Brazil Day 6 - It's just a perfect day

I woke this morning at 08:00 to find my shot of Rooney and Hodgson on the back page of the Daily Star. I thought that one would get a print somewhere. Other papers carried the same scene but from slightly different angles, but the usual forensic examination revealed that this one is, in fact, mine.

Then at the end of the day here, I had a message on Facetwitter to tell me I had another back page of the Daily Star for Wednesday. It's not even Wednesday here yet! This shot was featured in my post yesterday when I was talking about taking a happy and a sad picture of everyone if at all possible. Happy for me and for Focus Images - two successive back pages when up against the might of the big guns here is great news.

So, a great start and end to the day. And what happened in between?

Firstly I had to hang out my washing that had been done in the top loader overnight. Mrs T can rest assured that it is all still the same size and colour, though the small granules of paper all over the kitchen point towards a mislaid tissue in a pocket. Next I headed downstairs to the nice little cafe for some breakfast. Today it is a mixtaou or something like that. Basically it's a bit like a "mixte" in France i.e. ham and cheese, and in this case toasted, plus a bottle of Coke Zero. Healthy - not much. I did have 3 bananas beforehand while checking the papers though so all is not lost on the diet front.

I had a couple of chores to see to. First I had to change some money, and secondly I had to get my 3rd mobile SIM cut down to fit into my "proper" phone rather than my throwaway phone. This meant heading over to a large shopping mall just up the road. The weather, being sunny and warm at about 27C, meant a delightful walk along the WORLD'S BUSIEST ROAD. Amazingly the traffic stopped for a red light and those of us heading that way were able to cross over - I took a pic halfway across just to prove traffic does stop for red lights in Rio.The shopping mall is a bright, modern affair, with 4 floors of shops including big names and also lots of little ones. I was after a "cambio" to change some cash, and eventually found one after being told in no uncertain terms that the bank I had gone into didn't change money. Unfortunately they wanted to see my passport which I'd left secure in my apartment, so no change for me. I had to get some cash out of a cash point, expecting at any moment to be jumped by banditos which amazingly didn't happen.Then I eventually found a little stall that would clip my full size SIM into a micro-SIM size. This is done using a little clipping tool that chops the micro SIM out of the larger surrounding plastic. At least I got one job done.Back to the apartment and time to pack up some stuff in order to set off to the England training base again where they were to have a press conference, with Lampard and Sterling facing the media. I got there a bit early in order to avail myself of the facilities, set up my caption and ensure I knew what was happening. Then it was into the press room.Rather than sit in one place, I decided to stand at the back behind the TV cameras. This let me move around the back and sides to try some different angles for a bit of variety. And it was much better than yesterday, with more flexibility and more interesting results. You can see the gallery on the Focus Images web site as usual.I thought it was quite clever of the FA to put the very experienced Frank Lampard up with new man Raheem Sterling. Frank certainly knows how to handle his press conferences. The number of times he was asked about Luis Suarez was just getting ridiculous, and what can the guy say - he's not worried about Suarez - he is totally focused on his and his own team's performance.Once the presser was done, I had a plan. With the Brazil v Mexico game on at 4pm I thought it would be the ideal time to go up the Sugarloaf, which is a massive monolith that you've all seen lurking over Rio. It's not the one with the Christ statue on - that's a fair way away - this is the one right on the harbour. It's reached by a 2-stage cable car - the first stage goes to a lower monolith called the Morro da Urca, and then you change to another cable car to go to the top of the Sugarloaf. I wanted to get a shot down towards the England training base, a shot that is only possible from the left side of the 2nd cable car when hanging your camera out of one of the top open windows accoridng to another snapper.It's a really busy place at the best of times so if the whole country was coming to a stop to watch the game then it must be all quiet over there. Wrong! I found a massive queue when I got there.Eventually I got to the front and asked to buy a ticket. "No sir, there are no tickets available, it's sold out" said the big guy on the gate. What? How can that be? Further questioning revealed it was closed for a private party. Can they close a whole mountain? It seems so.I protested a bit but it made no difference, so I turned away to figure out something else to do for the rest of the day.But no! I didn't fly thousands of miles to Rio to be stopped by a little private shindig, so I had another go, this time showing my press card. My "magic" press card. My man went away, came back with someone else who looked at it while I explained that I was a photographer from the English newspapers here to photograph the party. "Ah yes sir - just go up there to the left" i.e. past all the queue and around the shipping containers, through the little construction site, to the base of the cable car station, where I found two nice ladies sitting at a desk with a list.I handed over my press card while they scanned the list for my name, which obviously wasn't on there until one of the nice ladies wrote it into a little space and the other fastened a "staff" wristband around my wrist and gave me a ticket. Booom!I couldn't really believe this and had to stop myself laughing as I went up the stairs and was ushered along a priority queue into the next cable car. Result. What I was going to I had no idea, but I'd saved about £40 for the cable car so that's good stuff in my book.At the top I found several thousand people, and a big covered amphitheatre with big screens to show the Brazil v Mexico game, and another large outside area with another big screen, plus bars. Lots of bars. This was looking interesting. Unfortunately the second cable car was closed off so I had to abandon my goal of getting a shot of the England base, but the party appeared altogether more worthwhile. Also I could take some sunset shots of Rio into the bargain, as I had Elizabeth's tripod with me and some nice graduated filters and my Sony A7R.I had a good wander around as I waited for the sun to go down. You can see all the pics in my Brazil gallery here by the way. Having spoken to THE EDITOR earlier in the day, I knew Dan wanted me to send some nice Rio scene shots into the papers as they may use them for feature articles and suchlike, and this was a pretty rich hunting ground.In the interest of impartiality, I photographed just as many women as men (so as to keep Mrs T happy) - here are a few to give you an idea.I was wandering about and was two "more mature" ladies who were having a chat and puffing away on their cigarettes like chimneys - the looked like the mothers of some of the people there. I had to take their picture. They were brilliant - what a laugh. We engaged in a sort of bizarre hand signal marathon as I wanted them to keep their cigarettes going and borrowed a Brazil flag off someone else. Great fun.I really have too many pictures of the mayhem, but here's one more that captures the atmosphere quite nicely.I wandered around a bit more and found that my wristband let me into the VIP area, which was all white sofas, out in the open air towards the second cable car station. In the VIP area THERE WAS FREE BEER! Yes, FREE BEER! How can this be? I've blagged my way into a massive private party, got a free cable car, had a laugh with lots of bonkers people, and now THERE'S FREE BEER. There was FREE VODKA as well, as the delinquent state of some of the punters showed. And it was only 6pm. I was quite restrained and had a couple of beers as I knew I had to be back "home" in the apartment to sort through all my pics, have dinner and write this blog for you all. But, in the VIP area I met these guys:The party was really starting to kick off, so I made my excuses and snuck out and got the cable car back down to ground level with a few other party poopers. All throughout my time up top I'd been taking pictures of Rio below. My, what a view! Really spectacular, with beautiful skies changing colour as the sun set, and cloud rolling in in the most photogenic fashion. Here are a few tasters - more in the gallery. OK, you could say I was lucky to have conditions like these, but you make your own luck.So that's it for tonight. It's a bit late here now and my hosts have headed off to bed, so I'm turning in as well. Tomorrow I'm flying to Sao Paulo where today there has been complete gridlock according to the news. I'm hoping to get to the airport, get on a FIFA bus and to the stadium in time to shoot the England training & press conference before heading to my hotel, but I think that will be pushing it. Then it's the Uruguay game on Thursday and back to Rio on Friday. I'm staying in a FIFA hotel so I can use the FIFA buses and will have a decent place to stay which is very nice. Until tomorrow (or is it today?).