By Scarlet Pruitt

Michael Zagaris doesn’t just shoot icons - he becomes them. For the click of a shutter he captures Lou Reed, platinum blond head bowed, lighting a smoke with blackened nails and addictive intensity; in another he is in the body of Mick Jagger, all bony hips and lips and attitude.

For Zagaris, who has photographed rock stars, sports legends and pop icons in a career spanning over three decades, the trick to revealing a subject is to step into their lives.

"When I shoot I shoot not as a voyeur but to show them what it's like to be them," he says.

He likens his method to acting, and the result is images that are themselves iconic. Often they show what the public feels: an uncritical devotion.

Rock 'n Roll Start
The "Z-Man," as Zagaris is often called, studied law and began his career as a speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy. After Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, he railed against the system and found himself settling in San Francisco where he cultivated a new interest: British rock.

Zagaris became captivated with the soon-to-be legendary British rock bands that were sweeping the U.S. with their hardedge style and blues roots. He decided to write a book on the subject and began attending concerts and taking photos.

It was the perfect intersection of time and place. The Who, The Stones, Peter Frampton and Steve Winwood — they were all there and Zagaris was never far away, with pen and camera at the ready.

One day he showed a stack of proof sheets to Eric Clapton, then lead guitarist for the renowned but short-lived band Blind Faith. Clapton convinced him that his true calling was photography.

"He said, hey look, the writing is alright but you should be doing this for a gig," Zagaris says.

The Sports Shooter
The advice stuck, and soon Zagaris was expanding his range, shooting fashion, photojournalism and sports in addition to rock. In 1973 he was named official team photographer for the San Francisco 49ers, and by 1981, he was also team photographer for Oakland Athletics.

Sport has become his bread and butter and he remains with both teams. Today, he practices his art by becoming one of the players.

"I don't go into the locker room as a photographer. I'm on the team and I take photographs when I see something interesting."

Zagaris's relaxed attitude belies the dedication and professionalism in his work. Just glancing at his images, one can feel the passion he has for his subjects.

Take, for instance, the famous black and white shot of 49er Coach Bill Walsh in a time out with quarterback Joe Montana during the 1985 Championship game. Walsh and Montana are in a huddle on the field, eyes locked, hands tracing a play, with a calm and darkening sky above them.

Then there is the 1979 shot of O.J. Simpson, carrying a football for the last time in his career. He walks alone through a stadium tunnel, looking unusually small as he marches sternly into the darkness, the light already behind him.

Processing Images
Zagaris takes hundreds of photos a game and sorting and processing them can be laborious task. Although he switched to digital photography about four years ago, he finds the computer work challenging and relies on his assistant, Sara Wolfram, to do the heavy lifting.

After he shoots a game, Zagaris downloads the images onto his Mac, and carefully goes through them one-by-one on Photo Mechanic. He selects the images he likes by scribbling down the jpeg numbers on a piece of paper and hands them over to Wolfram to save, caption and send.

It's not the most efficient process, but at this stage Zagaris says he's not prepared to learn a new language.

"Digital photography has enabled us to do some things we weren't able to do in film but at a very high price, and that price is spending much, much more time in post production," Zagaris says. "With film, you'd take it to the lab and they'd process it for you. With digital, you are the lab."

Of course, Zagaris never intended to be the lab.

"I live my life in the world, not on the computer. What gets me excited is taking the shot," he says.

As much as he dislikes the idea of being tied to a computer, Zagaris recognizes the opportunity technology gives him to preserve and share his work.

Online with PhotoShelter
Currently, most of his archives — innumerable black and white prints, black and white negatives, and color slides — are packed into a room in his San Francisco apartment. With the help of PhotoShelter, he is now beginning to scan his images so he can store and sell them online.

"Before PhotoShelter I'd keep my photos on storage disks which to me is like putting something in a box and throwing it in the ocean. What's the chance that I will dig back through those silver cans to find something?"

"This is an opportunity to avail more people to my art...and it's an opportunity to make a living," he says.

By putting his image archive on PhotoShelter, Zagaris is finally able to showcase and license work spanning 40+ years of shooting, while simultaneously marketing himself to gain new assignments.

Marketing is something he says he's never done before.

"I can't be huckster on the one hand and pro on the other. My marketing has been word of mouth. People call me because they know I have something."

Zagaris is also using PhotoShelter to deliver images to clients. Instead of emailing the photos, they are uploaded to Zagaris's PhotoShelter archive, where they can then be instantly transferred to clients like Major League Baseball.

"Because Photo Mechanic is integrated with PhotoShelter it's really easy to send the images — and PhotoShelter's uploading system is really strong," Wolfram says.

But for Zagaris, it's not about what he can do with the technology — it's about what the technology allows him to do.

"I do my art as a lifestyle and as a reason to live," he says. "While you can certainly gain some technology experience, taking pictures is like dancing or making love — you just do it."