South Devon Football League photographs © Al Macphee/MiraclePR
The South Devon football 6 team challenge
In a recent radio interview with David Hammond for Riviera FM‘s Sports Roundup, I mentioned how setting yourself a challenge can help keep things fresh for a sports photographer.
Since Neil (press officer) and I hadn’t covered any South Devon Football League action for the past three weeks, we decided to take on the challenge of photographing six teams in one afternoon and getting the league as much press coverage as possible.
The process
Getting the order of games right was important and knowing not only the location but the layout of the grounds is useful. We decided to start with Chudleigh Athletic Thirds v Watts Blake Bearne Reserves, a 2.30pm kick-off. Because the pitch is a little bit of a walk from where we would be parked, I planned on getting there early so we would have that time to get across that field. Turning up at kick off time and spending ten minutes walking across a field is a no-no. That’s just wasting time. So we got to a viewpoint in time for kick-off, shot for the first ten minutes until I had three to four shots.
There were extensive local roadworks around the Newton Abbot area. The traffic would be absolutely solid, especially on a Saturday afternoon in the town centre. So we had deliberately picked a route to avoid these. Our next stop was Abbrook Park for Watts Blake Bearne v Ivybridge Town Reserves (which had also kicked off at 2.30pm). That was straight down the back roads, avoiding the roadworks. We also thought about the parking. We could easily park the car, take a couple of minutes walk to the ground, take the necessary shots and get back to the car by half time.
We chose Broadpark (Kingsteignton Athletic) for a few reasons. Again, we didn’t hit the roadworks. The last thing you want to be doing when you should be at a game is sitting in traffic for 20 minutes. It was another place where we could park easily and the timing of the kick-off helped. Kingsteignton Athletic were playing in a Devon FA Senior Cup game against Hatherleigh Town AFC and the kick-off was 3.30pm. So we knew that if we had had any hold ups we could easily absorb the time without getting stressed. Being clear on the details of a sports event is one of my tips in my How To Photograph Sports series of blogs.
The results
Every job has to have an end result and this has to be kept in mind throughout the process. Taking the photographs was only half of the challenge. The rest involved me preparing the images and getting them over to Neil in the correct format and in time for the local newspaper deadlines.
The value of professional sports photography to leagues, clubs and club sponsors was made clear when the papers hit the shelves on Thursday and Friday.
In the Herald Express, our pictorial coverage was second only to Torquay United. To put this in context, we practically had a double page spread of images while there were no pictures at all that week from the Western League, Peninsula League or Devon Football League – all higher placed leagues than the South Devon Football League.
We also had photographs featured in the Torbay Weekly and Mid-Devon Advertiser.
Have a burning photography question you would like Al to write about in his next blog post? Email info@miraclepr.com with your request.