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Two people hunched over a black and white checkered board, deliberating what moves they will make, how their opponent might counter and how they might counter that counter, with barely a flicker of emotion passing over their faces.
At first glance, it’s a sport that doesn’t seem the most vibrant or colorful or particularly dynamic, which makes the art of capturing its drama and excitement more complex than most sports photography.
Maria Emelianova is a leading chess photographer, tasked with traveling the world to document the highs and lows of the sport.
With over 10 years of experience, Emelianova has become proficient at capturing the slightest flicker of emotion or tension etched in the faces of the sport’s stars.
But even after years of experience, she finds it hard to put into words what makes it such a difficult profession to capture.
“That’s always a very difficult question,” Emelianova told CNN Sport when asked how she would describe the art of chess photography.
“It’s opening the very outliers in sports to a more general public through the eye of the camera. So like people who know very little of chess and of the personalities can kind of get very close to the game and feel like they are right next to this chess game.
“But I think if I knew the answer to this completely, I would probably have solved (it).”
‘Destiny’
Growing up in Russia, Emelianova began playing when she was a six-year-old, facing off against her grandfather until she joined a club to practice against her peers.
She earned her woman FIDE master status – awarded to players with an classical rating of at least 2,100 and is the third-highest ranking exclusive to women – in 2010.
She went on to become a professional chess player before taking a break from competitive chess. She did, however, make a brief return at the British Online Championship in December, 2020.
Emelianova switched her allegiances to the English chess federation in February, 2020, citing the affinity built with the organization during years of competitions in the UK and friends she made on the team as reasons for the change. She is also a staunch critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Her Elo rating peaked at 2,144 in 2004. The Elo rating system measures the strength of a chess player relative to their opponents. For context, Carlsen holds the record for the highest Elo rating ever achieved by a human player when he reached 2,882 in 2014.
Emelianova remembers her mother having a passing interest in photography.
“My mother was doing some photography stuff when she was younger in university, but it was analog photography,” Emelianova explained. “But I was quite fascinated with analog photos.”
Analog photography is the process of using cameras loaded with film and processing the photos in a laboratory afterwards using chemicals.
