Having recently been chatting to local sports photographer Russell Pritchard I was invited to have a go at shooting a football match on Wednesday night. Glentoran, where Russell is official photographer, played Maccabi Haifa, from Isreal, at The Oval stadium in East Belfast. With the score already 0-6 on aggregate, the home team gave away another 4 goals on this second encounter.

I was quite disinterested in the score, let along the teams, but rather the Canon 1D MkII with 300mm (plus 1.4x converter resulting in 420mm) lens I had in front of me. Sport isn’t my thing, and least of all football, but, like most things, I enjoy the opportunity to watch as an outsider, camera in tow.

For me, it was the shortest 90mins in a long time, as I rattled off hundreds of shots like a sniper in a first-person shooter, only it was a machine gun and most of my rounds were wasted.

Pretty analogies out of the way, seeing everything through a 420mm lens takes quite some getting used to and I need (and think I’d enjoy) a lot more time at it. None of this taking shit photographs and calling them “abstract” in this game.

Thanks again to Russell (and Kyle!) for the experience.

Tagged: Photography, sport | 6 comments »