I was recently invited along to be one of 4 speakers to present on The Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Unions Big Day. Its an annual event, and it was a real honour to be invited along to give a presentation on my sports photography.
We had a great turn out from the audience, and the auditorium was excellently prepared and ran by Mike Lawrence, who's help and knowledge in setting up the audio visual equipment was top notch, and ensured everyones presentation ran the way it should.
I showed approx 160 sports images, featuring horse racing, football, rugby, motor sport and athletics.
I gave advice on equipment and how to set it up and use it. What makes a good sports image, etiquette and much more.
One of the topics I discussed is a pet hate of mine, the fine line that exists between a sporting incident and a sporting accident.
A horse that has lost its footing, and fallen head first to the ground, or a sportsman being injured, shows sports in a bad light.
It might provide an instant impact to the viewer, but there is so many great pictures that can be taken instead on a sporting event, which does show sport in a good light, and I urged people to focus on that (no pun intended) instead.
We had a lot of great feedback from the audience, during lunch and coffee breaks, and it was a pleasure to speak to so many enthusiastic and talented photogtraphers. I had a conversation with a TV journalist, who told me he had learnt more from my presentation than he had done reading several books on the subject of photographing sports.
Its lovely comments like this that makes all the hard work in preparing for these events worthwhile.
The Big Day also had a print competition, which the speakers judged, and it was a thrill to see Kean Brown, a photographer I have known of for a number of years, and met several times, walk away with the top prize for a super portrait taken of his friend Terry.
A massive thank you goes out to The L&CPU for inviting me along to The Big Day. In particular Norman, Henry, Mike and Rob, who did a lot of hard work behind the scenes to pull the day together and make a winning day.