Who Shot it Better? Simon Bruty vs. Bob Rosato: Tom Brady

Who Shot it Better? Simon Bruty vs. Bob Rosato: Tom Brady

Well, well, well, the Super Bowl is nearly upon us once again, and Tom Brady is back in the big game. So it’s a perfect time to compare and contrast photos of Mr. Bundchen from the cover of Sports Illustrated. In this episode of “Vs.” we contrast the in-game photo stylings of staffers Simon Bruty and former staffer Bob Rosato. This particular comparison is a bit different from the others in that Mr. Brady wasn’t posing, and the choice of photo was more a function of the photo editors, but let’s take a look.

This February 7, 2005 cover featured the headline of “Mind Game,” and the photo matches it accordingly. Brady is glancing upwards in a thoughtful expression. It’s no Tebow (or Rodin for that matter), but the photo is well-exposed, the uniform color and background color work well, and the crop is solid.

Remember how angry Brady played in the Denver-Patriots game? Everyone was talking about Tebow, very few people were talking about Brady, despite the fact that he has more Super Bowl rings than the number of years Tebow has played in the league. That makes Brady mad. The January 30, 2011 cover features Simon Bruty’s image with Brady facing the same direction and with a similar crop, but he’s mad. Hulk mad. A little older. Hasn’t been to the dance in a few years. Has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, and the photo shows it.

Verdict: Bruty. I’ve always like Batman over Superman, and that’s basically what you have here. Bruce Wayne  juxtaposed next to Clark Kent. The primal scream of the old veteran with a chip on his shoulder. Again, i wouldn’t say one photo is better than the other, it’s more of a visceral reaction of how an emotion-expressing photo is paired with an editorial message. By the way, GO GIANTS!

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This article was written by

Allen Murabayashi is the co-founder of PhotoShelter.

There are 5 comments for this article
  1. Sam in SC at 2:20 pm

    It’s a testament to the shot and the moment if it’s not, but the second cover photo (which gets my vote), looks like it’s seen a good bit of post-processing, by looking at his skin tone and the contrast in the jersey. Love the shot though, not judging it if it’s seen any processing, just an observation.

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