Merry Christmas

December has been an unbelievably busy with the usual hectic end of term at school; I have also photographed four rugby matches taking somewhere in the region of 6,000 photos, culled them down to around 400, which have been edited and posted.

Chinnor vs Taunton Titans, 2 Dec

It has indeed been a lot different from my photographing u13s, albeit an excellent schoolboy side. The players are a lot bigger but so is the pitch, which compensates so I still need a 300mm lens on my Nikon D500. The pace of the game has taken some getting used to, but there is a lot of one (or two) out runners, but when the backs do get the ball it can be hard to keep up, and on the odd occasion I have bought a dummy. The hardest thing to get used to though is the lighting (or lack there of), the floodlights aren't great at this level, so a combination of high iso (up to 12800) and editing is needed.

Maidenhead vs Weston Super Mare, 9 Dec

It has indeed been a lot different from my photographing u13s, albeit an excellent schoolboy side. The players are a lot bigger but so is the pitch, which compensates so I still need a 300mm lens on my Nikon D500. The pace of the game has taken some getting used to, but there is a lot of one (or two) out runners, but when the backs do get the ball it can be hard to keep up, and on the odd occasion I have bought a dummy. The hardest thing to get used to though is the lighting (or lack there of), the floodlights aren't great at this level, so a combination of high iso (up to 12800) and editing is needed.

Henley Hawks vs Chinnor, 23 Dec

I have started to use Photo Mechanic (https://www.camerabits.com/tour-v5/) in my work flow; it is a super fast way of importing files, tagging them and adding metadata. I have it on a 30 day trial but will be purchasing it soon. It would definitely have been a help a couple of weeks ago when The Rugby paper wanted some photos and then asked for captions.

The Rugby Paper

December is nearly over, a busman's holiday next week as I'm off to see the Big Match 10 at Twickenham, meeting up with a few friends not seen in a while. Hoping that next year I can continue to build Snapzman up, looking to branch out in the summer to cricket, polo and perhaps softball (the national softball centre is in the village).

Mery Christmas and happy New Year

Snapzman