Gentlemen of the Press

Last Tuesday saw Prescot Cables entertain Woodley Sports, leaving their pristine polyester to play on our rather more weather affected surface. They were playing in red, which I suspect takes about half an increment off the best aperture for the desired shutter speed compared to having one team playing in white.

James Thomas returns to Prescot

Tuesday is also the publication day for the Merseymart, of which more in a moment.

Last time I was in London, I was talking to my friend John from the Southwark News. As I mentioned at the time, most local papers, even those owned by the larger groups, only have one or two staff photographers, and will use those mainly for news and events, with sport taking a back seat. So, the amateur photographer can help the club, although some requirements for print are a bit more exacting than for the web, particularly in terms of pixels, of which more in a future post.

Just before the Durham game, I had a call from the sports desk at the Liverpool Echo. They have relaunched the Merseymart supplement, covering south and east Liverpool, Huyton and Prescot. As Cables are the highest placed football club in the area, we get a fair chunk of the back page, and our Chairman, Tony Zeverona, put the Echo in touch with me to see if I could supply some photos. Before anyone sees crisp currency, if local papers could afford to pay for photos, they would employ someone to take them, so the main glory is your name in the paper. I even buy my own paper!

When I have supplied photos before, it has been a one off for the Southwark News, or the opposition's local paper, so I sent a link to my online collection, and let the paper's sports writer choose the images. However, the Merseymart deadline is on Monday, so to speed things up, I pick the photos.

I mentioned in the last post the pictures I sent after the game against Bamber Bridge. They chose the picture I was expecting, of Ashley Ruane shooting for his second goal. Generally, they will not be looking for the best standalone picture, but the one that best illustrates the match report. Where a player has scored two goals, he is likely to be in the picture, preferably scoring.

Here is the picture as it came off the camera.

For the web collection, I cropped it like this.

If it had not been a goal, it would probably not have made the collection - at full screen size, we can see that Michael Grogan in the background is in slightly better focus than Ashley Ruane. When I submitted it to the paper, I cropped it slightly differently to draw attention away from this.

This was a bit wider than the space the paper wanted to use, so they cropped it more tightly - I try to avoid cropping through players, but this can be done whilst still showing that the shot was taken under pressure from the opposition.

That is is not exactly as the image appeared in the paper, it is my crop to show the effect - the original and any variations I make of it belong to me. By sending the photo to the paper, I allow them to use the image, and any variations to cropping and lighting they make belong to them.

We also had a good match report. The club recently appointed a new Press Officer, after some time without anyone filling this role. This has really improved the coverage, as he has a knack of writing match reports that can be used by the press with minimal editing, which makes the reporter's job easier. With a print deadline approaching, a match report or press release that can form the bulk of a story, accompanied by a picture, can really increase the chance of getting coverage.

The pictures from the game against Woodley can be seen here.