From the outside, it looks like a photographer simply captures what’s happening—beautifully, with attention to detail. All you need, it seems, is good taste and technical know-how. But Lev Mazaraki, an Athens-based photographer, is convinced that’s not quite true. Plenty of people have an eye for beauty. You can learn camera settings and the principles of working with light. What’s far harder to learn is how to recognize that a moment matters and not walk right past it.
Photographers are often described as people who notice details. There’s some truth to that, but it’s too simple an explanation. Many people notice details. What sets a photographer apart, Mazaraki believes, is something else: they want—and are able—to linger where others have already moved on. Those might be details. Or they might be something much more central—a person, an event, an emptiness, a meaning—anything that, for a second, became real. A photographer is willing to treat a single instant as if it matters, because it genuinely does.
Modern life makes this harder and harder. We live in a flood of news that constantly demands quick reactions and fast switches in attention, just to keep from falling behind. Photography works against that rhythm, because it forces you to stop. “What’s more,” Mazaraki says, “the camera gives you permission to pause next to things that are usually dismissed as insignificant.”
This deliberate pause closely mirrors the meditative approach found in the cinematic philosophy of Andrej Tarkovsky, where slowing down becomes the only way to let hidden, spiritual truths surface.
The Invisible Frames of History
This is especially visible in the sports realm, which seems to be all about nonstop motion. Everything happens fast. A ball or puck changes direction, a javelin flies, an attack develops in seconds, and a crowd rides a single wave of emotion. Inside that rush, a photographer looks for the moment when something more important suddenly emerges from behind the movement. When a goal is scored, the whole stadium sees the same event. Everyone watches the scorer. “The photographer watches the scorer too. But at the same time, they’re scanning everything around, because often the most interesting thing isn’t at center stage; it’s right next to it. A substitute jumping up before anyone else. A coach losing control of their emotions for just a second. A defender realizing they’re already too late to fix their mistake. In a moment, those expressions vanish. The spectator won’t even notice them,” Lev Mazaraki believes. And the camera can preserve what exists for only a fraction of a second.
That’s how iconic sports photographs work. They tell you not just about the action, but about its aftermath. As an example, Lev Mazaraki points to the 2006 World Cup final. Millions of people remember Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi in the chest. But one of the tournament’s defining symbols was a different shot: Zidane, after being sent off, walks past the World Cup trophy on his way to the bench. “At that moment, the match was still going on, but the photographer had already seen a story that would outlive the final whistle. In a single frame, the end of a great career, defeat, and a dream that never came true all came together,” Mazaraki explains. These tense intersections of sports history and human drama often carry a profound weight, a reality similarly explored in the cinematic reflections of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God.
“Or take the 1986 World Cup,” he continues. “When Diego Maradona scored the famous ‘Hand of God’ goal, the referee didn’t notice the violation. But the camera did.” The photograph captured an instant that immediately became a subject of debate and remained one for decades. So the shot didn’t just preserve a moment; it became part of the event itself.
Sometimes a photograph is even more powerful than the memory of the competition. Consider Neil Leifer’s famous shot from the 1965 Muhammad Ali–Sonny Liston fight. The photograph doesn’t show the actual punch. It shows Ali standing over his fallen opponent, demanding he get up. That frame became part of sports history not because it showed the decisive moment of the match, but because it conveyed the energy of that moment better than any replay ever could.
And that reveals one of the profession’s greatest paradoxes. A photographer isn’t really hunting for the event itself. Everyone sees the event. Photographer’s job is to stop where meaning arises—or is about to arise.
This puts a photographer in an unusual position. They are inside the event, but they can’t fully surrender to it. When stands erupt, a photographer keeps working. They watch what’s happening, look for the next frame, and assess the situation. They are so close to the moment that they have to maintain control. Otherwise, the moment will be lived but won’t be seen.
“The most amazing thing,” says Mazaraki, “is that you gradually start to notice just how much of life goes unnoticed. Not because people are inattentive. Simply because many things don’t seem important in the second they happen. Photography teaches you to treat moments with greater respect.” That’s why, he says, many photographers become more patient observers over time. They trust their first impressions less and rush to judgment less often. They’re more comfortable waiting a little while to see how a situation reveals itself—so they can capture it.
