Top shots in a snap.

• Author: Lusky, Mark
• Position: Veteran sports photographer Rich Clarkson - Company Profile

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a really good picture should be worth at least 10,000. Using that measure, photographer and creative genius Rich Clarkson is worth a gazillion words.

Unfortunately, we've only got room for a snapshot.

Clarkson's love of sports has led him into photographic arenas that would have left even Howard Cosell speechless (well, maybe). Clarkson is a world-class photographer with more than 60 Sports Illustrated cover credits (he's lost track of exactly how many), and 13 Super Bowls (including Super Bowl I). He has also covered eight Olympics and 45 NCAA Final Four tournaments.

Clarkson is former president of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). In 1995, American Photo magazine named him one of the 50 most influential figures in American photography.

Clarkson founded Rich Clarkson and Associates photography and publishing in Denver in 1987. Staying a technological step ahead of the game has been central to the company's staying power ever since. While teams and organizations nationwide archived photos in boxes, Clarkson started cataloging and digitizing them onto CD-ROMs.

That has enabled teams such as the Colorado Rockies, and organizations such as the Western Athletic Conference, the Big Twelve and the NCAA to provide complete, easy-to-use-and-find photo libraries. (The system works extremely well. My pictures were washed out, and I needed a decent photo to memorialize "Sam...