His attention was drawn more by the sports photographers and their telephoto lenses than the game itself. Eight years later, his dream came true when he was asked to take photos for an Ajax football team program. But his career truly began after making contact with the cycle-photographer Cor Vos and the newspaper for which Ras still does most of his work, the Algemeen Dagblad. For the past 30 years, Ras has been active with the paper and it sports section AD Sportwereld and, after winning the 1998 Canon Sports Photo prize, became its first sports photographer. He has covered eight Olympic Games and two Winter Olympics, as well as 10 European and World Cup football championships for the paper.
In addition to sports photography, Ras covers news topics and shoots portraits for the Algemeen Dagblad, and has also done documentary photography for Doctors Without Borders and Terre des Hommes. He is represented by the Hollandse Hoogte photo agency. Ras has won numerous prizes in his career, including, in 2009, the Zilveren Camera—the highest Dutch award for news photography, for his coverage of an attack on the royal family.
