AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- More than 100 Sports Illustrated covers; the NFL, the Olympics and the NBA Finals
- Worked in
- Color: slide film for decades, digital for Sports Illustrated from 2002
- Camera
- Canon EOS-1D X with a 400mm f/2.8 or 200-400mm f/4 lens on a monopod
- Also
- Canon Explorer of Light; taught sports photography workshops; wrote Peter Read Miller on Sports Photography (2013)
- Start with
- Peter Read Miller on Sports Photography (New Riders, 2013)
Peter Read Miller (c. 1947–2026) was an American sports photographer. He worked for Sports Illustrated for more than 35 years, and his pictures ran on more than 100 of its covers. He covered 41 Super Bowls, nine Olympic Games and 14 NBA Finals.
The story
In 1964 a new student at the University of Southern California walked into the office of El Rodeo, the school yearbook. He was only 16. In high school he had already taken pictures for the yearbook and the paper. “I went to the El Rodeo office and said, ‘Can I shoot for you? I like sports stuff,’” he remembered. They found him a press pass. His first assignment was the USC–UCLA football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Born in Chicago, Miller grew up in Evanston, Illinois. His first camera was a gift from his grandmother. Football was his great love, but his father did not want him to play it. “My father was worried about me playing, so I never played it in high school, but I always had a passion for the game,” he said. At USC he rowed on the crew team and photographed games from the sideline instead.
Photography still looked like a hobby. After a degree in economics, he started a Ph.D. at the Wharton School. But he left after one semester to focus on pictures. For a short time in 1971 he worked as road manager for a rock band, until its equipment was stolen in Detroit. Then he went back to shooting USC football.
From 1972 he worked as a freelancer, and in the mid-1970s he began shooting NFL games. In 1977 he joined Sports Illustrated. Over the next decades he covered Super Bowls, Olympic Games, NBA Finals and the Kentucky Derby. In November 2005 he photographed LaDainian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers leaping over the line against the Buffalo Bills. The Pro Football Hall of Fame named it the best football photograph of the year.
The famous jobs never took him away from the yearbook kid's first field. “But on weekends when I wasn't busy, I'd always go over and shoot USC home games,” he said. In December 2015 the Los Angeles City Council honored him for 50 years of photographing Trojan football. He was still working NFL games in his last season, at 78. Looking back on those five decades at the Coliseum, he said: “It does not feel like 50 years!”
The work
- c. 1947Born in Chicago; grows up in Evanston, Illinois
- 1964First assignment for the USC yearbook: the USC–UCLA game, at 16
- 1972Starts working as a freelance photographer
- 1977Joins Sports Illustrated
- 1992Covers the Barcelona Olympics, using a rare Canon 1200mm lens
- 2006Wins the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Dave Boss Award for his Tomlinson photo
- 2013Publishes Peter Read Miller on Sports Photography
- 2015Los Angeles City Council honors his 50 years of shooting USC football
- 2026Dies in his sleep at home in Manhattan Beach, California, aged 78
Lessons
Know the game. He said the more you know about the sport, the teams and the players, the better your chances of a great picture.
Use the light you have. Helmets shade a player's face, so he looked for low sun or shot with the sun behind the player.
Keep your setup simple. In a game he kept one long lens on a monopod and did not switch cameras.
Try this: go to a local game in the late afternoon. Stand where the sun is behind the players. Use your longest lens, look for a clean background, and follow one player for the whole game.
Gear
Miller worked with Canon cameras for most of his career and was part of Canon's Explorers of Light program.
Canon EOS-1D X: his main camera body in the 2010s, with a Canon 7D Mark II as a second body.
Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4x: he called it his favorite lens for action sports. On other days he used a 400mm f/2.8 instead.
Monopod: the long lens stayed on it for the whole game.
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom: for action that came close to him.
At the 1992 Olympics he worked with a rare Canon 1200mm lens. He started shooting digital for Sports Illustrated in 2002.
Books
Peter Read Miller on Sports Photography: A Sports Illustrated Photographer's Tips, Tricks, and Tales on Shooting Football, the Olympics, and Portraits of Athletes (New Riders, 2013). His only book, 288 pages, written by Miller himself after more than 30 years with Sports Illustrated. It has seven chapters: four on football (shooting on the field, how plays work, light and lenses, and working for SI), two on the Olympics, with one on swimming, gymnastics and track and field, and one on portraits of athletes. Each section mixes practical advice with the stories behind his pictures. It is written for sports photographers at every level, from beginners at a local game to working professionals.
