Guildford Inside Out - Sport

There are plenty of sports photography opportunities that I had noted in the photography brief. I have explained below the particular reasons for including these as potential subjects:

• Cycling - The town centre becomes a venue for professional cycling a couple of times a year, e.g. it is the finishing line for one of the stages of the Tour of Britain. 
• Walking and horse riding - these are popular all year round activities on the North Downs, just on the outskirts of the town.
• Kayaking and rowing - I had photographed these activities for Assignment 4 and these are also all year round activities. The attraction of kayaking for this assignment is that this is not only a colourful activity, but that the river is narrow so that it is possible to get close to the competitors. 
• Surrey Sports Park: This is home to two professional sports teams, men's basketball, women's netball. There is also a professional ice hockey team at the Spectrum sports centre. I wanted to go and see one of more of these teams to find out if there would be some photo opportunities. 
• Lawn bowling - the Castle Green bowling club plays on a green just below the castle in the town centre. I knew from previous photographic visits that the gardens catch the afternoon and evening sun so in good weather the light should be good. Furthermore, in the sunshine the players in their light coloured clothes stand out well against a dark background of stone and foliage.

At the time that I was ready to take some sport photographs in May, the ice-hockey, basketball and netball seasons had already finished. The cycling events in the town centre are only going to take place in late July and August which was after the due date for completing the assignment. At the Surrey Sports Park, however an international women's basketball demonstration competition was being held between six countries, including Team GB for which tickets were available.
Image 5 - Women's basketball

Nikon 28mm: Iso 640 f2.8 at 1/160th second
Without a fast telephoto lens, I appreciated that I should not expect to get close-up action shots of the kind that appear in the sports pages. I arrived early and found that there were few people in the audience for the first match between Germany and Greece. I was able to sit close to the pitch on an elevated seat close to shoulder level with a clear view and space to move around.
I experimented with my different lenses (18-200 mm f3.5 to 5.6, 28mm f2.8 and 50 mm f1.7) sometimes panning to follow the action, sometimes without panning. I selected this image as the one that showed the best action:-

• The focus of attention is the two players in the middle ground. Their movement is largely frozen and sharp. 
• The posture of the blurred figure in the foreground conveys a sense of speed. This also directs attention towards the two female players.
• The cream playing surface and mid blue walls contrast well to make a colourful picture. 

Image 6 - Bowls - a close decision

  

















Nikon 50 mm: Iso 100 f1.8 1/4000 second
I planned to go along to two bowling matches at the Castle Gardens, one afternoon match and the second an evening competition. The afternoon was sunny and I was able to get a number of reasonably good photos over the course of an hour and a half. The purpose of returning for an evening match was to take some photographs of the players in silhouette against the light sky as the sun went down. However, the weather on the evening that I could go was darkly overcast, so I did not return to photograph this match.
I chose this photograph over others where the players were in the act of bowling as I liked the matching postures of the two figures. I may have been influenced in this, by the uncanny resemblance of the two captains to a pair of penguins about to incubate their eggs. By coincidence there was an excellent programme on TV about the life cycle of penguins the previous evening.
The whites stand out well against the mid and dark greens, even though the grass is a relatively muted colour.
I had taken a large number of photographs of a kayaking competition along the river through the centre of town last December. I thought that one of these would be suitable for inclusion in this Assignment. However, I did not find one that I thought would be fit within the requirements of this brief.