I spent a great weekend photographing my son's cricket team. They had been
languishing on the bottom of the ladder until last week. A timely rained
out match got them into the semi finals. ( Hard to believe after such a dry
Summer in Melbourne.) Yesterday they had to play the top team. I don't
they had beaten them all season. I sat on the boundary with my two cameras.
An p****x on a tripod and an OM40 handheld. An old Tamron 500 f8 preset on
the p****x with Fuji superia 800 and 80-200 on the OM with XP2 rated at
400asa. My aim was to capture each member of the team both bowling and
batting. The bowling shots from the far end were great but those from the
closer end not so good because the bowler was running away from me.
I used the OM to follow the action. I managed capture two catches. I
was pretty happy with that as trying to follow the ball through the view
finder and fire the shutter at the right time is difficult. At least you
can anticipate a catch. The run outs and bowleds were impossible. I can't
afford to photograph every ball bowled!
I managed to get a good sequence of my son's bowling action even though
the shots are of separate deliveries. This is the second time I have done
this. Must be bad reflexes or something although the result is good.
Photographing the team batting was more fun. I concentrated on one end.
One shot has the ball on the bat.
I think the shot of the day was when my son's coach ran out near the end
of the match to speak to my son. I new the game was close but was not sure
how close. The message was " You have four balls left and we need four runs
to win". My son was the last batsman. In this competition each batsman has
a maximum of 20 balls and all batsmen get to face that many unless dismissed
first. In other words the are 11 wickets to an innings instead of the usual
10. Needless to say I very nervous. I don't know how my son felt. He
missed the next two balls. Trying win by hitting boundaries I think.
Scored two on the next. The fourth was a wide, which adds one to the score
and the ball has to be rebowled. While this was going on I was try to
operate the cameras and give a commentary to my wife on the mobile phone!
Ivan walked up the pitch to give instuctions to the batsman at the non
strikers end, " we are going to run no matter what". Which is what they
did. I didn't realise the they had won the game because I had not seen
the umpires signal the wide. But the photo of the team congratulating each
other is great.
The final was played this afternoon. Unfortunately they were unable to
repeat the performance. However it was a great achievement to had made the
final. This time I was able to sit square to the wicket which gave me a
better angle for the bowlers at each end. I also concentrated more on the
fielding this time. I used fuji 800 again and Ilford Delta 3200. I have not
used that before so I will be interested in seeing the results. I was not
very happy with the XP2. It lacked contrast and was very difficult to print
well. The over cast day did not help the contrast either. Eventually
printed on Grade 5!
After the match I allowed the team to take the photo's of themselves. It
was terrific to see their excitement as they went through the photos took
the one's they wanted. I made me feel the effort was worthwhile.
John Venables
J. Venables
jjvenab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jjvenables@xxxxxxxxxxx
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