Associated Press photographer Alessandra Tarantino, who has covered the wire service since 2005 and operates out of Rome, published a technical breakdown of the portrait on May 15. The image captures the Italian tennis star mid-swing during a match at the Foro Italico, isolating his focused expression from the surrounding stadium environment.
Tarantino said the technical constraints of covering Sinner require unconventional positioning. “First of all, Sinner is a great player, but we photographers have various problems photographing him,” Tarantino said. She noted that the pace of professional matches leaves little margin for error and that the player’s cap visor frequently obscures his facial features from standard baseline angles.
To bypass the line-of-sight obstruction, Tarantino moved to a lower deck area beneath the main court. She located a small, slightly elevated viewing window and found the position unexpectedly clear of other shooters. “That’s why I went to this spot under the court,” she said, noting that the empty space allowed her to frame the shot to include the window’s architectural silhouette.
The composition required rapid technical execution. Tarantino deployed a 50mm f/1.4 lens, configuring the camera to fire at 1/8000th of a second. “The window is quite high, so I couldn’t look through the viewfinder, only at the back of the camera, keeping my arms up,” she said. She credited the autofocus tracking and a pre-shoot recording feature on newer camera bodies for ensuring the tennis ball remained sharply frozen against the face of the racket.
After securing the original capture, Tarantino routed the file to a colleague for post-processing. “In this case, I didn’t edit the photo myself, but my colleague Antonio Calanni did, to whom I sent the full file directly from the camera,” she said. “He had the merit of seeing what I was seeing.” Calanni reframed the composition to a wide, near-16:9 aspect ratio and adjusted the color grading to reflect the evening light.
Tarantino attributed the final image’s impact to the interplay between sharp focus and extreme background blur. She said the 50mm lens renders distant sponsor logos and advertising boards as a soft, impressionistic wash while keeping Sinner as the sole defined element. “Antonio framed the photo better, bringing out its full value,” she said.
The resulting image aims to convey the focused isolation of a professional match point. Tarantino said the photograph strips away the visual noise of a packed arena to emphasize the singular sound of the sport. “You can still sense everything else: the crowd, and that slightly magical moment when, in a stadium full of people, all you hear is the sound of the ball hitting the racket,” she said.