Bill Fox Putting Down Award-Winning Cameras

Chances are there will never be another Bill Fox, Sports Photographer.

After all, it took “divine intervention” to create Bill Fox, Sports Photographer, in the first place.

The 62-year-old Fox, a 33-year Novato resident and longtime owner of the on San Marin Drive, said last week he’s retiring from his thoroughly enjoyable job.

He’s not exactly hanging up his camera. Truth is, he can’t. No, seriously, he physically cannot.

You see, Fox recently tore the biceps tendon in his left arm reaching for, of all things, his camera in the overhead compartment of a plane.

Alas, Fox’s “retirement” is more a result of waving a white flag in his decade-long war with technology.

“It’s the perfect storm,” Fox lamented. “Everybody has a camera and nobody has money. Everybody is giving pictures away for free.

“The irony is: The quality (of Fox photography) is the best it’s ever been.”

That’s saying a lot. Because one of the first pictures Fox took as a paid photographer stands today as one of the best sports shots of all-time.

Fox, a former quarterback at Lincoln High in San Francisco — Mike Holmgren’s replacement, in fact — caught a break during the NFL players strike of 1987 when the 49ers’ team photographer left football to take a job at National Geographic.

Fox, a former San Francisco policeman, jumped at the opportunity to earn $100 a game, and he soon thereafter found himself standing on the Candlestick Park sideline at the Cleveland Browns’ 20-yard-line, focusing his powerful 600-millimeter lens on Joe Montana.

As the ball was being snapped, Fox got a tap on the shoulder and was "told" to move slightly, which he did. Two and a half yards, he recalls.

The rest is history.

“I saw Montana was looking right at me,” Fox remembered. “It was a streak route and here comes the ball.

“So I put down my big camera and grabbed my little (28-millimeter) camera. Jerry Rice lays out for the ball, and I get the picture. Turns out it was the NFL Picture of the Year for 1987.”

Fox spent 22 years shooting 49ers games. Home and away. Preseason and Super Bowls.

He’s taken thousands of shots in his lifetime. The Rice catch, which hangs today in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, remains his favorite.

“God took that one,” Fox gushed. “There was a metaphysical quality to that one. Something told me to move. Had I not moved, I’d have been obstructed by the side official. The next frame after THE picture, he (Rice) disappears behind the referee.

“It was divine intervention.”

Years later, Rice disclosed it was the only time in his career he laid out to make a catch. Fox, who claims he will be buried someday with an autographed copy of the photo by his side, was lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.

Or maybe it wasn’t luck at all.

“I tried to approach my job as a coach,” he admitted. “I studied the design and structure of the game. I watched games all the time like a coach would. When the ball was in a certain area of the field, I was looking for certain things.

“As opposed to Major League Baseball, where you’re assigned a spot in the camera well, you’re allowed to move at NFL games. The 49ers gave me complete access — the locker room at halftime, draft day …

“I saw everything in the NFL, from a Super Bowl to a player dying in the locker room.”

Yes, it’s true. Fox was an eyewitness when 49ers offensive lineman Thomas Herrion collapsed and died following a preseason game in 2005. It occurred one week after one of Fox’s happiest moments at the team photographer: being on-hand for Steve Young’s Hall of Fame induction in Canton, Ohio.

In the end, the ups and downs of being around an NFL team prompted Fox to leave the 49ers in 2009.

“I was there when the 49ers were great. It was easy to go to work on a Sunday,” he noted. “But the last 10 years was really depressing.

“There’s nothing better than a victory in the NFL. The only thing I can compare it to is the birth of my children. But when you lose one of those games, it’s like getting a cancer diagnosis. You’re right there. It got to me in the end.”

Fox leaves sports photography grateful his wife, Rosemary, commuted 40 years to San Jose for the family’s “real” job, allowing dad to watch his 32-year-old son Rocky and 20-year-old daughter Nicole grow up, while at the same time affording him time to take countless shots of youth athletes in Novato and all throughout Marin.

Fox recalls, for example, current major-league pitcher as a Little Leaguer.

“Harry Edwards would say the odds of a guy making it from Little League to the pros was 10,000 to 1,” Fox recalled of the famous sociologist, a one-time consultant to the 49ers. “I took some shots of Bud Norris when he was a little kid. It was pretty neat to go the whole route with him.

“Over the years, I probably saw 10,000 kids come through the and one of them made (Major League Baseball). So I guess Harry Edwards was right.”

Neither of Fox’s children shares his passion for photography, prompting him to assure: “Bill Fox Sports Photos dies with Bill Fox.” As testimony to his dad’s observation, Rocky Fox finagled his way into the San Francisco Giants’ party that visited the White House last month, but brought nothing more than his cell phone to record the memory. (Watch for another Patch story about Rocky's experience).

The senior Fox’s next challenge is to write a book. A San Francisco-based murder mystery, he envisions.

Once a policeman …

“It was never about the money,” he said of sports photography.  “But it was pretty cool for 35 years that you could make a living doing it.

“I could have been a San Francisco cop all my life … I sure could use the pension right about now.”