Inside Getty's Photo Coverage of the Paris Games

Jamie Squire: 'It's a dream job ... because I'm witnessing history'

Photographing the Olympics is “an Olympic event for photographers. It’s the ultimate assignment.” So says Jamie Squire, chief sports photographer at Getty Images, the official photographic agency of the International Olympic Committee.

He and 59 other Getty editorial photogs have been putting in 18-hour days shooting the 2024 Paris Games. “It’s non-stop, but that’s what we want to be doing. We will rest later,” he says.

Kansas City-based Squire, who has shot several Olympics for Getty since 1996, was focusing his lens on the women’s and men’s gymnastics competitions when we spoke last week. He is also covering basketball, beach volleyball, fencing, sports climbing and rhythmic gymnastics at the Paris games.

“When they said, ‘Hey, do you want to do the gymnastics?’ I was like, ‘‘’Yeah! I mean, twist my arm—marquee sports, Simone Biles, absolutely,'” he says.

The night before our interview, Squire snapped one of the most iconic photos of the Olympics to emerge thus far—an image of Biles, the G.O.A.T. of women’s gymnastics, showing off her diamond-encrusted goat necklace after winning gold in the all-around competition. Squire, who has been alternating between shooting from the photographer’s pen and the floor during the women’s gymnastics competition, happened to be on the floor that evening, perfectly placed in front of the athlete as she celebrated.

“After she won, her teammate [Jade Carey] came down to give her a big hug. She put on her necklace, and she’s holding up her necklace, and I’m right in front of her. So, that was something a little bit different,” he says. “You don’t get that access every day.”

Squire, who has also photographed Super Bowls, Stanley Cup Finals and World Cup soccer matches, says gymnastics is particularly challenging because so much happens all at once. Multiple athletes simultaneously compete on different apparatuses—the vault, the uneven bars, the balance beam and the floor.

Which is why Squire and his fellow Getty Images photogs arrived at the Olympics a week before the Games began and scouted the venues to figure out the best site lines. “We have a plan before we even step out on the floor of how we’re going to cover the event,” he says.

That said, there are also a lot of split-second, gut decisions that a photographer has to make in the heat of the moment. “You’re not just physically running around, you’re also thinking, ‘Okay, if this happens, then I need to be over here. And what if she falls, or what if she stumbles? Then this person could win, and then I’m going to have to be over here,'” he says.

Squire values the autonomy he is given by Getty whether he is covering gymnastics at the Olympics or another sporting event. “They’ll send me out to an assignment, and they’ll just say, ‘Go cover the assignment.’ They don’t tell me, “You have to get the winner crossing the finish line. You have to get this or that. It’s not lost on me that I’m responsible for Getty’s gymnastics coverage at the Olympics. None of this is life or death situations or world changing or whatever. But that’s a big responsibility to know that their coverage relies on me. It’s scary and motivating at the same time.”

All of the Olympic venues are wired for digital photo delivery, which allows Squire to send photos to his editors (more than 40 Getty editors are live-editing remotely from the Getty Images London office) within seconds of taking them. Speed is of the essence. “It’s very competitive to get the pictures out as quickly and as early as possible,” he stresses, noting there are photographers from various photo agencies covering the events. “So, technology is a huge factor in how we work.”

When he photographed the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, Squire shot on film, and the process of getting the images from camera to clients involved runners, couriers and photo editors peering at pictures through light boxes.

Back then, Squire shot fewer photos. “You had a finite number of images on a roll of film. With digital, we take hundreds, thousands more images than we would have back in the old days when we would have had to be a lot more selective,” he reflects. “Now, we can just shoot freely and then delete later or put them on a hard drive somewhere and save them. You have a lot more to choose from shooting digitally.”

Once he is done with his assignments for the day, Squire catches up with his fellow photographers. Like the athletes who compete on teams, the shutterbugs enjoy a sense of camaraderie. (In addition to Getty’s editorial photographers, there are 24 Getty commercial photogs operating throughout the games to capture content for sponsors and paid assignments). “We all come back [to the hotel] at the end of the night, and everybody sits down and has dinner—or you run into people and you have a drink—and asks, ‘Hey, what’d you do today?'” Squire says.

“We’re an international company. So, there are friends of mine that I’ve known for 20 or 25 years, and we only see each other at these big events,” he continues. “We’ll always get the pictures. But, for me, it’s about the experiences, and it’s about the people. And the people at Getty are like my family. I’ve been there for 30 years. These people—I’ve grown up with them.”

Squire started taking photos professionally when he was a student at Atlanta’s Emory University, shooting for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Sports Illustrated. After graduating from college in 1995, he was hired by Allsport Photography, a sports photo agency that was acquired by Getty a few years later. (Getty covers all kinds of events, including the Met Gala.)

To this day, the Getty photog marvels at being able to make a living doing what he loves. “It’s a dream job. A lot of people I talk to—they’re fascinated by what we do and how we do it. They’re like, ‘You have the coolest job. You’re right on the sidelines.’ And it’s true,” he says. “I don’t do anything to dispel that because I’m witnessing history. I’m right there.”