First solo match and publication [Trainee Photographer @ FIL]

Well, I don’t even know where to start, as I’m still shocked and amazed, and how things turned out for me the other night! After a couple of weeks of training with Focus Images’ front man Daniel Hambury, the time had finally come for me to go solo, and to shoot my first football game. The game was a Championship match between Peterborough United and Reading.

I arrived at London Road stadium, Peterborough, about an hour before K.O. This was to ensure I had enough time to check in with the press officer and pick up my credentials. I’m not going to lie, at this point I was feeling quite nervous but excited at the same time – after all this is what I’d been working up to!

I made my way out pitch side to have a good look round and familiarise myself with the venue as I’d never been there before, and workout where I was going to shoot the first half. I spoke to Dan beforehand, and we agreed that due to Reading’s excellent recent form, I should shoot Reading attack, in front of the Peterborough fans, as they were the favourites. I headed over to my spot, and started unpacking my gear, which was a standard setup for the match. 2 x Canon 1D bodies, one with a 300 2.8 on, and the other with a 70-200 2.8 on for the closer up action. All was well so far, only thing that was bothering me slightly was that the light was quite poor, so i was needing to shoot at 3200ISO which isn’t ideal but not unusable.

Unsurprisingly, next I ran into some problems. I had my laptop with me, so I could caption images on the fly, and get them sent off. First thing to do was to connect to the internet before the game.  Easier said than done it seems! First of all my laptop would not connect to the Wi-fi network at the ground, and when it eventually did around 10 minutes later, it kept timing me out! – not what i needed especially in the current state of my nerves! No worries I thought.  I made sure I had my mobile dongle with me before heading to the game, so gave that a try… Then I found out that due to the size of the dongle, I couldn’t fit that in the USB port along with my card reader at the same time! So in the end, throughout the game, I was chopping between a dongle, and the ground’s free Wi-fi, as well as having to keep constantly unplugging each one of them when I needed to download images. In the end it worked as I did manage to get images away, thankfully.

The game started, and I was prepared as I could be in the current circumstances. I got lucky within approximately the first 20 mins when Reading scored their first goal. I managed to capture a couple of reasonable frames of this, so the card was straight out the camera, images off, captioned, and sent off, whilst at the same time, still trying to shoot and concentrate on what was happening in the game – not an easy task. The game continued without many drama’s and then Peterborough opened up and scored 2 goals at the other end of the pitch! I managed to miss the first one completely, but thankfully caught a couple of images of the second, so once again, straight on the laptop, and getting them captioned and sent away. I wasnt that pleased with the images as they were from the other end of the pitch, which made it difficult, but it was the best I could do.

Half time came with Peterborough 2-1 up. This is where I got some luck…..I was having trouble sending pictures at halftime, so was spending quite a while, maybe too long, trying to get connected to the internet once again.  By the time I finally got connected, half time was over, and I didn’t have enough time to swap ends, and shoot Reading attack again. So I was relying on the fact that Peterborough were on top this game, and hopefully the form would continue in the second half.  Amazingly Peterborough scored their third goal right in front of me, and I managed to get one good picture of this, and some celebrations in front of me!  I was buzzing and so excited I literally dropped my camera, as I dived for my laptop to get these pictures downloaded and sent out.  Speed was going to be key in this situation.  After that, there were no more goals from either side and the match finished 3-1 to Peterborough – a shock result!

I packed my gear away, quickly sent a couple more images, and then headed home for the night.  I was still absolutely pumped from the game so finding it hard to sleep.  I had the fact of checking the papers the next morning to see if I got published playing on my mind too.  I wasn’t expecting it at all but I wanted to know whether I hadn’t so I could be put out of my nervous state so to speak.

To my amazement, the next morning, I discovered that the Daily Star had ran my photo of Peterborough scoring the 3rd and final goal.  The smile on my face was absolutely massive – after all, this is what it’s all about!  I achieved what I wanted and set out to do, and I wasn’t expecting it to happen this quickly!  I cannot thank Dan @ Focus Images enough for all his time he’s put into me, and all the help he’s provided along the way – it paid off!

Here is a scan of the page in the paper…

I cannot wait for my next game already, and I’ll keep you posted with further updates!

Thanks

Rob

http://www.focus-images.co.uk

Triple Crown Saturday – By FIL Photographer Andrew Tobin

Today I shot a rugby match that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The atmosphere at Twickenham in the last 5 minutes was something really special. The noise was just staggering. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such volume from the fans before. As Strettle hurled himself at the line in the last minute I was practically shaking with the excitement of it all. He must score – surely…

I was convinced he’d got the ball down. No time to review the pictures as 100% concentration was on waiting for the reaction of the players when the video referee’s decision came in. The tension. Which team to focus on – England who looked confident, or Wales who looked like they’d given in. I ended up ping-ponging between the two of them trying to seek out the emotion.

Eventually, the decision sparked up on the boards – no try! Wales went potty. England shoulders slumped. And here it is, Strettle didn’t ground the ball.

However, looking at my pictures closely and zooming in to the last frame of the sequence, it looks like Strettle did in fact get the ball on the ground whilst holding it. Law 22.1 of the game states that no downward pressure is required, the ball just needs to be grounded.

And that was it. 80 minutes up and no time for any reply. I have to say that when I saw the ball pop out to the right wing with a perfect pass to Strettle that England must score. After a game with plenty of errors, but lots of fast and exciting action, surely this was the rescue for the home team.

So, it was not to be, but I think there will be plaudits for the young home team who have only really been playing together for 5 weeks. Mr Farrell was really very good at fly half and I spent some time just concentrating on him, trying to get a shot that would show the way he was sorting out the back line with such determination. Happily I got a nice little set of those which may work in the next few days in the papers.

Once the video ref has denied the try, it was rush-rush-rush as I had to get from the far corner to the tunnel as Wales had won the Triple Crown. A bit of advance prep meant that I had my 580EXII flash on the 70-200 as well as the 400 2.8 with me. Legging it around the perimeter with that gear was stressful enough so I had to calm down a bit to get the quickly done presentation up in the stands. It’s horribly dark and dingy up in the stands, so much twiddling of dials ensued as I got settings that were something like what I needed as Sam Warburon lifted the Triple Crown trophy. I decided to use the 400 to get a decent frame-filling shot, and also stuck the flash on to get a bit of zap to the pictures. A 400 2.8 with a flash on is quite an amusing sight.

After that was a massive scrum of photographers to get the champagne shots. I’d left it a bit late and wasn’t in a good spot, but managed to squeeze down below the main mass of cameras and get some decent celebration pictures. The Welsh skipper Sam Warburton then kindly posed with the trophy for a few seconds – in that situation you always want eye contact and he was good enough to pan himself along the line of snappers and I ended up with a nice direct shot with the 70-200 with a good catchlight from the flash. Then followed by a second-guessing game as Wales did a lap of the pitch with the trophy, with us lot running around trying to get ahead of them the long way round.

So, a cracking game full of incident and excitement. Good job Wales – I won’t be surprised if they go on to win the grand slam. And I reckon England will come on strong in the next two games. The Ireland match should be a cracker.

Weekend Coverage from Focus Images Ltd.

Focus Images Ltd. expects to file live images from the following fixtures this weekend. Check http://www.focus-images.co.uk soon after to view the images.

Saturday 25/02/2012
England v Wales;

Chelsea v Bolton

Portsmouth v Leeds

Huddersfield v Exeter

Charlton v Stevenage

Wigan v Aston Villa

Brighton v Ipswich

Oldham v Tranmere

Sunday 26/02/2012
Arsenal v Tottenham

Cardiff v Liverpool

Norwich v Man Utd

First Game Experience – [Trainee Photographer @ Focus]

So last night (21/02/12) I attended my first football match with Focus Images’ very own Daniel Hambury. The fixture was a League 1 match between Charlton Athletic and Rochdale. As it was my first game, I wasn’t shooting, I was tech’ing for Dan and watching closely to see how a professional photographer works. Essentially tech’ing is the preparation for transmission of live images from the game. Dan tagged images on his camera that he wanted me to edit. This involves checking file levels, sharpening them slightly, cropping and adjusting for size before adding a caption with info about ‘who, what, when, where and why’ is in the images and then sending to the picture desks via email.

After a nightmare train journey across south London, we arrived at Charlton’s ground about 45minutes before K.O. This gave us just enough time to check in with the media officer, and pick up our press bibs & passes. Straight after we headed pitch side, to start setting up the gear Dan would be using to shoot the match. We decided on sitting at the Charlton attack end, as we felt we’d have a good chance of catching an early goal! – How wrong were we! But that’s the fun of it.

The gear used for this match was quite a standard setup. 2 bodies both Nikon D3, one with a 400 2.8 and the other with a 80-200 2.8 for closer action. I wasn’t shooting at this game, so I was next to Dan with the laptop at the ready to quickly edit, caption and then send pictures to the multiple papers’ sports picture desks we submit to.

Dan at work.

At first, it’s a lot to take in, as you have to work quickly under pressure, as well as contending with technology when it doesn’t want to work. At the start we were having trouble connecting to the the internet, but after a few attempts we were on, and being able to wire pictures straight to press. It took me a while to work out my own workflow that was most comfortable for me, but by the second half, I was getting up to speed, and getting pictures away relatively quickly.

My View.

During the game, things always don’t go your way and happen in the way we expect. After the first half, it was still 0-0, so we swapped ends, so we would be shooting Charlton attack once again. Unfortunately for us, Rochdale scored first at the other end of the pitch – right where we were before we decided to move, making it a lot more difficult to get good pictures. Luck soon changed for us though, as Charlton won a free kick soon after, on the edge of Rochdale’s box, with Yann Kermorgant slotting in the equaliser. Dan managed to get some cracking images of the goal, and as soon as that phase of play was over, I was getting his card, straight on the laptop, and getting them sent off to the papers as soon as possible.

The final edit.

After the game, we obviously packed up, and headed back to Focus HQ, and uploaded the chosen edits onto the website for archive purposes.

Rob Fisher – Trainee Sports Photographer @ Focus Images Ltd.

Hello!

Hello and welcome to the new Focus Images Ltd. blog…

FIL cover major sporting events in the UK. We are licensed to shoot in the FA Premier League, Football League as well as Premiership Rugby. We have very strong links with national picture desks and an ongoing relationship with Archant Regional Publishing.

Published in every national newspaper, we are available for commissions for regional or national press.

The blog will keep you upto date with the goings on of our staff photographers, tutorials, tear sheets of our published work and more!

Hope you enjoy the site!

Focus Images Ltd.