Goooooal!

It is not often that scoring a goal merits a title of a post, even one like that scored by Prescot Cables Jonathon Bathurst in the opening minutes of their game at home to Radcliffe Borough. However, this was our first goal on the opening day of the season since a win away at North Ferriby United in 2007, which, coincidentally, was the first game for which I published photos on the web.

This was the photo I sent in to the Liverpool Echo for their Merseymart supplement (more of that later).

Jonathon Bathurst beats the keeper

This is what happened next.

Keep calm and carry on

Our programme editor has gone for a cover design with text to one side and a photo next to it, so there was a portrait format picture for his consideration too.

Tap in to the net

It was a bright sunny day, the sort we expect, but this year did not look likely to get, for the start of the season. This brings its own lighting challenges, and I thought a few of the photos were looking a bit contrasty (is that a real word?), and may have benefited from conversion to black and white. A decent image in black and white depends on a contrast in the teams' kits, e.g. one in white and the other in a colour, or one in plain and the other in stripes. Looking from the front, this was possible at this game, with Radcliffe in blue and black stripes.

However, when the Radcliffe player has his back to the camera, we encounter the plain back - a plain panel for the number is useful, but I see no need for it to take up most of the back.

The end result is two plain colours, which never works as well in black and white.

With new faces to identify at this time of year, I would welcome an innovation trickling down from international level - numbers on the front of the shirt. Some clubs have numbers on shorts, but this is not universal, and it makes the job of the kit man harder, as shorts need to be matched with shirts when they come back from the laundry. Often they are more to the side of the shorts, so not always easy to see when the player is facing the camera.

I mentioned at the beginning that I had sent a picture in for the Merseymart. We are in competition for column inches with our tenants, AFC Liverpool of the North West Counties League. We have come out well in the half season since the Echo relaunched the Merseymart, and I like to think the photos help, along with excellent match reports from our Press Officer, Richard Quinn.

However, there are times AFC Liverpool do something newsworthy that gets them the space, which was the case this weekend, when they lost 8-1 at Winsford United. I am happy to trade the back page of the paper for a point on the opening day against one of the teams tipped for a play off place.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Touch the stubble plains with rosy hue

A sunny autumn day is always good for pictures, with the sun low in the sky and creating a contrast of light and shadows. At Prescot Cables, the stand casts a particularly deep shadow, as does everything else - even the blades of grass seem to be casting shadows of their own.

It is the situation for which auto ISO was invented - quite possibly not exactly this situation, I have never received a visit from the clever people at the Nikon laboratories, but it is certainly useful. We have looked in previous posts at using ISO settings to get the best shutter speeds in various conditions. However, these have looked at constant conditions, in daylight or under floodlights.

Where players stay in one place for more than a few seconds, such as a golfer taking a shot, it is possible to prepare a setting in advance, as there is only one lighting condition to think about at a time. In football, the players move from light to dark without worrying about my exposures. Well, I hope they are not thinking about the photos...

When I first started taking football pictures, I did not find the auto ISO setting on my D50 to be very good, it went to far too low a shutter speed before it kicked in. So, I would either set for the lighter part of the pitch and accept that I would not get many in the shadow of the stand; or, later in the afternoon, when the shadow covered more of the pitch, set for the shadow and accept that pictures in the sun might be washed out. However, the D5000 is much better, so it can jump from ISO 360 (with 1/2000s at f/8) in bright sunlight ...

... to ISO 1600 (1/500s at f/5.6) in the shadow.

The autumn light also gives some striking contrasts, both in colour ...

... and some photos that would have too much contrast to be usable in colour, but where it can make a feature in black and white (I use the "Convert to black and white" function in Photoshop Elements for this).

As for the game, it was a much needed win for Prescot against the bottom club, Ossett Albion, the full set of pictures can be seen here.

The title of this post is one of the lesser known lines from Keats' To Autumn.

Old fashioned newspaper-style photographs

Remember when the newspaper had photos in black and white, the ink came off on your hands, and, on the sports pages at least, it always seemed to be raining?

A few months ago, I saw an exhibition of London Street Photography at the Museum of London. The exhibition has recently finished, but the book is available from the museum shop. As I was looking at some of the pictures, from the 1890s onwards, I wondered about creating some of the effects of these photographs today. Our friend Photoshop can do much, but some of the effect must depend on the actual equipment on the ground, with digital sensors capturing a level of detail, and sometimes clutter (of which I suspect there is more today too), not possible on film.

Whatever else may have changed, the essence of most sports has remained the same: the ball may be synthetic materials instead of leather, but there are only so many ways to kick it. The rain too continues to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. So I thought I would have fun with some of the pictures from Prescot Cables' trip to Lancaster City, and try to create the atmosphere of the papers of days gone by.

I adjusted the lighting on some of the colour pictures for the slide show, using the levels, as discussed in the last post, to get rid of the mist, then lightening the shadows to emphasise how hard it was raining in the second half.

Then, I went a step further, using the "Convert to black and white" menu in Photoshop Elements, starting with the "Newspaper" option, tweaking the colour intensity and lighting shadows to give that old fashioned press look.

If it was not for the advertising and the white ball, you could probably be anywhere between 1930 and 1980.

There is one aspect of the golden age of the newspaper photograph I cannot recapture - the mud. Lancaster's pitch looked to be in excellent condition, and it is only September, but even the heaviest pitches at our level are positively verdant compared to even First Division pitches in the seventies and before.

The rest of the photos from the game, including more pleasant weather in the first half, can be seen here.

Pre season friendlies kick off

It was a belated start to Prescot Cables' pre season schedule, with the weather at Hope Street being the opposite of the disruptive rain at Chadderton the previous week.

Alongside the usual new faces were many of last year's team returning for duty, including the two winners of the Player of the Year awards – Players' Player of the Year Liam Hollett, 

and Supporters' and Manager's Player of the Year Joe Gibiliru.

There are new faces to recognise, and I try and get individual shots for the webmaster's player profiles for those players who stay for the regular season, and the usual slide show for the forum and website. We will be talking about what I look for in photos for each of these in future posts.

The visitors were gap Connah's Quay, better known to many as Connah's Quay Nomads. With the opposition in all white, on a bright sunny day, there is always the temptation to get arty with black and white.

You can see the full slide show here.