The Greatest Of All Time

First up apologies for not updating this thing for a month, I had the folks over for a week and didn't update it then, after that there was some other reason I didn't do it, next thing I knew a full month had passed. It's it's not through lack of photos either, I've been pretty busy snapping away this last month.

I decided some shots I took this time last week were probably an excellent place to start. I managed to procure myself a ticket to the men's final at Wimbledon, which turned out to be in the 2nd row and close enough that both players could hear me shouting "COME ON ROG". To say it was a good day is perhaps the understatement of the year, from start to finish - including breaks - it went for about 7 hours, and I wasn't getting sick of it at all. If it wasn't almost pitch black at the end I could happily have sat through several more hours. The quality of the tennis was absolutely breathtaking, at least once every game through all five sets I made a comment along the lines of "What? That's not possible" after one of the warriors blasted an impossible winner off a shot that would have been a winner against anyone else on tour. 5 hours of play hadn't desensitised me at all to this genius, I've seen a fair bit of top level tennis in my time and these guys were so far ahead of anything I'd seen it was ridiculous.

So, on to the photography. I managed to get my 40D and 70-200L f/2.8 into the ground which was pleasing, the conditions on the ticket say photography is allowed but you can't use the images for commercial gain but you never know the reaction of an overzealous security guard when you try and bring in a huge white lens. Fortunately they were more concerned about the 4 x 250ml cans of Pimms I attempted to bring in, you were only allowed 2 cans and my argument that these cans are half the size of regular cans fell on deaf ears. Rules is rules. If you want to know where I was sitting it was the corner that Nadal ran to after the match to get into his coaches box, I could have patted him on the shoulder but I was too busy trying to take his photo, you know you're close to the action when the athlete is too close for the camera to focus on. These shots give you an idea of our position (I went with my flatmate Dave who wore a bright pink shirt which was a master stoke of being identified on tv), and how close we were to the pro photographers (well, one group of them anyway).







(just as a side note that guy on the far left looking at me taking his photo is the chief sports photographer for the times and wrote this article about the final)

So, now you're sufficiently jealous of my positioning it's time to hit you with some action shots. I took over 1100 photos on the day, which is a lot, but sports photography is a game of hit and miss to an extent, the more you take the more chance you have of getting that killer shot with the ball right on the strings, or that split second facial expression, a prime example of one of these shots is this one. It was a combination of new balls, back lighting on the fluff and a bit luck, but they all come together for a cool shot.



Of the 1100 photos I'd say close to 70% were of Nadal. There are several reasons for this.
a) He's more photogenic, ie better facial expressions when he hits the ball, ridiculous arms that translate well to photos, etc
b) At my end I could only get shots of Feds face when he hit forehands, and Rafa was really pumping it to Feds backhand so I didn't bother taking too many photos of his back
c) When Rafa hit his backhands he was facing me, and a backhand is a more photogenic shot than a forehand which often tend to look a bit awkward when frozen in time
d) Rafa won and I reeled off close to 300 after the match of his celebrations, crowd invasions, trophy acceptance and what not.

Here are some of my favourite action shots from the day.








I was looking in the paper and internet before the final this year and realised that most shots that got published were not action shots but shots of players fist pumping or somehow showing emotion. It's so tempting to put the camera down once the point is finished but the trick to capturing great shots is the know the feel of the game, understand the massive points and the likely reactions of the players and make sure your lens is pointed in their direction if they win those massive points. For this reason I pretty much missed the epic 4th set tie break as I was glued to Nadal to get his reaction when he won (which everyone thought he'd do when he was up 5-2). Still though, small price to pay as I managed to watch LOADS of tennis with the camera safely stowed in my backpack.















So there you have it, memories and photos that will last a lifetime.

Oh, other exciting news, I photographed my first wedding last weekend as well, it went really well and I'll put some shots up here in my next posting. Take it easy.