Aged 71, a Chennai resident travels to top-tier international sports events, freezing iconic sporting moments

In cricket, one regularly comes across teams that shift to a whole new lane in the second innings, with surprising progress, eclipsing their first-innings performance. And in that process, they bring immense joy and wonder to spectators. 

Seshadri Sukumar has pulled off something similar to that. 

Here are the details of 71-year-old Seshadri’s second innings: a Press Information Bureau-accredited international sports photographer from Chennai and a Canon EOS Ambassador. He now has a reputation for “checking into” major international sporting events. As this article is being written, he is shooting images of sporting excellence at the 20th Asian Games, unfolding at Aichi Prefecture and Nagoya in Japan. 

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Before zooming in on what he is doing now, a quick run of his first innings: Sukumar had been working in the banking sector, being an official photographer with Indian Overseas Bank (IOB). He always had an intense desire to be a sports photographer, but that remained a desire for a drearily long time.

When retirement from his corporate career was looming large, Sukumar took the plunge and started pursuing sports photography full steam ahead. 

After Sukumar had been years into sports photography, in 2021, Sukumar’s nephew shared a story about his uncle’s passion for sports photography online. Sukumar was 66 years old then and covering the Tokyo Olympic Games. And the story of how someone is flourishing in a career kickstarted mid-life caught the world’s imagination. 

Sukuamar’s portfolio includes multiple Olympic Games, FIFA World Cups (including the most recent edition), ICC World Cups, Grand Slam tournaments, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, NBA events, FINA World Championships, FIDE World Cups and MotoGP, among several other major sporting events. 

Among his iconic photographs is one of the Rio Olympics, one that captured the contrasting emotions of the winner and the loser; the photograph won him a gold medal from the Photographic Society of America (PSA). 

Sukumar’s professional photographs have been distributed through international wire services and stock photography libraries, including Alamy, Zuma Press, IMAGO Images, SOPA Images and Reuters Connect. 

Sukumar’s life and career are a reminder that it is never too late to start afresh.