There has to be, you'd imagine, a hefty chunk of luck in most sports action photography. You can only guess and speculate, for example, who will score the decisive goal at which end of the pitch unless you are an Italian betting syndicate and you have to be constantly vigilant for freak incidents and upset results. Then there are those telling exchanges that truly define sport and its heroes think Andrew Flintoff consoling Brett Lee after the second Ashes Test in 2005. These moments resonate precisely because they are so unexpected.
Yet, flicking through Tom Jenkins's In the Moment, the first collection of more than 20 years of sports photography, much of it for the Guardian and the Observer, luck is not a word that comes to mind. It seems for every major sporting occasion of the past two decades, Jenkins was not only there, but in the perfect spot to supply the definitive image of the event.
He concedes there have been moments of good fortune. When Jonny Wilkinson lined up the drop-goal that would win England the 2003 Rugby World Cup, Jenkins was on the wrong side of the pitch to catch much more than the left-footed player's backside. As it happened, though, Wilkinson popped it over with his right boot.
But it is what happened next that is revealing about Jenkins. While other photographers concentrated on the England players' wild celebrations, he alone tracked Wilkinson as he modestly returned head bowed, job done to the dressing room. From that one event, Jenkins came home with a sublime action shot and a portrait that reveals so much more.
In the Moment is a handsome retrospective and Jenkins mostly lets his pictures speak for him. There are subtle hints, however, at the dedication that has produced this sustained excellence. There's the caption under the 2007 Tough Guy endurance race the scene resembles the Somme more than an athletic event which notes that the conditions were so awful that he ended up in hospital with pneumonia. Or an epic, disorientating in-flight photograph of Blake Aldridge and Tom Daley from a synchronised diving event at the Beijing Olympics that required Jenkins to be strapped to a girder in the roof.
An introductory essay from regular collaborator Richard Williams offers further insights. Jenkins was skilled enough at snooker to have played against Ronnie O'Sullivan as a young man, but it was his time studying with Magnum photographer David Hurn at the Gwent College of Higher Education in Newport that appears to have had a lasting impact on his approach. Hurn required all his students to take photographs every day; he also restricted them to one roll of film per job. That meant just 36 exposures, an economy that still inspires Jenkins, even though digital cameras now permit thousands of images.
As Jenkins says: "I can sit next to guys with cameras at a cricket match now who're hosing down every single ball, and they're still not getting the picture. They are not really looking, not analysing what's going on. It's like going fishing and putting so much bait out that you're bound to catch something. But that's not how it works."
