England 29 - 18 Wales

Sunday's game between England and Wales at Twickenham was a real cracker. The atmosphere was fantastic - really pulsating and charged with energy. I love the way the fans mix in rugby, with a bunch of Welsh supporters sitting side by side with English supporters and having a really excellent time. A bit different to football!The day started early as I had a big brief to shoot for O2 and their media agency M&C Saatchi. Plenty of stadium views, flags, branding, supporters etc etc. This is a quite challenging part of the day's work as the aim is to get the background of the match captured - what it's like to be a supporter, some of the passion, and to keep "on message" from a branding perspective. For example, capturing people wearing England shirts - they have to be the current shirt (Canterbury) not the old version (Nike) so one has to be quite picky. It's also important to get some context into the shots, so the obvious one is to have the stadium in the background with its trademark roof girders, and obviously get the brand in shot as well. Below is a good example, shot using a 24 1.4 at f/5 and 1/640th with a 580EXII set at high speed sync and gelled with a 1/4 orange to warm things up a bit.As well as all the usual branding related imagery, I was also tasked with following the O2 Inside Line live broadcast crew around with presenter Alex Payne and various England players & ex players like Lewis Moody and Alex Corbisiero co-presenting. These shots were to be used as background to the new live broadcasts of O2 Inside Line. This was fairly tricky due to the invevitable crush of people around the crew, and the need to establish friendly relations with their cameraman and sound man to ensure we kept out of each others' way. It also meant I had to be in certain places at certain times for the live pieces so had to fit in the other work around that schedule, meaning at least 3 laps around the outside of the stadium before the match got under way.After several hours of seeking out the perfect branding imagery outside, it was into the stadium for the game. You could tell it was going to be good. The atmosphere was really fizzing, the sun was shining and everyone was in the mood for a good game of rugby. There are games when it's as though the crowd just can't be bothered, but this was different. With the Triple Crown up for grabs (the England v Scotland v Wales v Ireland competition) there was really something to play for, and the need to avenge the drubbing by Wales last year was at the top of the English agenda.With a fixed shooting position, I wasn't permited to be down at the tunnel for the team run out which meant the options for capturing Prince Harry and Cressida were severely limited. Massive kudos to freelancer Dan Wooller who captured THE MOMENT which hit front pages everywhere and beat the big agencies to the punch. Good work Dan! Ironically 15 minutes earlier Dan had been saying to me how the papers were going through a phase of not using pictures from freelancers, but it seems that phase is well and truly over from his perspective!Position-wise, I didn't have a good spot in the first half as I was shooting partly into the sunny east stand. Any tries or action down my west side would have been fine, but that sunlit east stand was very tricky indeed.And so it happened that the first significant action was Danny Care's surprise attack to run in a try from a quickly taken penalty while everyone else was looking about and not paying attention.Needless to say the best pics were from the other side of the pitch. Still, there's nothing that I could do about it - fixed seating position, the lighting was what it was, so you just need to make the most of the situation and get what you can.A couple of the England backs really impressed. Jack Nowell played like he was in a movie running at twice the speed of everyone else. Very impressive stuff indeed. Luther Burrell was a powerhouse on the other wing, with a great try which of course had to be on the other side to me, and obscured by the replacements warming up.It was a very fast paced game, lots of action, lots of points on the board, and lots of real-time editing and sending to be done during the inevitable breaks for scrum resets. Plus a pulsating crowd and a win for the right side meant all was good with the world!With the 6-Nations title looking elusive, requiring a massive win in Italty to get the points difference to exceed Ireland's, it's great to have at least the Triple Crown in the bag.After the game I had about 30 minutes to process and send my presentation pictures and any remaining match shots to Focus Images for onward distribution to the papers before it was back into the branding fray. Post match pictures of the player "meet & greet" in the O2 Blueroom were needed, plus more fan shots, people celebrating in the bars etc. By the time I had finished I was well & truly knackered and thankfully able to get home quickly through the traffic on my motorbike. Once I'd got home I had another 4 hours of work to do to process all the O2 brand imagery so it could be picked up first thing on Monday by the M&C Saatchi team. It's the glamour of it all that keeps me going!