Brazil and England v Germany
Detailed research has been taking place here at Tobinators Towers into the logistics of shooting the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Needless to say it is looking extremely complex, so I have created the advanced tracker-ometer above to simplify things and allow you to trace my progress over the coming months.Firstly, there appears to be no easy way to organise this before the group stage games are finalised, by which time prices will be even more through the roof than they are already. Thompson are offering a package for the first 3 England group games costing £7k which includes 13 nights accommodation, travel to & from all 3 group games and so on. However, after the third group game, their charter flies back to the UK.Now, granted it's unlikely England will progress beyond the group stages given their current form, but I would want to be out there for the duration. So, there is a "ground only" package excluding airfare that they are offering which is £5k assuming I am sharing, or £7k single, again only covering the period of the group games. The problem with this and the other package is that the England team hotel may be in a completely different city to the Thomson hotels, so covering training sessions, press conferences etc rapidly becomes a complete nightmare of travel trauma.With both packages I'd then need to stay on afterwards and find my own way anyway, so I might as well be doing that from day 1.I have also started to make contact with friends of friends who live in Brazil and they are being delightful and very willing to help. They have advised that my suggestion of getting a van and driving around the country for a month is indeed a very stupid idea. Regardless of being in a van or not, the potential for being seen as a target, being 6'2", obviously northern European, and with £20k of camera gear in tow, is rather concerning especially if I am on my own.So, it appears that the only viable approach at the moment is to wait for the groups to be drawn on the 6th of December and hope that England are playing their 3 group games in one of the more concentrated areas of host cities e.g. Rio/Sao Paulo/Curitiba or Natal/Recife/Fortaleza rather than being spread from Porto Alegre to Manaus to Salvador. In all likelihood, it will be the latter!
Once I know where the group games are going to be, and if they are close together, I can look into getting a single base for those games, and then work out what to do when the knockout phase begins, as it would be possible to work out who England would play and where from the shape fo the draw. Of course I also need a client or clients who are willing to foot the bill of going to Brazil, which is another load of work in itself for me and Focus Images.In other news, I had the embarrassment of arriving first at Wembley for the England v Germany game last week. In my defence I was driving in rather than taking the motorbike, so I wanted to get there in good time to avoid the nightmare traffic that accompanies a big game at Wembley. Much to my surprise I was the first one there as it took far less time to get there than I had thought. Being first always gives the impression of looking far too keen, which obviously just isn't acceptable. Also, it is well known that the photographers' entrance at Wembley is the coldest place in England (though I understand Downing St runs it a close second), so the prospect of sitting around for hours didn't fill me with joy.Once the queue had built up a bit, someone had the bright idea of laying down a towel to indicate that the Germans had got there first and booked their spot before dawn, then retired off somewhere warm and cosy until the door opened. This provided at least 15 minutes of extreme amusement for the growing group of photographers, as pictures of the aforementioned towel spewed forth onto Facebook and Twitter in a stream of nationalistic stereotyping.
Some time later, after more McDonalds and trying to get a few winks of sleep leaning against the windows, we were let in. Being first of course gives you the pick of the spots, apart from those already marked out for the big boys. I elected to go diagonally opposite "lazy man's corner" (the corner nearest where the photographers go pitchside from the media room), on the sideline, seeing as in the unlikely event that England were to score they have shown a tendency to run in that direction. I also elected to stay put and do a half of each team on the basis that Germany would probably score at some point. The position I did choose had the disadvantage of "steadicam guy" possibly blocking the view as he went up & down the line in front of us, but I decided to take that risk.
As it happened, Germany did score first down at my end, and I had a few nice frames of Mertesacker's goal which were unfortunately not as good as those from close in behind the goal on the left side which is where I had pondered sitting. Ho hum. At the end of the day this positioning lark is a 25% chance of being right, with there being 4 corners. The key is to slew those percentages in your favour by any means possible including research, knowing who is playing, where the players' families sit etc etc.
As the game dragged on, it was increasingly obvious that England were outclassed by a German B team. I could count their on-target chances on the fingers of one foot (i.e. none). It really was appalling. I remarked to the photographer to my right that anyone who would pay to travel to Brazil to see a performance of this standard needed their head examined!
I decided that getting pictures of England looking dejected was the way to go, so started shooting for that rather than just following the ball, and fired off a number of such pics in the hope that they would lose, whilst still being alert to the unlikely possibility of an England attack down my end in the second half. As it was, I need not have worried myself too much on that score, though Townsend did have a shot come off the post.
While all this was going on, the aforementioned photographer next to me was having trouble with his network connection. Wembley has pitchside wired LAN cables which are incredibly quick. It also has pitchside wifi but when the stadium is full the wifi isn't too good. My little network adapter dongle had decided not to work so I was using my EE 4G wifi modem instead of wired LAN, which was very very fast and working like a dream. Seeing my collegue's evident distress, I followed my own advice from 2012 and gave him the password to my EE wifi hotspot so he could send his pictures away. A little kindness costs nothing, and I had already sent a bunch of pics anyway so was well ahead of him. He was very grateful, and it made me all warm inside. Aahhhh....sweet.
By the way, for those using EE's 4G thingy, my initial 90 day credit ran out last week and I found that I could buy a 24 hour credit for £3 which seems very reasonable and allows you to pick & choose when to top up without wasting money.
The dire match finished England 0-1 Germany. I stayed pitchside to send a few remaining pics before retiring to the photographers' room to warm up and have a sandwich, and browse the Daily Mail Online report of the game hoping to see something of mine used, which it wasn't. It's very tricky in a big game like this when you're up against a many-man Getty team covering everything from every angle. However, it wasn't all bad news as I got the front page of The Sun the next day. My pics from the game can be seen here on the Focus Images web site.
