In an age when anyone with a smartphone is a photographer, it’s easy to lose sight of what makes photography art. But when you see an image by Charlotte’s own Streeter Lecka, you know.
His photographs are so vivid, they glisten. He can get a puzzle-worthy scene of a rustic old barn by shooting in what he calls Jesus light or “that perfect glowing light.” Lecka can turn one moment from a remote spot across the world—or through a hospital window—into an unforgettable story. Lecka calls them mega frames.
He spent the better part of 20 years capturing mega frames as a sports photographer for Getty Images, attending major events from Super Bowls to Soccer World Cups, golf majors to the Olympics. He wasn’t your run-of-the-mill sports photographer; he was one of the best in the world.
Lecka traveled to Asia, South America and Russia to get close to the action and the people who make it. He peered through countless lenses at Tiger Woods and took golf tips on a commercial shoot with Jim Furyk. He followed snowboarder Shaun White from one Winter Olympics to the next. He chatted up Kobe Bryant, setting up cameras before a shootaround. He once got mauled by a defender trying to break up Santonio Holmes’ game-winning touchdown catch for Pittsburgh in the 2008 Super Bowl. He’s been crunched by LSU’s 6-foot-9, 290-pound Glen “Big Baby” Davis at the NCAA Final Four.
“But I still got the picture,” Lecka says.
He became the subject of ESPN’s Super Bowl postgame coverage after capturing a reflection of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady holding his daughter in a Super Bowl trophy. He was one of just five photographers allowed inside an Olympic track to illustrate Usain Bolt crossing the finish line in a 100-meter final.
He was poised and ready with his wide-angle lens just 33 seconds into a Duke-North Carolina basketball game when Duke’s prized player Zion Williamson injured his knee as his Nike high top split apart. When Lecka flipped on CNBC the next day and saw a news story about Nike’s stock falling, his pictures from the night before flashed up on the screen.
Taking advantage of being in the right place at the right time is how Lecka got his start in photography in the first place.
He was a student at the University of North Carolina when a friend mentioned her older brother, a photographer, needed help shooting a UNC basketball game. For a chance to sit courtside and make $50, Lecka agreed to change out film, carry equipment, set up cameras and whatever else was needed. The brother was Getty photographer Craig Jones.
Lecka began shadowing Jones at other games too, and golf tournaments at Quail Hollow, Carolina Panthers games and more. Lecka fell hard for the craft. He was determined to follow in Jones’ footsteps to Getty, even after a UNC journalism professor explained that most photographers work their way through daily newspapers first. Lecka applied for an internship with Getty, was chosen out of 250 applicants and never looked back.
“I fell in love with how to take the pictures, finding angles, finding light, finding backgrounds where it made the pictures jump off the page,” Lecka says. “There was an art form to it. You had moments you needed, the coaches or the main players who did well. But then there's also a time when you can use everything as a canvas and make something truly incredible. People step back, go, ‘Whoa. I was at that same event, and I never saw that.’”
Lecka was at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, shooting a gold medal match between two Chinese table tennis players, when he decided to put a remote camera in the rafters to get an image from overhead. He climbed without harnesses or carabiners.
“Looking back, that was pretty dumb,” he says. “I would have fallen to my death about 120 feet down.”
Lecka pursued his career like he shot his subjects, with singular focus. He worked long days, including nights and weekends, and traveled for weeks at a time. Only after he broke his collarbone while shooting downhill skiing in Aspen did he slow down long enough to meet his wife, Kellie.
Lecka grew up in Banner Elk, N.C., and was a seasoned skier, which gave him rare access as a sports photographer at winter events. But with 100 pounds of camera equipment on his back and a whiteout to contend with, he hit a bump and crashed into a mogul. Lecka was home editing when he ventured out to Selwyn Pub.
The first time he saw Kellie, knowing the power of an image, he told a friend: “I’m going to marry that girl.”
They now have two children, Harris, 8, and Olivia, 4. He eventually resigned from Getty to focus on his family and opened his own studio. Taking portraits and shooting advertisements didn’t hold much allure after a while, so Lecka ventured into something new. He has joined forces with children’s author Steve Barrett to turn children’s books into an animated series called “The Adventures of Avery and Masa.” They are pitching it to streaming services.
In the meantime, Lecka has had to learn to leave family photo-taking to somebody else with a smartphone.
“Because of my OCD, perfectionist personality, I missed the moments with the kids,” he says. “I'll have a great photo, but I was too busy, trying to get the background right, trying to get the lighting right, and ‘Oh, that looks really cool if I change the camera or shoot it with this lens.’”
Streeter Lecka explains the work behind some of his favorite images.
Alaskan Bore Tide
Lecka pitched a project to shoot surfers at the Alaskan Bore Tide, which creates 10-foot waves when ocean tides meet a narrow inlet. It’s the only bore tide in North America and one of 60 worldwide. Lecka’s photographs were featured in The Atlantic Magazine.
“It was 10 days in Alaska in the middle of July. There was a super full moon, so the bore tide was going to be stronger than normal. I would go out every morning and night when the tide came in for nine days straight. Some surfers didn't like it because they didn't want people to know about it and steal their waves. I made friends with one, and he let me put a camera on his board. When I wasn't shooting during the middle of the day, I would drive along (the inlet) which is miles long, and look for spots to shoot. Every day, when I was done, I'd go through what worked, what didn't, where the light was at this time of day. After a week, I put together a pretty d*mn incredible story. It's surfing in Alaska, which nobody would ever think of. It was a spiritual moment.”
Uptown Charlotte
Awaiting the birth of his daughter Olivia at Novant Hospital, Lecka noticed the incredible view of Uptown from his window. He had his camera equipment with him to take pictures of his newborn daughter. Using his iPad to create a reflection, he captured a one-of-a-kind cityscape.
“Each night, I was like, ‘Man, what an incredible view of the city.’ I started shooting it, and then I remember thinking, ‘What can make this better?’ That was always my thing. How can I make it really jump and stand out? After that first night, I said, ‘I need a better sunset. If I get a good sunset, then what else can I do?’ I had an iPad, and if you don't turn the iPad on, it's black and it's got a great reflection. I cleaned off the iPad so it was a perfect reflection and tilted it down. I held the camera in my right hand and the iPad in my left hand, and I kept tilting it and shooting it to where I could make it to get that reflection. There is no pond. There is no lake. There is no puddle. That is how I did that.”
Mormon Row in Grand Teton National Park
Lecka’s wife, Kellie, loves Jackson Hole and asked him to shoot a picture of an iconic local scene of one of the barns along Mormon Row, a historic site where Mormons first settled in the late 1800s.
“I told her, ‘You know I'm extremely particular about my pictures, and I'm not going to (hang) it up unless it's something that I love. She said, ‘Fair enough.’ So we went out super early one morning. We had a break in the light for maybe five minutes, where the morning light hit the barn perfectly, and the Tetons were beautiful in the background. I really like that one. But you can look online at the National Geographic guys and see they will go to that spot and shoot it for weeks or a month, the same way I did in Alaska, every morning, every night, and in the beautiful what we call the ‘Jesus light,’ that just perfect glowing light. It’s hard for me to see those. I'm thinking, ‘Man, I'd love to do that.’ But we had a perfect morning. So I still love it because she loves it so much. It means a lot to us personally.”