Aussie Rules Again

I was delighted to be commissioned again by AFL Europe to shoot another of their Easter Series of Australian Rules football games down in sunny Surrey last weekend. I shot their previous Easter games, as well as the AFL exhibition match at The Oval which was superb.The idea of the Easter Series is that the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), who run an Australian Football League (AFL) academy, bring over the 30 best young players in the country to do a tour of Europe. They went to Milan, saw snow for the first time in the Alps, visited London to play against the best in Europe, and then up to Copenhagen before flying back. It's like having the top football players from the Premier League academies all brought together to learn what it takes to be a pro. 80% or more of these academy players will be snapped up by the top Australian teams in next season's draft.The AFL Europe guys run the Easter Series at the Surrey Sports Park in Guildford. It entails a match between the Great Britain Bulldogs and the Irish Warriors to warm things up, followed by a celebrity "Legends" 9-a-side game, and finishing with the main European Legions v AIS AFL Academy match.First up for me was a headshot shoot with the European Legion squad. Last year I did this beside the swimming pool after the guys had done their warm-down pool exercises, and it was a bit of a nightmare as all my gear steamed up in the very warm & humid atmosphere. This time I stationed myself in a corridor just next to the pool where I set up my mini octabox on a boom as the main light, and two additional speedlights off to the rear sides of the subject to give some gentle rim lighting and definition. I didn't want anything overly styalised. I put the octabox on a boom so I could get it directly overhead and have nice shadow symmerty on the faces of the players. I also wanted a gentle fall-off of light away from the face. It would also give me a slightly moody, tough look to the pictures with slightly shaded eyes but still with a catchlight in them.Not being in the pool area kept my kit from steaming up, but the corridor location had the additional problem of normal sports centre punters coming & going through the shoot, though I did try and sell them a nice portrait or two when they were walking through.I ran through 5 or 6 shots of each player with straight on then slightly angled pictures to give a bit of variety. Of course quite a few of the guys were doing press-ups off camera to look properly ripped when their turn came!One thing I didn't do was to get each player to write their name on a piece of paper and hold it in front of them for the first shot. That was foolish of me and definitely something I'll do next time. Aside from the fact there was roughly a 2-foot difference in height between the tallest and shortest players, necessitating moving the boom up & down, it was quite a simple setup and shoot. There was one lady physio whom I shot with an additional shoot-thru umbrella down low to fill the shadows of the octabox and be rather more flattering than the otherwise quite masculine lighting.Onto game day then, and a bitterly cold wind made it feel freezing even though the sun was out. I wished I'd had my heated jacket (subject of a future post) on. Played on the main cricket pitch as the Surrey Sports Park, the first thing you find is that it's a BIG playing area, and the action takes place all over it. I shot the vast majority of pictures on the 400mm and even then found myself cropping quite a lot.With harsh sun often popping behind clouds, and a dark background of the shaded wall of the sports centre in a lot of my shots, exposure was quite tricky and I oscillated indecisively between manual and aperture priority, with lots of dial twiddling in both. The pics turned out well enough though with minimal exposure adjustment needed in post.The GB Bulldogs pulled an early lead over the determined Irish and ended up winning 9.5.59 to 1.1.7 (which means 9 goals at 6 points each and 5 "behinds" through the side posts at a point each giving a total of 59).The main game was, understandably, a different kettle of fish. Put the top 30 young players in the world together against a just-recently-formed Europe team and you get a score of 3.0.18 to 15.14.104. Fair to say the Aussies trounced the Euro boys, but you'd expect that. In reality, a sub-100 point difference is not bad at all, and a big improvement on last year's match. The first quarter was much closer than predicted, with two of the Europe goals coming in fast to surprise the Aussies. However the superior skills and fitness of the young guns shone through as seemingly every high ball was caught (a "mark") and every pass completed. The Legion didn't mess about though, and when they could catch the Aussies they meted out some hefty tackles.Aside from the team shots before the game (requiring a level of shouting & organisation) it was a pretty typical action sports shoot much like football or rugby, but with the added 3-dimensionality that comes with Aussie Rules. The height these guys jump is quite remarkable - it's a hard, pysical game that requires supreme athleticism. Often I had to shoot in portrait orientation to get all the action in. I also moved location a lot, trying to get a crowd in the background if possible, and also shooting from the elevated balcony of the sports centre which gave a nice clean background to those pictures. I also made sure to get a variety of wide pictures so the environment of the rather superb Surrey Sports Park facilities could be seen.The AFL Europe organisers needed a set of 50-60 pics within a couple of hours for use in the evening dinner reception for players, coaches & families so I'd been tagging images in camera as the day had progressed which left me a 90-minute editing session whilst wolfing down a sandwich to get those sorted out. I then did some light coverage of the dinner event, speeches and awards before setting off home.With a total of 1400 pictures from the day I had a fairly big editing job that evening and the following day with all my picked images then needing refinement in the form of cropping, straightening etc, and captioning names where I could for the main match. Overall, a great sport, fun shooting, and it did warm up later in the day when the wind dropped. I'm getting to quite like Aussie Rules and with the season just started down under I find myself looking for match coverage online. It's definitely worth a look.