My second professional football match was Stevenage Borough -v- Shrewsbury Town.

I had occasion to pop down to Brighton in October; I was collecting my mother who had been staying with my brother down there.

Needless to say I took the camera with me. I went for a walk down the pier with Laura & my brother, the weather was atrocious, pouring rain, but it didn’t stop us having an ice cream and a walk round the pier.

The middle shot is Laura walking down the pier

In the last regular season game the Watford Cheetahs welcomed the Milton Keynes Pathfinders to their home ground.

The Pathfinders were rumoured to have made some significant improvements over the season & were looking for revenge for the earlier season defeat by the Cheetahs.

The rumours were found to be true & the Pathfinders had indeed upped their game. They managed to beat the Cheetahs for the first time in their history with a score of 35 – 13, no mean feat considering their earlier 28 – 8 loss.

You can see the rest of the games from this match on my old website.

With the approach of Joy & Rob’s wedding, I got them over to my place three weeks before the big day for a pre-wedding shoot.

The idea was so that Joy & Rob could get used to posing for some photos & we could get used to each other so we could spend time on the big day getting some nice shots rather than them worrying about what to do and how to do it.

We started off in the home studio (converted living room) and I just got them sued to standing there while I rattled off some shots. We talked about posing & how to feel more comfortable in front of the camera.

Then we headed off to the local common for some outdoor shots. (The third shot below shows Joy pretending that a local weed is in fact her bouquet)

I guess the shoot worked as both Joy & Rob said they felt much more confident about their photos after the shoot  than they had when they arrived. This was reinforced when they saw the photos later.

At the end of June I went down to Finsbury Park, the home ground of the BAFA Premier leaders London Blitz to shoot them taking on the Sussex Thunder.

The Blitz have been national champions several times & were unbeaten this season. Sussex were totally outclassed & the Blitz ran out easy victors with a score of 76 – 0.

You can see the rest of the game shots on my old website.

Sunday 2nd May saw the Herts Hurricanes travel to Birmingham University to take on the Lions for the second time in the season. This time it was for a place in the National Championship Final of the British University American Football League.

It was always going to be a tough game for the Hurricanes; they lost their regular season battle by 44 – 12, the Hurricanes’ biggest defeat of the season.

Although, a better p[erformance by the Hurricanes, they lost the game 28 -12. The Lions advanced to the Championship final while the Hurricanes' season came to a bitter end.

This was the last Hurricanes game I covered in the season. I’d like to thank the coaches & players for making me a member of the team & allowing me exclusive access to get some shots that most other photographers aren’t able to access.

Good luck to the ‘Canes who  will graduate this year & move on to other things. I look forward to working with the Hurricanes again for their 2010-2011 season when it begins all over again in October.

You can see the rest of the shots from this game on my old website.

Focus on Imaging is the largest photographic show in the UK & is held at the NEC in Birmingham. This is the third year I’ve attended.

Talk about being a kid in a chocolate shop, you can find everything at Focus. I bought my Elinchroms last year. This year I had to reign in the spedning as I’d only got the 1D MkIV a few weeks earlier, so major acquisitions were out of the question.

The other great thing about Focus is all the free talks & seminars. You can pick up so much info. I watched a couple on the Flash Centre’s stand, one by a guy on ‘Strobist’ type photography, basically, photography with flashguns. Then there was another by someone who is using a 5D MkII for video production. Another good talk was at the PhotoTraining4U stand on black & white portraiture & how to make money from it. I was quite impressed with their seminars that I later joined their training website.

Several stands give you the opportunity to photograph some models. Lastolite had the ever-gorgeous Katy Green. I popped by their stand in the morning & the afternoon & took my chance to grab a few shots. Looking at them I doubt you’d be able to tell I was just standing in the crowdline waiting for her to look into my lens. The shots are taken with the ambient light on my 1D MkIV with 70-200 f2.8 lens.

I walked away from the show with another Pocket Wizard, a white shoot-through umbrella & a Lastolite Ezybox & stand for my flashgun.

In needed to take my 600mm lens back to Canon in January as I’d lost the little nut which holds the collar on. The service centre is just down the road in Elstree.

On the way back I stopped off at Tyttenhangar Gravel Pits to make sure the lens was working OK. There wasn’t any wildlife about due to the snow, so I tested it on the local flora.

The little white dots you can see are snow flakes, not sensor dust!

In December I was tasked to cover a 5oth Birthday party. The brief was simply to take photos of the guests as they arrived & capture some shots during the evening.

I used the 5D MkII with the 24-105 f4 L lens & a Canon EF 580II flashgun. Additionally, as a light-softening measure I used a Gary Fong Lightsphere attached to the top of the flashgun.

The following were taken at the wider end of the lens with the camera held up in the air & poitning downwards, a bit hit & miss.

I took some shots hand-held but had to up the ISO levels, so you can see more noise in these shots.

New Year’s Eve saw a ‘blue moon’. The name has nothing to do with the colour of the moon but is the origin of the phrase ‘one in a blue moon’ to mean a rare event because the blue moon only occurs once every 2 to 3 years & is the 13th full moon in a twelve month period.

Usually there are 12 full moons a year, but as the calendar year includes an extra 11 days over & above the usual 28-day cycle for full moons, these accumulate & mean an extra blue moon every few years.

The following shots were taken around 2.30am on the First of January 2010 & were done on the 5D MkII with the 600mm prime, additionally I stuck on the 2x & the 1.4x converters for a total focal length of 1680mm. The shots were processed slightly differently but are only slightly cropped from the originals.