Sydney, it was hard to think that it been worth all the effort because the quality was hideous. Every now and then
You don’t want to be their best friends because, at times, you’re going to take pictures that they’re going to like and you can’t let that affect you. It’s your job.
you would get a picture that looked all right, but most were either blurry or fuzzy.”
Craig then went on to shoot the summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney and Athens.
“The Olympics were always a bit of a nightmare,” he says. “Basically, you were only covering Australians so you’d get about three hours of sleep a night because you had to process all your images. Both Barcelona and Atlanta were in the early days of negative scanning. Sydney was more enjoyable because there wasn’t just two photographers trying to cover everything, and all the transport worked. Unfortunately, though, we did shoot digital at the Sydney Olympics and, to be honest, it was awful, but logistically it was the only way to go. There simply wasn’t the time to have shot film which then would have had to be processed and scanned; the result would have been that production would have collapsed on day one.
“So digital covered the speed aspect, but the result was that, at the end of the Olympics, I – as did everyone else – had all these great images with a maximum file size of just over five megabytes before any cropping. There was also a time lag with the cameras so you had to anticipate when something would happen. Shooting digital when it was still very much in its infancy – and at what I felt were the best Olympics I had covered – was basically just sad.”
Good Sports
In 2008 Craig left The Sydney Morning Herald and worked with Getty Images for a few years. Then one day he got a telephone call from Sam Mooy who was the pictorial editor at AAP.
“Sam asked me if I was happy to shoot everything and I said, ‘No, but if you’ve got sport, I’ll do sport.’ AAP are great to work with, and I wouldn’t work for anyone else at the moment. It’s a great relationship and they look after me and give feedback. You might do a job with a sport person and be with them for a few hours and then the next time you see them, they walk straight past you. But there’s other people, like Buddy Franklin for example. The first job I did with him was for the AFL and, beforehand, a couple of people said to me, ‘Good luck with Buddy’. I wasn’t an AFL person, but I knew who he was and he was just like a lot of the others… he didn’t want to spend a lot of time doing pictures. However, whenever I’d see Buddy after that, he’d look at me and say, ‘Hi mate, how you going?’ Then he’d put his hand out and shake your hand. And this is one of the greatest AFL players ever.
“A lot of people that I started out shooting have now finished their careers, and a lot of new people have come in who don’t know you. You can see them thinking, who’s this old bloke? So you’re constantly shooting different people.
“A lot of the photographers want to be best mates with the sports people. I’ll have a chat with them if I’m working with them. You’ve got to be able to talk to them, but you don’t want to be their best friends because, at times, you’re going to take pictures that they’re not going to like and you can’t let that affect you. It’s your job.
“I thought shooting sport was easier than a lot of things. There were a lot of jobs I didn’t want to do, including standing around outside a court. Sport has the full range of emotions of life anyway… joy, despair and excitement. I thought there’s a chance for me to sit down on sidelines and watch all these brilliant events and it’s supposedly called a job. That’s really why I pushed towards sport. I think I was one of the first full-time sport photographers for newspapers in the country.”
On The Beach
The beachside suburb in southern Sydney where Craig now lives has become the subject of an on-going photographic project, and he’s continually finding new subjects right on his own doorstep.
“The Cronulla series only really started
Shooting digital when it was still very much in its infancy – and at what I felt were the best Olympics I had covered – was basically just sad.
seriously when I left The Sydney Morning Herald. It was therapeutic, relaxing and good for helping keep my eye in. I had taken pictures around Cronulla for a long time. But once I started walking around, I thought there’s something really appealing about documenting your own space. Not just the people who live here, but the people who come here too.”
Craig bought a waterproof housing to do some of the Cronulla pictures. He could have sat on the beach and shot with a 400mm telephoto lens, but that wouldn’t have given the intimacy that he prefers… and it probably would have looked a bit creepy.
“Half the time I put a media accreditation thing around my neck and then go and see the lifeguards and, if I know them, it’s all cool. If I don’t know them, I just try and be as visible as possible so they know what’s going on.”
Craig says he spends 80 percent of the time talking, and 20 percent taking the pictures.
“You would be surprised at the number of people who come up to you at the beach saying, ‘ What are you doing? You’re pointing your camera in the direction of my child’. I’ll say, ‘Here’s my Website, have a look’, and most people are OK with that. But beach photography is probably the hardest thing to do. I was wandering around Cronulla on Australia Day and came upon a party. I just had to go over there. I found the owner and he was suspicious initially, but I go into my spiel, ‘Look, my name’s Craig and I’ve been documenting Cronulla for years. Do you mind if I take some pictures?’ He stared at me for about ten seconds and then said, ‘No problem mate’. Once he said that, I was in, and I was getting handed beers and sausages. It enabled me to get in with a shorter lens and be part of it. I often end up having great conversations with people and come away feeling great. Photography has opened so many doors that might never have been opened.
“Once – and this was before camera drones – I thought I should get some aerials so I bit the bullet and hired a helicopter to photograph the SLSA National titles. When we arrived over the beach, the competition was on hold because they were changing the shark nets, so we wasted 20 minutes of flying time. But enough happened in the next 20 minutes to get some decent stuff. And I got one image of all the boats lined up on the shore that I wouldn’t have got if the competition was on.
“I’m always looking for things that would look different… that would make an interesting picture. That’s why I like variety, it’s refreshing. I think you can get stale, complacent and start working to a formula if you’re shooting the same sport all the time.”
Being The Best
Late last year Craig photographed the Invictus Games in Sydney.
“They were seriously competitive, but even more seriously supportive of each other,” he comments. “Once a competitor had finished a race they would turn to cheer and scream out encouragement to those that were still to finish; it was highly emotional and inspirational.”
He says he found himself shooting through teary eyes a number of times.
Another former sports photographer from The Sydney Morning Herald, Tim Clayton, says, “You always think no one wants to win more than you.”
Now based in Connecticut, USA, Tim adds, “But then you meet someone like Craig who puts being the best above all else. He loved to achieve and hated to be second best. He wanted to take the best image at every event he went to, and more often than not, he did. If he didn’t, he was down on himself. It was the level of his professionalism; he lived and died by the split second. His dedication and desire to be the best he could be is second to none. I am still in awe and thankful I had such an amazing partnership with him and Steve Christo on the SMH during the halcyon days. He is without doubt the best Australian sports photographer ever and he really hasn’t received the recognition he has deserved in the national arena, while achieving so much internationally for his work. I tip my hat to an amazing human being and an amazing sports photographer who made me better.”
People would run into the darkroom, do a print in two minutes and run out again. I’d been in there and, three hours later, I was still trying to get a good print.