By Sean Marco
It was during the 2019 Toronto Raptors’ championship run that photographer Kishan Mistry caught the attention of sports fans on a global scale.
The shot that rocked the world. Kawhi Leonard’s game 7 buzzer-beater that rolled around the rim to eliminate the Philadelphia 76ers. One of the most historic and iconic moments in NBA history and Mistry’s photo captured it.
“Now it’s slowly starting to set in that moment was an iconic moment,” Mistry said.
“That was a very iconic moment,” Mistry says. “In history, in sports history, Toronto history, basketball history in general.”
With cameras virtually everywhere we go, everyone is a photographer. From smartphones to expensive DCLR cameras, it seems like the photos we can capture are endless.
But some photography still manages to stand out. Some images manage to capture the imagination of people.
Sports photographer, Mistry started in the world of music, capturing live performances and artists. This allowed him to develop his style of shallow depth of field to allow the image to focus on the emotion of the artists as they perform.
It was when Mistry constructed a graphic design edit of Edwin Encarnacion during the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2016 playoff run and posted it on Twitter that the sports media industry started to take notice.
After a couple of follows and a direct message he found his way into the sports world and was offered a position at TSN.
Mistry was able to take the same style and use it on athletes to give the images a more artistic, soft look that gave the same type of emotion as concert photos did. It allowed viewers to get a close personal look at athletes during games.
As you may know, Leonard brought Toronto an NBA championship, added a Finals MVP to his collection, and left the Raptors to go home to the Los Angeles Clippers, which makes this photo even better. A photograph of a legend doing something no other Raptor can do.
Award-winning photographer and professor Peter Power says much like photographers of his generation, he fell in love with photography in the dark room.
“There’s nothing really that compares today with photography in terms of that moment when you look at a print coming up in the developer,” Power says.
Today he says the photography trends are constantly changing within the field and you
need to adapt if you want to keep up with the game.
“Photographers who want to stay current, are always going to adapt to trends,” he says.
Power remembers when the trend was photographers shooting with extremely wide lenses compared to now where subjects are captured with shallow depths of field, allowing the viewer to focus on the subject, such as in some of Mistry’s shots.
He says style is in the photographer and that doesn’t change, but being able to adapt is what makes a photographer successful.
At 23, Mistry has enjoyed success in the sports media arena, even given interviews for his Game 7 shot, but says he expects to do more.
“I don’t want that to be my peak.”
He says he’d like to capture more of that kind of momentous shot. He’s always looking to improve and beyond the culture of the city, he points to Toronto shooters like Charlie Lindsay as a source of inspiration for the kind of photography he’s like to do.
Style, skill and opportunity came together and for now, this once-in-a-lifetime shot means that Mistry is on top of the trend.