A Painful Night at Chelsea
It's nights like last night that make me dig deep to keep my motivation.
Covering the Champions League quarter final between Chelsea and Manchester United is a dream for any aspiring sports photographer. I usually do football up to Championship level for the small-but-perfectly-formed agency I shoot for. Premier League is just not worth it due to the competition from the big agencies, so there's actually more money to be had doing the next league down.
So this was an excellent opportunity to see two top teams have a go at each other. Knowing about 80 photographers were accredited, and knowing that there's a first-come first served system in place, I got to Stamford Bridge at 3:30pm for 7:45pm kick off, and found 20 people already in the queue. The wait to get in was taken up talking general nonsense to other photographers and discussing the mental torment that is the decision on where to sit.
Being decently near the front of the queue, after the usual brain-wracking odds calculation, I decided to go behind and to the left of the goal (the first 4 rows of seats are netted off behind the goal with photographers in the first row for Champions League games). Keeping away from any of the "big guns" like Getty, AFP etc was out of the question and I ended up surrounded.
I figured that the only way to stand a chance of getting anything published was to follow the two "story" players - Rooney and Torres, and just stick on them. I was after any off-the-ball action, expressions etc that would illustrate their individual personal challenges - FA censure and zero delivery for £50m respectively.
The first problem came with the seating behind the goal. Sitting on the seats makes you too low to see over the extra-height advertising hoardings that are used on Champions League matches. I knew this might happen, so I had my 55cm extra height Walkstool with me. However, there just wasn't enough space between the folded plastic seat and the concrete wall in front to sit on the stool without blocking Adrian from AFP on my left. Incidentally Adrian is another biker and like me enjoys the freedom & flexibility you get from a motorbike when getting to & from big sporting events.
I ended up sitting on the upturned plastic seat for the entire game which was massively painful. Cramp set in after about 5 minutes and I had to keep swapping from one cheek to the other to keep the blood flowing. Must have looked a right fidget.
As if going totally to plan, Rooney scored and celebrated right in front of me. Top work - fab shots beautifully framed and in focus (1DIV and new 70-200 mk II). I had the pictures downloaded off the card, into Lightroom and captioned before any of the runners arrived for the bigger agency shooters. Then the real pain started. I love the adrenaline rush from getting "the shot", and the absolutely key thing you need to do is then get that shot sent out to the picture desks FAST.
I'd been checking my mobile network connection throughout and knew it was good and ready to go when needed. However, obviously a goal means every other photographer is trying to do the same thing and my upload of 3 shots was terribly slow. I was seeing success oozing away to be replaced by a waste of time. At least it took my mind of the lack of blood flow to my lower legs.
The upload progress bar was ticking painfully towards 100% but then disaster - half time. Nooooo! At half time, everyone in the crowd gets on their phones so network throughput plummets faster than Torres's transfer value. With the upload 95% complete that was it - send failure - and no chance of sending until well into the second half. Damn damn damn!I even switched 3G modems (I carry ones for 3 different networks) and also tried my iPhone personal hotspot but every network was rammed.
I spent half time picking out the rest of my decent halftime shots and readying them for sending, and moving about to prevent gangrene setting in.
For the second half I just followed Torres. He was having a torrid time. Aside from the header that Van De Sar saved rather majestically, Torres looked like he was playing another game. He saw so little action that I had very little to show for it, and in the end, so I focused on getting shots of him looking depressed, upset, anxious, frustrated etc which was a lot more fruitful than trying to get any decent action pictures.
All the while I was trying to send my first half pictures and new 2nd half ones whilst still cheek hopping on the "seat" I was on. My respect for the photographers who brought large foam pads grew by the minute. Gradually I got 14 shots away which was a big relief, but I knew I was way behind the big agencies either side of me and with very similar Rooney goal & cele shots I was unlikely to see any joy in today's papers, and so it turned out.
In the end I sent the last 4 shots with my laptop in my backpack as I walked back to my bike, nursing cramped thighs and a very sore posterior. I'd also forgotten to eat anything.
So, overall a fruitless but personally action-packed evening. More experience in the bag though, and I certainly will be better prepared next time I'm at Stamford Bridge. Flicking through the papers this morning I can take solace in the fact that the majority of the key shots published are pretty much the same as the ones I sent. Aside from the comms problems I know I'm shooting the right things and picking the right pictures to send so all is not lost. If only I could get hold of ultra-reliable, fast comms that nobody else had access to I'd be laughing. Satellite connection possibly. Must look into what can be done.
P.S. cant show any pics due to copyright, but the look very similar to the ones in the papers today.