Posts Tagged ‘sport’

This was my second day out photographing one of our local american football teams, the Yorkshire Rams. Here is what I learned…

Set the white balance manually. During the Lancashire Wolverines game I left it on auto, whereas in this game I manually set it to cloudy and left it there. The photos came out a bit cold in the first game and a little inconstant too. This time they have a more consistent, warm feel.

An exposure of 1/500 is not fast enough to freeze the action. It is OK for players running around but when the ball is being thrown, you need at least 1/1000. When I photograph birds in flight I use 1/1250, and the ball is probably moving faster than that, so makes sense.

I tried taking off my 2x extender and just using my 70-200mm lens (whereas with the extender on I would get a focal range of 140-400mm), as this allowed me to open the aperture up to 2.8. I didn’t see much benefit though, I was already shooting at around ISO 100, so I simply didn’t need to open it up to that unless I specifically wanted to do so, and while that allows me to easily blur at the background, it makes it difficult to keep everything in focus. So 140-400mm f5.6 it is then; it is broad daylight after all.

I also tried increasing the ISO to 3200 in an attempt to get a much greater depth of field. This allowed me to work at up to f11 even at 400mm, again I didn’t see a great deal of difference, but I might give it another go next time and see if I can shoot some catches and plays where I don’t have time to re-focus the camera.

I used AI servo and back button focusing for this shoot. That means I turned off auto focus activation when you press the shutter half way down (I posted a video on how to do this a few weeks ago), and used a button on the back to activate it instead. Because it is in AI servo mode (continuous auto focus), I could then press this button on the back to focus, hold it if I wanted it to work continuously and then release when I wanted to take a shot, or even leave it going the whole time. Mostly I focused and then left it alone, unless the action started coming towards or away from me.

There is also an element of luck to it. I was shooting in continuous mode, but cameras can only take so many shots per second, and given a kick of a throw takes less than one, being able to capture the exact moment comes down to chance. Of course, the more expensive your camera is, the more it can take – my 6D clocks in at 4.5 I think, whereas if you have a 5D Mark III it can take up to 6.

You can find some of the photos in a previous blog post.

My photos from the East Kilbride Pirates at Yorkshire Rams game. The full set is on Flickr.

Some highlights from the Lancashire Wolverines at Yorkshire Rams game, that finished 7-22. You can see the full set on Flickr.

Last Sunday the UK celebrated the first Brit to win Wimbledon in 77 years.

Except it wasn’t. It was 77 years since Fred Perry won the men’s singles title, but the last winner of a women’s singles title was Virginia Wade, a mere 36 years ago in 1977. The Guardian sums up the newspaper headlines:

Times: “Murray ends 77-year wait for British win.”
Telegraph: “After 77 years, the wait is over.”
Daily Mail: “Andy Murray ends 77 years of waiting for a British champion.”

You can argue that it was implied that they were taling about the men’s singles title, but that is as much the point – we forget about our female players because the men’s game is considered more important than the female one.

Many people have taken this is a commentary on how we should reflect on our attitudes about women and care more about the women’s game. But this is a universal problem – nobody cares about women’s football. Or women’s golf. Or women’s rugby. Or indeed almost any sport! The men’s game is almost always considered more important.

The simple solution, therefore, is to stop segregating sportspeople by gender.

Do away with men’s and women’s tennis, and just have tennis, where everyone is allowed to complete on the same terms. No more would a female winner of Wimbledon be related to merely being the “women’s title winner”; she would be crowned the greatest tennis player of them all!

I first wrote about this in 2011 while nobody was watching the women’s world cup final that was being shown on BBC3, instead of BBC and ITV simultaneously as the men’s game is. Japan won, by the way.

Combining the competitions into one would stop the second class treatment of women’s sports and allow them to achieve to the highest heights, rather than being restricted by a very opaque non-metaphorical ceiling.

You can argue that women would not be able to compete with men at the same level, but this is, I’m sorry to say, the very definition of prejudice. You have to treat people as individuals and give them the same opportunities are everyone else. Saying “women are often weaker than men, so we’re going to prevent all women from competing” makes no sense in civilised society. Try telling Venus Williams she is too week and feeble to play against you – she’s 70mm taller than I am!

If you should still insist that it would be unfair on women who never get a chance to win, consider that most people don’t. I’m never going to win a Wimbledon tennis title; I an entitled to special circumstances that allow me to win despite not being the best also?

Switching to a characteristic other than gender quickly makes you realise how silly the split gender argument is. Imagine if we decided to split long distance runners based on their skin colour. Have a black marathon and a white marathon. How ridiculous! But when it comes to gender, we find it perfectly acceptable, almost certainly because that is what we have grown up with.

In the modern day, as we strive towards an equal, fair and just meritocracy, everyone should be allowed to compete in the same competition – regardless of skin colour, sexual orientation, or gender.

The 2013 NFL Draft starts tonight! Prior to the actual draft, a number of people produce a mock draft, showing their predictions as to what teams will draft what players, including Kiper, Scouts Inc and ESPN bloggers.

While I won’t claim to be an expert in NFL drafting, I have produced a mock of my own, showing what would happen if franchises were allowed to draft Chuck Norris. Obviously, being Chuck Norris he would be able to play every position, for all teams simultaneously, and thus this has been reflected in the mock.

Last weekends Malaysian grand prix turned out to be a bit of a sour one.

There was simply outright anger between Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, as Mark thought he deserved to have the race win, while Lewis Hamilton felt similarly guilty about taking third place ahead of team-mate Nico Hulkenberg one suspects entirely due to team orders.

As I mentioned in my post about the Australian GP, being a Button fan is only ever going to end in disappointment, as he retired only a few laps before the end of the race, with Di Resta well below him and Max Chilton spent most the race in last place – only Hamilton was flying the flag for Britain, and that was in dubious circumstances too.

Meanwhile, over in my adoptive nation, Kimi Raikkonen only managed 7th. Let’s hope for better results in China.

Seems like no time at all since we started the 2012 Grand Pix season, yet here we are, back at Albert Park for the start of the 2013 season. Indeed, by the time this is actually published we’ll probably be a few races in!

As a Jenson Button you would think I would be used to constant disappointment by now, but unfortunately not, as I watched him cruise home to 9th place, beaten by fellow Brit Paul Di Resta in his Force India, while Lewis Hamilton led the way for British drivers, finishing 5th.

Luckily, as an adopted Finn (I assume, Elina’s mum seems to like me), I can of course now legitimately support both nations and luckily for me, Formula One, along with rally driving and ice hockey, is one of the few sports that Finns are really good at. Kimi Raikkonen might be the only Finn in the sport at the moment, but what does that matter when he leads the world championship.

The Cheltenham Festival is the biggest event in the racing calendar. Only the Grand National can top it for prize money, and none can top the Gold Cup for prestige. Having spent the past four years in the gaming industry, it’s always a big week.

Most of the betting companies had a smooth week technical wise. Corals had some real problems with their website, and Bet Victor and Paddy Power had some big outages too – but everyone else came through it rather smoothly.

I made the mistake of following the tips from the racing team – and ended the week rather down. But it’s all in good fun, and I did manage three winners, just not particularly well priced ones.

Go Eddie, go!