NEW YORK – One of the most incredible photos of the year in sports, with Jasmine Paolini as the protagonist, is one of the big stories of this US Open.
When Italian-Australian photographer Ray Giubilo saw on his camera screen what he had captured, he never imagined the huge impact that would follow: “All of a sudden, boom, boom, boom. People started looking what I posted. I said, wow. This is fantastic. By now, one point three million people saw the picture on my Instagram, and my followers went from 4000 to 11000!”
Giubilo told CLAY in New York how he managed to take the photo everyone is talking about.
“I was concentrating on capturing facial expressions. I sat on her box’s side because that’s where it all happens. She’s always communicating with the box, whether she’s angry or frustrated or happy or pumping up. She was on the other side of the court, so I kept on shooting her, maybe something would come out.”
“And something came out!” he recalled with a smile.
During her first-round match in New York, Paolini tried to regain her balance after hitting a forehand. She placed her Yonex racquet in front of her face. The image shows how the brand’s logo on the strings fits perfectly with the Italian’s eyes and mouth: “It’s hilarious, it’s a funny photo. If you look at it, you start laughing, especially if you think of Halloween. It looks really like a pumpkin. And Jasmine loved it.”
After her next win, Paolini surprised Giubilo when she went to acknowledge his stunning work.
“At the end of the match, I saw her running towards her box who was behind me. I thought, okay, she’s gonna celebrate with her coach. But she came closer and closer. I took the lens off, and she was smiling to me. She said, ‘Grande photo!‘ Then she spoke about it in the on-court interview, this went viral even more last night,” said the 69-year-old photographer, with 31 US Open coverages.
“Maybe the picture of the year!” said Paolini laughing.
“That’s a fantastic photo. You could spend your whole life trying to get it and most likely you wouldn’t succeed,” French photographer Antoine Couvercelle told CLAY.
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Giubilo shot a sequence of four frames. The last one was the viral photo. He showed CLAY the series from his own computer in the press room of the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center.
“It’s good that I did that, because on the web, a lot of people are objecting, saying it’s AI or photo montage. I have it documented,” he explained.
The freelance photographer, contributor to Il Tennis Italiano, says he was “very lucky.”
“The strings are yellow, the frame is red. You could never see the face. All you see is the two eyes in the two circles and the mouth in the triangle, because the logo was upside down. With a Wilson or Head racquet, that would not have happened,” he said, laughing.
Or perhaps, he got help “from above”. Giubilo paid tribute to Art Seitz, the legendary North American photographer who covered more than 50 US Opens and passed away last week.
“Art was a very special photographer, he used to take amazing photos of the players off the court, unique in his kind. He would have loved this photo I made. Maybe from above he said, ‘Let’s give him a little shout.'”
Naturally, the photo is already a contender for photography awards. Giubilo confirmed he will submit it to some competitions: “The ITF runs an annual competition. Also I’ll definitely put it in the AIPS. Out of all those, maybe I get one. But then you never know. Somebody else might get a better picture. There’s always somebody who makes a better picture.”
