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.

Unauthorised food

I was lucky not to be ejected from Prescot Cables' game away to Wakefield at the weekend, although as it was not their regulations I was breaching, I suspect they were not zealously enforcing them.

Wakefield will be known to many by their former name of Emley AFC, under which they reached the last 16 of the FA Amateur Cup, the FA Vase final and the 3rd round proper of the FA Cup. The club moved to Wakefield in 2000, becoming Wakefield & Emley, to meet ground grading requirements. They are not to be confused with AFC Emley, who were founded in 2005 to use the historic Welfare Ground in the former mining village of Emley, following the disbanding of Wakefield & Emley's reserve team, who had until then continued to play there. Wakefield are playing this season at Stade France, the home of Ossett Town.

So, what did I do to risk being ejected?

Take a look at this picture of Cables' Liam Pearson going for a header - looking particularly at the notice behind the players. "No food or drink to be brought into the ground when the food bar is open. Anyone doing so will be ejected." I was in possession of a half finished bottle of water.

The tea bar is an important source of revenue for a club: one reason clubs often struggle when they do not have their own ground is that they do not receive the bar and refreshment revenue that goes to the landlords. However, I am not sure ejecting anyone with unauthorised food is the best way to protect revenue - anyone so removed is not likely to darken the turnstiles again. With crowds in the hundreds, or even the tens, the food offering is necessarily limited, mainly confined to burgers and pies, that will sell to the maximum number, and can be easily bought in bulk and frozen. Clubs do not have enough customers to offer something for all dietary requirements, and enforcing this regulation makes the game less attractive for those who cannot or do not want to eat what the club is able to offer. I would not like to be the press officer handling the aggrieved vegetarian ejected for bringing a cheese sandwich, or the diabetic left to eat his emergency Mars bar on the pavement outside the ground.

It was the last game in British Summer Time this year, although the light was failing towards the end, with the referee requesting the floodlights be turned on. I had not been paying attention to the shutter speeds the camera was offering before the lights came on. As the sports mode on the D5000 does not go above ISO 1600 but starts reducing the speed instead, I had to abandon most of the frames from the previous 5 minutes as the action was too blurred, although a couple still made it despite the low speed.

The game was not one for the purist, with a draw being a fair result, with Prescot's goal coming from Michael Grogan (on the right in this picture).

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