Foreign parts

Prescot Cables' Boxing Day fixture against Skelmersdale United had all the elements for a surprise result.
- Boxing Day - tick;
- high flying local rivals, managed by our former manager Tommy Lawson - tick;
- visiting supporters expecting us to roll over - tick;
- last game in charge for our manager, Dave Ridler, with the lads wanting to give him a good send off - tick.

Dave is taking up an appointment overseas with the expanding Liverpool International Football Academy network. He started his playing career with Prescot, before going on to a League career with Wrexham and Macclesfield. He returned to Prescot as Assistant Manager in 2009, and took up the reins when Joe Gibiliru stepped down in 2010. Whilst results have not been as good as we would have hoped, and reflect the financial resources available, performances have improved, and Dave has uncovered some good local players.

The biggest improvement has been in discipline on the field. This has been a problem for some time, with frequent bookings, particularly for dissent, with the club near the bottom of last season's disciplinary table for senior football in England. An improvement was noticeable towards the end of last season, and has really taken hold this season. There have been hardly any bookings for dissent, and those picked up in play have dropped too, with teamwork and individual performances improving as a result. Discipline alone will not get results, but we will not get them without it, so I hope this is something a new manager can continue.

Dave's departure will take an interest in Prescot to pastures new. This blog is unintentionally doing its bit, once you put something out on the internet, it can be read anywhere. I get 4 or 5 hits a week from Russia, so I am not sure if someone is looking for tips on managing condensation on the lens whilst watching bandy (basically hockey played outside on ice). I will not have been much help dealing with extreme cold, it is a few seasons since we last visited the East Coast.

A mention of a player can start traffic. Fraser Ablett attracted a number of searches for images from Australia.

That made sense, as he shares a name with a well known Australian Rules player. I am, however, unable to explain the 4 image searches from Norway, prompted by last week's mention of the return of Colin Flood.

The game lived up to the tradition, with a long range goal from Cables' John Couch

cancelling out Skelmersdale's goal (the picture is not of the goal by the way). The Skelmersdale match report suggested the game was "not for the purist". Granted, the scramble for Prescot's winning goal from James McCulloch was not pretty,

... but a goal is a goal, and their goalkeeper looked a bit surprised when it went in.

Prescot had chances to make the lead secure that were not taken, but held on with a sound display in defence.

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

Ee ba gum, it's a bit parky

Between Christmas and New Year, leagues tend to give clubs local fixtures - not like the fifties, when teams could just as easily have a long away trip on Christmas Day, with the return fixture on Boxing Day - I am sure I have read somewhere of Middlesbrough playing Plymouth in the Football League in these circumstances. The same cannot be said for the Saturday before Christmas, where there is often a chance to take a long trip and get well away from Christmas shopping.

This year, Prescot were away to Harrogate Railway Athletic. I like club names reflecting our industrial heritage. The Harrogate & District Railway Athletic Social Club was formed by employees of the London & North Eastern Railway works at Starbeck, between Harrogate and Knaresborough.

I set out from a snowy Liverpool, where we would definitely not have had a home game, with possible alternative entertainment in mind, as I was not completely convinced by messages emanating from Harrogate that the weather was lovely and the game was going ahead. Snow was still on the ground coming in to Yorkshire. This blog uses historic county boundaries for reference, so Yorkshire begins between the parishes of St George and St John the Baptist in Mossley, or for the secular minded, between Mossley FC and the Rising Sun.

Past Huddersfield, the weather reports proved to be accurate, and I got some snaps in Knaresborough, and a pint in Blind Jack's, then headed to the game. We started in good light for December, with the regulars being joined by a couple of new faces, and a returning Colin Flood.

This being Yorkshire, and the middle of December, it was still more than a little cold. I do not find too much problem keeping warm, and my feet do not matter as long as they still move at the end of the game. That just leaves fingers, which need function throughout, despite the body's inclination to cut down the blood supply. Full gloves are fine for the left hand, which only needs to control the zoom ring, but on the right hand lose too much control over the shutter button. Bare hands end up cold and less than responsive, and I have never found fingerless gloves to be very helpful. I have recently tried running gloves, which have been an improvement - they keep most of the wind off, and are thin enough to keep control of the camera.

Not that they are completely effective, by the end of the game (a picture from the last 10 minutes or so above), it was time for the coldest part of the day, when you start moving after standing still for 90 minutes, and all that blood that has been cooling in your feet starts moving to make the rest of you cold, so it was back to Knaresborough and Blind Jack's to warm up.

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

From Caldy's woods and fields

Prescot Cables' home game against Ossett Town a couple of weekends ago fell victim to another wet weekend (or more accurately a full week of wetness), so it was off to watch rugby union again, this time at Caldy, who were playing Preston Grasshoppers.

I have not been to Caldy before, although not for want of trying. The club play near Thurstaston on the Wirral, a pleasant walk from West Kirby through the village from which the club takes its name. Unfortunately, on that occasion, what I thought was a short cut turned out not to be, so I ended up using my long lens to take some pictures of the local woods, which started my Walk in the Woods series.

The club play at the foot of the sandstone outcrop of Thurstaston Hill. The soil looks to have good natural drainage, which will allow them to play when others are likely to have problems with excess water. To illustrate how dry the pitch was, this picture is from the end of the game - remember I was not watching football 10 miles away due to a waterlogged pitch.

The hill adds to some of the pictures...

The club attracts crowds a bit larger than Prescot Cables, and a club of this size in football would be subject to a whole series of ground requirements, such as a wall round the ground, to prevent the game being viewed from outside. If anyone wants to watch the game across half a cricket field standing in a busy main road, I suppose they could do so, but I am glad they are not required to spoil their setting when it is not necessary.

The main pitch was missing the equipment that has most effect on my activities, floodlights (although there were lights for the training pitch). With rugby union mainly played once a week, with midweek games only used to clear fixture congestion at the end of the season, it makes sense not to have lights, and move the kick off to 2pm or 2.15 to allow the game to finish in daylight.

I was surprised at this level (National League 2 North, the third level of the club game in England) that the only cover in the clubhouse: a football club with a similar crowd and admission price (£8 including a programme), for example, in the EvoStik League First Division, is required by the FA Ground Grading Rules to have cover for 300 spectators, with at least 150 being seated.

Having said that, the seats are often sparsely occupied, and it needs to be raining quite hard to drive me under the cover if I can get a better vantage point in the open. However, if the forecast is for heavy rain, I might cross Caldy off my list of venues for the day - I have never been a fan of umbrellas at the best of times, and I have never tried to combine holding one with photography. Or, I could just wear a hat with a brim.

There is a balance to be struck for all community sports clubs between spectator comfort and the cost of facilities. I sometimes wonder whether the FA's approach may be a little too prescriptive, and it may be better allowing the clubs more leeway in this area, and make their own balance between the cost of cover, and any lost revenue from those who may stay away because of its absence. I think clubs can trust their supporters to have some idea how to wrap up on a cold day.

Picking up the ball and running with it

Prescot Cables' game at home to Mossley at the weekend was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch, caused by torrential rain falling on already wet ground. So, it was time to find a sport with a relaxed attitude to mud (or where a safe and meaningful game can be played in wetter conditions than football).

I therefore made my first trip for some time to Waterloo FC, who were playing Sandal. I have been an occasional visitor to Blundellsands if Prescot Cables have not been playing or I have not wanted to go to an away game. Since I have been taking pictures for Prescot, I have been more inclined to travel away, so my visits to Waterloo have been even less frequent.

P.G.Wodehouse had Bertie Wooster describe rugby (union) thus, "Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end. In order to squelch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench." Fortunately, we will be staying on the sidelines with a camera.

Both codes of rugby present a different photographic challenge to football: players are usually holding the ball when running with it, passing is by hand, and offside is simply being in front of the ball, which makes for a more structured flow of action. I usually watch from the side of the pitch rather than my normal football location behind the goal. I have never tried watching rugby union from the end of the pitch - I have with league, and got some good pictures of players running, but missed out on a lot of tackles.

Running and tackling are of course common to both union and league. Union, however, has its own photo opportunities: contested scrums (observe the nice straight feed in the example below),

and line outs, which seem to take a bit of time to organise, but are worth it from the photographer's point of view.

Another photogenic part of both codes of rugby is passing the ball - in union the best shots often come after the ball emerges from a scrum, ruck or maul.

For once at this time of year, I have not been talking about floodlights, as, in common with many rugby clubs, Waterloo kick off at 2.15 in the winter, allowing the game to be completed without adding to the electricity bill.

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

Moles see fine tonight

This blog is about taking sports photos using consumer kit, working from the terraces of clubs at step 4 of the National League System. So, no Nikon D3S with its ISO range extendable to 102,400, or 200mm f/2 Nikkor lens with its combination of wide aperture and long view. Nor do I frequent Anfield, with its international standard floodlights (1400 lux minimum, 2000 lux recommended for high definition television). So, we have to improvise sometimes.

Tuesday saw Prescot Cables visiting Warrington Town, to play them for the fourth, and, as we have lost all four, thankfully last, time this season. Prescot had seven players normally in consideration for a start missing due to injury or work commitments, so it was unlikely to be a good evening. So it proved with Warrington scoring three goals in the first 13 minutes, with two more in the second half. The only consolation was Steven Tames taking the opportunity of a place in the starting XI to end a barren patch in front of goal.

Well, it is not the best of pictures, but a goal is a goal.

The photo above shows the pattern of the light on the pitch. More to the point, there is not one, the spread is fairly even. The spread of light depends on the siting of the lights - a column at each corner, or three or four columns along the sides - and how many lights are on each column. In my experience (relatively limited, as I have only been taking pictures at night games for a couple of years), there are dark patches where you cannot capture anything, and light patches that are very helpful. At Warrington, I suspect the lights passed their test with few values much above or below the average.

It quickly became apparent that I was not going to get very far with my 70-300mm lens, even at the lower focal length, the resulting pictures were very dark. Here is Cables' Lee Roberts at 125mm, f/4.8, 1/200s.

We can improve the lighting ...

... but it is still quite grainy.

So, it was time for emergency measures. I have a 50mm f/1.4 lens. The much better aperture (f/1.4 takes in 8 times as much light as f/4, and 16 times as much as f/5.6) gives a clear, light image when the action is immediately in front of the camera, for example Cables' Phil Cooney taking a throw in.

There are, however a coupe of disadvantages.

Firstly, action further than a few yards away will be small in the middle of the image. In practice, the lens can only really be used over the quarter of the pitch nearest to the camera. Take the original of the picture above of Steven Tames' goal.

Of course, we can crop out the unwanted part, but if the part we want to keep is too small, there may be issues with the quality of the resulting picture. Take this example, with Cables' Ashley Ruane.

This looks like a promising image to crop. However, when we do so, we find the players are quite blurred (which will be more apparent if you click on the image and view it at full size).

This picture also illustrates the second problem with the shorter lens. The auto focus point is a constant size in relation to the frame. Using the longer lens, and a camera with a small focus point like the D5000, it is easy with some practice to position the focus point wholly on the player. With the shorter lens, the focus point is far more likely to be partly on the player and partly on the background, so the camera may focus on either - you can see in the picture above that the advertising hoarding is in better focus than the players.

This means that more of the pictures will have to be rejected. The rest of the pictures from the game, in a somewhat smaller album than usual can be seen here.

Supporting the supporters

On the way to Dulwich Hamlet's game against Worthing I posted about here, I photographed the game between the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters' Team and our hosts, the Worthing Supporters.

I had not planned to be at this game - I have been to see Dulwich games on the south coast over the last year, each time thinking this would be a good time to meet an old school friend after his son's football training in Redhill, only to find engineering works meaning I would not be able to manage that and get to the game. So, I was ready to arrange a meeting, until a quick check revealed ... er ... engineering works meaning I would not be able to manage that and get to the game.

So, it was time to take up the opportunity to attend a supporters' game, in a strictly non playing capacity. Our hosts had booked a pitch on a recreation ground on the outskirts of the town, with a most unusual arrangement of trees in the lane alongside.

The purpose of the Dulwich Supporters' Team is to promote Dulwich Hamlet, and promote friendship with other teams. So, it is open to all ages and abilities. A typical side will contain a couple of good young players, some good players well struck in years, and some making no claims to ability who enjoy turning out. The Supporters can even boast a player with a First Team appearance, Shaun Dooley having appeared in a pre season friendly back in the nineties.

Age is no barrier, from the youngest player on the day (although nowhere near the youngest to have turned out for the team), Callum Smith,

to the oldest, Mark Hutton.

I have taken pictures for a couple of games of this type when some of my colleagues organised them at work. I have found that if I take enough pictures, I can be confident of getting everyone doing something that looks good. After one of the work games, I showed a colleague a picture of what I thought was him scoring a goal (which he had done). It looked great, controlling the ball, the goalkeeper committing himself to go the wrong way, but he remembered it differently, "Ah, that's the one the other end where I missed and fell flat on my arse".

Trying to get a couple of decent photos of everyone means I take a lot more pictures than I would at a club game. The game is a lot less predictable than a club game - a club has a pattern the manager will want to play, the players will train and play together two or three times a week. Even the regular players in the Supporters' Team only play together every few weeks, and players drop in and out as work, family and other circumstances dictate.

I needed to make sure I did not slip into "club photographer" mode and just concentrate on the Dulwich players, but to make sure I got some of the Worthing players as well.

The usual guideline I adopt for the size of the album goes out of the window, everyone will want to see themselves and their friends in action, so I went for publishing almost all the decent shots, whilst strictly maintaining the rule that the dodgy ones never see the light of day. I hope the players enjoyed the game as much as I enjoyed working on the photos.

The rest of the photos can be seen here.

A night in the cold

Tuesday saw what will probably be Prescot Cables' last home League game in midweek until the Spring, hosting Trafford FC. By this time of year, although there are floodlights, the likely drop in temperature at night means there is every chance a pitch that is playable at 7.45 may be dangerously hard and slippery by 9 o'clock.

There is a League game away next week, and the Liverpool Senior Cup tie at home to Southport in December, but the fixture list now has games mainly on Saturdays and Bank Holidays to the end of the season. We have been fortunate with the weather, which will not last, but with only one League fixture to rearrange, it should be easier to fit in the inevitable postponements in March and April. Many people support a winter break in the season, but the practical question would be when to have it - last season December was effectively frozen off, the season before the same happened in January, and the season before that November was washed out.

The cold weather brings challenges for camera equipment: a frequent bus service from near my home to the ground means the camera does not spend long outdoors in the bag before meeting the cold air, so there is a risk of condensation, which can affect optics or electrics. Fortunately, although there was a bit, it did not affect the working of the camera. Coming back indoors is a lot easier - the bag has reached the temperature outside, so I just put everything in, and leave it for 2 or 3 hours after getting indoors to allow it to warm up slowly.

I have mentioned in previous posts that the image from the camera under floodlights usually needs some work to get the best details from the available light. Take this example from early in the game.

This is quite reasonable, but there are details, like the players' faces, wehere we should be able to get some definition. First, we look at the Levels.

There is space to the left and right of the mound on the histogram, so some parts of the picture are over exposed, and some under exposed. Moving the black slider to the left edge of the mound, and the white slider to the right edge will ensure that the picture is using the full tonal range. For pictures from Prescot I do this for the RGB channel, adjusting all the colours at once, as the new floodlights cast a fairly white light. Last season I would often adjust the red, green and blue channels separately, as the older lights had a slightly yellow cast.

We may also want to lighten the picture, either using the grey slider on the histogram to adjust the lighting generally, or the shadows / highlights menu to lighten shadows or darken what has become too bright (particularly useful when one team is playing in white). When part of the image is the sky, the more the shadows are lightened, the more grain will appear in the sky, so I keep this adjustment to a minimum for the effect of the players against a dark sky (the difference in the two images can be better seen by clicking on the image and viewing them at a larger size).

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

Mr Hardaker's backyard

This weekend saw Prescot Cables playing away to AFC Fylde. The club won the FA Vase in 2008 under their former name of Kirkham & Wesham. I am not sure the new name has established a unique selling point. Some of us stopped on the way to the game in the Bitter Suite in Preston: when some other customers heard we were going to Fylde, they thought we meant  Fylde RFC (where I have been a couple of  times to watch Lancashire v Yorkshire rugby union).

Fylde play at Kellamergh Park in Warton, between the former and current homes of the Football League in Lytham St Annes and Preston. The ground has an air of provisionality: although Fylde moved there in 2006, their long term plans involve a multi sports complex nearer to Kirkham, so the stand, bar, board room etc. look neat and tidy, and able to be dismantled and sold on to recoup some of the costs of the new development.

It can get a bit windy in these parts, as we can see from the angle of the trees.

It was a clear day for November, although that is a relative term: I think of November as the month with the least attractive light. Perhaps it is the transition from October, when we usually have at least a couple of good days, with the backdrop of the leaves changing colour. From the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the fruitfulness has departed, leaving just the mists.

The auto focus is not always quite as responsive as in the lighter months. I have no problem getting enough to create a slide show, but a few shots that looked good on the camera's montitor prove to be out of focus when seen on a larger screen.

A lot of shots appear murky as well, even at the beginning of the game. Take this example.

After cropping, the next thing I do in Photoshop Elements is look at the levels.

The black part in the middle that looks like a range of mountains is the histogram, and it shows how well distributed the light is in the photo. There is a flat area to the right, which tells us the picture is slightly under exposed. If we move the white slider to the left, to the end of the mound, this will have the effect of lightening the picture. I do this on the RGB channel (as shown in the drop down at the top of the window), which adjusts all colours at once. This is usually all we need in natural light, although sometimes under floodlights it can be beneficial to adjust the colours separately.

This often leaves shadows that still need to be lightened, and can leave some of the highlights over exposed. This can be adjusted using the shadows / highlights menu.

This makes for a lighter picture, with brighter colours, and a better view of the players' faces.

The purist could say that this is presenting a false image - if it was a grey and murky day, then the photo should reflect that.

I do not agree. Most cameras have their own quirks when relecting the natural light, I find the D5000 (and the D50) on a cloudy day makes a dark picture, and it is far easier to adjust the lighting when you can see the picture on a full sized screen. Enhancing the lighting also makes the action stand out - people looking at the website / programme / local paper want to see Cables' John Couch challenging for the ball, not a reminder that it was a bit dark.

The game was a superb defensive perfomance from Prescot,

who held off a strong Fylde attack for almost the whole game, only succumbing in the last minute of normal time, and taking home a point courtesy of a long range goal from James Thomas a few minutes previously.

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

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk

... ah, wrong sport again.

Normally by this stage of a season I will have been to London a couple of times to watch Dulwich Hamlet. However, for one reason and another, I have been occupied at home in Liverpool this year, so this weekend was my first Dulwich game of the season, away to Worthing.

Worthing played "Sussex by the Sea" as the teams took to the field. It is an inspiring tune, sometimes described as the county's unofficial anthem, leaving one wondering whether to stand to attention or look for a flag going up somewhere. Not that it makes a lot of sense in the whole county, but that is another story.

The Supporters' Teams of Dulwich and Worthing had played in the morning (more on that in a future post), when Sussex had reportedly been warmer than Syria. Fortunately for the first team, the temperature had dropped by the afternoon. I was quite pleased too, as I had to rush to get to the ground. I found after the supporters' game that my spare SD card had less gigabytes than I thought, the town centre is some distance from the station, and then there was a stop for fish and chips. It's rude not to when you are at the seaside, and if I will have the plaice ...

The floodlights, which looked as though they were of Blue Square South standard, were on from kick off, but it gets dark earlier in Worthing than I am used to in Liverpool. It is only 4 minutes' difference now (according to the US Naval Observatory's Civil Twilight tables), but I always get caught out by the half an hour's difference when I go south in the summer. Regular readers may think I have a thing about floodlights, but they affect most of what the photographer is able to do at this time of year.

The sports mode on the camera did not work very well, so I went straight to shutter priority with a shutter speed of 1/320s. For the first half, this allowed me to use the full range of the lens, and capture shots the full length of the pitch.

As I was photographing mainly for Dulwich supporters (and any photos the club and their local paper, the Southwark News, may want to use), all the considerations in the last post about constructing an album apply, with one complicating factor - I recognise less than half the players. It takes me about 3 - 4 weeks to get used to new Prescot players, watching them twice a week, so having watched Dulwich only 5 or 6 times last season, I know those who have been in the team for a year or two, but am a bit hazy on the rest.

Dulwich have made a good start to the season, maintaining a challenge for the top spot, and Worthing have had a run of form keeping them in contention for the playoff places. This showed in pace and skill, with the players of both sides making full use of the available space and passing options, which made even me feel a bit energetic keeping up with play.

It was therefore surprising that no-one noticed until the second half that a passing fox had left a message on the edge of one penalty area.

I come from a rural area, but the only time I have seen a fox is at East Dulwich station, near Dulwich Hamlet's ground - outside the big cities the fox tends to be observed more by a trail of damage. As I was leaving, the groundsman was lifting the goalnets and wrapping them in industrial strength plastic sheeting to protect them from the attentions of our vulpine chums.

The natural light lasted quite well, so I was able to maintain the 1/320s shutter speed well into the  second half.

I then dropped down to 1/250s, and then to 1/200s, with the high standard of the floodlights, and Dulwich's continuing to press forward at every opportunity ensured that I could capture some good images, even from behind the goal, right up to the end of the game.

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

Slideshow, and rule no 2

Following our trip to Wakefield FC came news that we may have been among their last visitors. They have gained more time to negotiate funding, but still need to raise a significant amount of money to cover an unpaid sponsorship, and improvements at their previous ground that they paid for before being unable to renew their lease.With news of Bamber Bridge also cutting their playing budget, few clubs appear to be immune from financial pressures.

Whether more clubs follow the lead of Prescot Cables, and go amateur remains to be seen. I suspect there are some that should, and Prescot's experience suggests this is not as likely as sometimes thought to lead to a mass exodus of players. A club recruiting players from miles around having to cut expenditure when everyone else is increasing it may see players going elsewhere: a club with local players, making economies in today's financial climate, is likely to keep a good proportion of them.

Prescot's visitors at the weekend were Harrogate Railway Athletic. We have been used to Harrogate sides, like many from Yorkshire, with an imposing physical presence, but this time the sizes seemed more evenly matched.

It seemed just after half time when they had cancelled out an early Phil Cooney goal and then gone ahead, both courtesy of the pacy David Brown, that this would be no advantage.

Fortunately, the second Harrogate goal seemed to give Cables added focus, with a hat trick in 5 minutes from James Thomas

(here shooting for his second goal), and a goal from Liam Pearson making for a decisive victory.

I have been posting a lot so far about how to get particular photographs, lighting conditions, etc. However, I have not talked about what to do with them, and ways they may be useful to the club. My main output comes in the shape of a web album, that can be viewed as a slideshow. I use Picasa, partly out of habit because I have been using it for a long time, and partly because I like the black surround when viewing as a slideshow, I think it brings out the light and colour of the photo.

So, how big do you want your album?

There is one absolute limit -  how many pictures you have that you are happy to show. We can call this rule no 2 (rule no 1 was to get rid of anything out of focus or missing the action) - only show a photo if you are happy with it. So if you have half a dozen photos you are happy with, then show those, a small collection will still remind supporters of the game, give a flavour for those who were not there, and can be handy for the club in many ways, such as illustrating a match report on the website.

If you start to take photos regularly, you will probably start to have more than you want to show. My personal limit for the size of an album is about 60, that is enough to get all the players in, and with many more than that, people will start to switch off and not look at the rest. 60 frames takes about 3 minutes to go through in slideshow mode, so the Cables webmaster sometimes puts a show to music.

Getting an album of 60 photos is not quite as easy as turning up and taking 60 photos, at least not for me. As I have become more experienced, I have found the ratio of good to bad shots has been remarkably consistent - between one and two fifths for the bin without touching the sides, about one fifth worth cropping and making adjustments to the lighting, with about half of those making it into the final selection. So, to get an album of 60 pictures, I will have taken about 600 frames - any more than that enables me to be more choosy about the ones I select to crop.

That sounds a lot to process, although I can do the first step, getting rid of those of no use, really quickly, spending no more than a second on each photo. Picking and cropping takes longer, about three times as long as the game for the end to end process. That has stayed consistent too: as I have become more experienced, I have been able to handle a larger number of photos in the same time.

There are a few things I look for when choosing pictures: -
- a good range of action shots - players making solo runs and passes, and competing for the ball;
- getting all our players in (preferably shots they will be pleased to show to their friends, colleagues and relations);
- try not to have one or two players dominating the album (probably the most difficult to achieve);
- individual shots of players for the webmaster's profiles (and the players' Facebook pages);
- goals (ours!).

We will look at all of these in more detail in future posts, but in the meantime, the pictures from the weekend's game can be seen here.