I had my first ever professional football match in November when I got to shoot Stevenage Borough in their cup match against Milton Keynes Dons.
I was told by my agency that they’d booked me in with the club so I just needed to turn up, shoot the game and upload my shots to the agency’s server. All well & good when you haven’t got a clue about shooting football or how the system works.

I rang the club & found out where to park & where to go when I got there. On arrival I was handed an information pack & an orange vest. The information pack included a ticket (still not sure why you have a ticket when you spend the match sitting on the pitch), a match programme and details of the wifi so you can log on and upload your shots from the game. A team sheet came around 20 minutes before kick-off.

I hung around a few of the other photographers to see if I could overhear any tips, like where you were and weren’t allowed, but didn’t glean any info.
I picked my spot twenty yards up from the goal line & got all the kit together. I used the 600mm & the 70-200 but, to be honest, the 600 is a little large for soccer; it’s quite difficult following the ball when you have such a narrow field of view. I think though that a 300 f2.8 will have to wait.
I hadn’t brought a laptop though other photographers were uploading their shots at half time. As I live close to Stevenage I had planned on sorting out my shots when I got home. I was later told that about 14 of my shots had been submitted to the national papers & several more could have been if I had cropped them tighter.

Two days later I was on a night shift & flicking through the Daily Mirror. I don’t normally read the football section but I thought I’d have a look to see if any Stevenage photos made it. Imagine my surprise when I found the following shot inside the football supplement. It shows the MK Dons manager having a go at an official. Though it was heavily cropped, there it was, my photo, in a national newspaper, my first one.

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Photo Shoots