Brazil Day 32 - World Cup Final
It all began very early at 3:50am when my alarm went off. I was sort of awake anyway - sleeping soundly doesn't come easy on the eve of your first World Cup Final. After a shower and downing some Frosties and a couple of slices of toast with jam, I was ready to go to the stadium. My landlady Dani had extremely kindly offered to give me a lift, seeing as a lot of the roads around the Maracana are closed as the place is in lockdown, and I would have found it very difficult to explain to a taxi driver how to get me as close to the stadium as possible. I didn't fancy walking through Rio's environs in the dark at 5am with £20k of camera gear on my own.
Everything worked nicely, and Dani dropped me 100 yards from the press entrance at 4:50, where I joined about 10 folks who were already there including 2 Brits. Over the next few hours the line lengthened and lengthened - I have a video of it all to add to my growing list of "videos to edit in the future". All press, not just photographers, have to go through that entrance, so it was excellent being right at the head of the queue for a number of reasons but mainly because I'd get a good position in the queue for pitchside positions. Being in the third group (after Argentinian, Germand and Brazilian photographers), plus behind the big agencies, most of the good spots are gone so having an early choice in group 3 is vital. Position is everything in this game.After 4 hours hanging around talking rubbish with the rest of the Brit Pack, and watching videos of the samba dancers at the Nikon party last night (that I didn't attend), and visiting THE MOST DISGUSTING PORTALOO, LIKE, EVER, we were in. First port of call was the photographers' desk to get our position selection numbers (the order we queue up in to choose a position when they are allocated later) where we formed an orderly queue as per the one outside. Predictably the Brazilian contingent decided shortly afterwards that they'd form another completely separate queue for group 2 (the Brazilian photographers' group). We weren't having any od this and had slightly earlier manipulated the Tensa barriers into a subtle funnel leaving no place for a 2nd or 3rd queue to form. As the Brazilians lurched forwards, all the rest of the people in the queue went bonkers and the shouting started. Being right at the front the Brit Pack was well positioned to fend off all attacks so we tried to remain above it all, but still had to throw interlopers back out on a regular basis. Honestly, the snide and sneaky behaviour of some people trying to blag their way to the front. JUST GET UP EARLIER DAMMIT!Calm was restored when the FIFA photography lead Thierry told everyone in no uncertain terms that there was one queue and that was final. Cue mass confusion and anger as the Brazilians tried to reinsert themselves into the remnants of the original queue but 20 spots further up from where they had been. How can such a simple thing be so difficult? I was delighted to get my slot and be away.Next, loan gear. Initially I wasn't going to get any, but thought it would be better to get their stuff bashed about in the post-final-whistle chaos than my own, so I got a 400 2.8, 16-35 2.8 and a 1DX body. Cracking! Being a Canon Professional Services member I was able to jump the non-CPS queue and get my kit quickly and early.As I type this it's 11:15am and there's 4 hours 45 mins to kickoff. I need to get my pitch ticket, go to the photographers' briefing, check all my gear over, check my laptop and all my cables, and sort out the comms. We get on the pitch 2 hours before the kick off, and there will be pre-match stuff to shoot as well. It promises to be a crazy day.
Fast forward - it's now 9pm and I am a sweaty, knackered, starving, thirsty, exhausted person. My overriding feeling is that I can actually go home now. It has been a busy few hours and I'm done in. Thankfully THE EDITOR has been doing a sterling job of editing my pics so I've been able to pop up to the canteen and get a drink and some snacks for me and BenQ that I'm now tucking into, and write my blog as my remaining pictures import. Anyway, it went a bit like this...We got pitchside and there was no internet from any of the wired LAN cables. Everyone was going bonkers. I even tweeted the fact so serious was it. I'd already agreed with THE EDITOR that I'd focus on the pictures and if there were any comms issues we'd just leave it and focus on sorting it later. I got down to shooting a few pics of the opening ceremony.
After the pitch had been cleared of all the performance stuff, the sprinklers came on giving anyone a soaking and ruining a number of pieces of equipment, thankfully not mine, but the guy next to me's laptop was killed off which wasn't very well received.We were then ushered onto the pitch to shoot the team lineups. What a bunfight. I was at the front and basically the lot behind just shoved and shoved until the "pack" of snappers was out of control, with the stewards yelling at me and the other guys in front who couldn't do anything about it. Some people are just idiots - we could have all walked up there quite simply but no, let's barge along, push in and make us all look like fools. Anyway, I used my Olympus EM5 with a fisheye on a long monopod up in the air, with a cable release, to get this shot which I quite like.
The internet came back just as the game started, but too late for me to do anything about it as my laptop was under my seat. After a prolonged break in play I managed to get hold of it and click the relevant button to start the auto-sync, thus flooding THE EDITOR with 2 hours of accumulated pictures. Sorry about that!The game started. End to end stuff, very tight. It went on like that. And on. I was just focused on getting pictures down and concentrating as much as possible. All the action but could I get any news-like stories as well? I got some Messi shots of him looking sad which I thought might come in handy later. Following sage advice from some uber-experienced hero photographers I shot a lot the stuff from 18 yards out a lot wider than usual to get some of the atmosphere of the stadium in the pictures.
For most of the rest of the game there's not a lot to say really. Standard shoot of a game of football, with a bit more focus on specific players for stock and trying to get a story. It went to extra time. Oh great.I was willing someone to score. Anyone. At any end. Eventually with a few minutes left Mario Gotze of Germany slotted it in right in front of me. So right in front of me that I was too tight to get the ball in shot (in other words my timing was too slow and I didn't quite get the connection of ball on foot that I would like). You can go and find them on the Focus Images site if you want to look for them, but I'm not advertising them overtly due to not having the ball in shot (dammmmmit!). Then he ran my way. Fantastic. I filled the buffer on my 1DIV before I knew it. Excellent cele as you can see from the pic at the top of the post. Here's another.
Brilliant! It won't go to penalties now, if Germany can keep the Argentinians out for 5 minutes. And my pics were sharp and correctly exposed (in manual mode 1/1000th f/3.5 ISO 2000 or so). My shot of Messi looking sad from earlier was becoming more important. With the goal and cele shots sent quick fashion back to London it was all looking good.Some to-ing and fro-ing followed as it does with football, and then the final whistle went. Germany had won. Awesome. I shot a bunch of happy/sad pictures.
We had been well briefed before the match by the FIFA photography liaison guys on the procudure for the trophy lift. I made my way to the nearside corner for the barely controlled stampede to the platform set up for us. Again, idiots shoved in front of me, pushed, and eventually ran like wildebeest onto the platform. I was on the first step of the platform but the lot behind were just piling in and I eventually couldn't hold them back, stepping forward off the platform causing the dam of idiots behind to fall forward in a pile on the floor. Oh dear. All they had to do was walk up to the platform and stand on it.After much ado there was the trophy lift. By this time everyone had calmed down a bit and we knew we could all get the shot we wanted. Happy days.
The German team came down onto the pitch for the setup shot on the grass, which I positioned myself to the side of as it was mayhem in the middle, got a bunch of pics and there followed a level of pandemonium that is rare to see as the German team took the trophy into around the pitch. They jumped over the barrier and headed for the crowd but were intercepted by a million photographers. I tried piling into the scrum but it was a disaster, too close even at extreme wide angle and arms & elbows everywhere. The players soon realised this was a bad move and went back onto the pitch leaving us to scrabble around the outside for a picture. I found it very tricky to get into a decent position and ended up standing on a power supply unit.
Eventually the madness subsided and I went back to my seat to send my remaining pictures, with my laptop happily not having been stolen in the intervening celebrations. Packing stuff up took some time, and I started to cool down a bit. A quick Skype call with THE EDITOR confirmed he was a happy man and he had all the pics. I've got to say that he did a brilliant job editing which is high pressure and very tricky, especially when you're not at the match in person. Good work Dan - saved me a load of pain.I returned my now very second hand bashed about 400 and 1DX, and the 16-35 which hadn't had as much abuse, and got on with importing all my pictures, writing this and sorting all my gear out.Pictures taken today 2,091 (1DIII 119, 1DIV 576, 1DX 1,345, Olympus EM5 48). Pictures sent via Focus Images to the papers 210. Time now to calm down and contemplate - I have a couple of days before I fly back. Goodnight and thankyou for your support during the last 32 days - it's been invaluable.