Harlequins v Leicester at Twickenham

Tobers

Tobers

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Andy
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Lots of rugby shots from this weekend. Here's a few more.

Harlequins decided to see if it was possible to get 50,000 people into Twickenham for a standard Guinness Premiership match. And crikey, that's exactly what they did!

Twickenham Stadium is amazingly professionally run. I collected my accreditation and then had my bag searched and tagged at the gate to confirm I was allowed in. There's a dedicated photographers' room under the stands with WiFi, sarnies and tea, plus a dedicated photographers' liaison lady who briefed us, showed us noobs around, and gave us our bibs. Unlike other "normal" league stadiums, there's no moving around during the game and I had to sit in the right area to match what it said on my bib. I elected to shoot from the 22 line for the first half, and had arranged to shoot from the end Leicester were attacking in the 2nd half (involved a bib swap).

In previous games I've struggled with my laptop taking too long to download pics at the end of the game, and Lightroom running really slow. Today instead I decided to have the laptop running all the time during the game and swap CF cards to download during the game, download from one card whilst shooting on the other, swap, format, shoot etc. This worked really well, and I had all the pics ready to analyse within 5 mins of the end of the game. I'd already selected a number of pics during the game as well so had 7 or 8 already chosen.

So, good news on that front. However, the tricky bit is working out who's who. I need to caption the pics (e.g. "Toby Flood of Leicester Tigers kicks a penalty to take the score to 16-7 bla bla bla). I can recognise most of the main players, but dont know the rest well enough to recognise straight away. I did a few "back shots" after each move/play to get the players as they ran back into position which worked well. Still some work to do on this front though. Still, I was sorted and uploaded within 30 mins of the game ending.

The story of the game I decided was the huge crowd, so I wanted to get a bit of that sorted out as well as the normal game shots.

The game ended 26-all after an amazing last few minutes when Harlequins ran in a try and a superb conversion from the touchline to equalise. All this happened at the wrong end of course!

#1 Before the game started I decided to get some shots of the dancing girls coming out of the tunnel.
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#2 And carefully positioned myself for Harlequins coming out to get the crowd in the background and the England Rugby logo as well :smashin:
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#3 And some game shots...
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#4
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#5 Surprise catch
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#6 Croft running in for a try
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#7 Flood on top form as usual
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#8 Getty's version of this got on the BBC's front page. Grrr
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More experience in the bag. Met a nice bunch of other togs and had a few good chats. It's getting easier but some way to go yet...

Tobers
 
I like all the action shots, probably 3 and 6 most. Not so keen on the first two though which don't do much for me, sorry.
 
Not bad, but the whites are blown, the horizon is on the skew, the green is over saturated, and it looks like you never moved.

Of course, I have never done this, I just sit and slaughter peoples pictures through sheer jealousy. That said, I am going to cover my cousins, nephews, mates, friends, sisters, brothers touch rugby next week and this will help me. I am using a 30 year mirror lens - f8 through the range. Just the job and would have helped here!

I would doff my hat to you, but the bloke on AVF got much better pictures than this and he can take pictures of moving bikes to! Ha.

Diego. ;)
 
To my eye #6 is the pick of them as all the elements have come together well -- and you've got ball carrier and distant players including tubby last line of defence in shot.

Did you get any of the crowd - it looked full of colour and fun on the telly?
 
Agree with Diego about whites being a little OB, the background is very dark in the shots. Which (at least) on my screen gives the photos a little dark feel.
As I have never shot a game of rugby in my life, the action is totally hebrew to me. So I shall not try to comment on that one beyond the point that there seems to be action in most of the shots so that's cool!
 
Gary Coyle said:
No6 for me, must have some incredible lighting at Twickers, what ISO were you shooting here, id guess 1000
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The lighting is great. I was at 1250-1600 and getting 1/500th and above most of the time so yes, a pleasure to shoot there.

Diego Garcia said:
Not bad, but the whites are blown, the horizon is on the skew, the green is over saturated, and it looks like you never moved.

Of course, I have never done this, I just sit and slaughter peoples pictures through sheer jealousy. That said, I am going to cover my cousins, nephews, mates, friends, sisters, brothers touch rugby next week and this will help me. I am using a 30 year mirror lens - f8 through the range. Just the job and would have helped here!

I would doff my hat to you, but the bloke on AVF got much better pictures than this and he can take pictures of moving bikes to! Ha.

Diego. ;)
Click to expand...

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: You're too funny mate!
 
GooGaBu said:
Agree with Diego about whites being a little OB, the background is very dark in the shots. Which (at least) on my screen gives the photos a little dark feel.
As I have never shot a game of rugby in my life, the action is totally hebrew to me. So I shall not try to comment on that one beyond the point that there seems to be action in most of the shots so that's cool!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your comment. The thing is that under floodlights you need to be very careful with your exposure, as the bulk of the background i.e. the crowd, is not lit. As a result, the camera will over-compensate and increase the exposure to brighten up the background, over exposing the subject. To handle this, you need to shoot in manual having metered off something of a similar colour to the players kit, or shoot in Av and dial in 2/3rds to a full stop of negative exposure compensation. This is why the players in the shots are by and large decently exposed, and why the background looks dark.

Had they put some floodlights pointing at the crowd as well they would be lit in a nicely balanced manner, or I could have used a few pocket wizards to flash them I guess.
 
GooGaBu said:
Agree with Diego about whites being a little OB, the background is very dark in the shots. Which (at least) on my screen gives the photos a little dark feel.
As I have never shot a game of rugby in my life, the action is totally hebrew to me. So I shall not try to comment on that one beyond the point that there seems to be action in most of the shots so that's cool!
Click to expand...

He was having a joke with him mate
 
Hi Tobers. I really like this set. You are privileged to get ringside seats at HQ. I am very jealous.

I looked at these earlier today and can't help feeling they are a bit 'contrasty' or something. But what I don't know is whether this is a function of ISO and lighting or Post Processing? There is a lot of black in the shadows on the players? Maybe some detail lost? I think this is what is giving people the dark feeling.

Really like Crofts run in for the try (#6). I always like the DOF effect where the subject is in focus and the support and tacklers are chasing but out of the DOF...
 
You're right - I tried a "medium contrast" setting in Lightroom which accounts for that. The intention is to make the image pop a bit more but I think it's a bit too much when strong lights are used. It's fine when the lighting is not as powerful as the pics need a bit of a push.
 
If you really want to compete against the like of Getty and PA, don't shoot RAW (no real benefit in an evenly lit sports stadium) and learn how to caption and send half way through the 2nd half with fingers like blocks of ice ;)
 
well done tobers, twickers is a nice place to go, the media room is great, i did eng vs bar bars earlier in the year with a guy who i freelance for and that was some experience.

If you really want to compete against the like of Getty and PA, don't shoot RAW (no real benefit in an evenly lit sports stadium) and learn how to caption and send half way through the 2nd half with fingers like blocks of ice
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Edtog is correct you do need to get working on the fly nailed, getty and pa most of the times have runners doing their captioning lucky so n so's
 
Edtog said:
If you really want to compete against the like of Getty and PA, don't shoot RAW (no real benefit in an evenly lit sports stadium) and learn how to caption and send half way through the 2nd half with fingers like blocks of ice ;)
Click to expand...

Yep - ta for that. I'm getting better and had a selection of 6 ready for captioning at the end of the 1st half. Therein lies my problem - captioning. I'm useles at recognising faces and this is a major drawback. I do take teamsheets with player mugshots to the ground which is a great help, and have started doing "back shots" of players to get their numbers after a particularly good shot. I'm also working on using boot colours, headgear and tape etc as ways of identifying players. I think it'll get easier as I know the players better. I could do with my son being with me as he knows all the players on sight.

Funny isn't it - the photography is a cinch compared to figuring out who's who. Any tips gratefully received.
 
tobers thats a good start to captioning, another tip is to lock only the best shots and caption those up after transfer - this will work when you get to know most of the players naturally, perhaps start doing some more quinns home games to get familiar with the faces and go from there - football teams now have their numbers on the shorts so you could prepare a template with the all the players name pre typed - this works when using the programme photo mechanic ( Code Replacement ) saves alot of typing.
 
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