Programme Profiles, Resting Felines, and Pre-Shoot Nerves

This season with the Phoenix I've been more involved in the match night programme than in previous years. In the past I've written the occasional article and provided the odd photo, but this season I've been asked to take a more active role and come up with a broader range of content. One of the outcomes of this was the publication of shots from the photoshoot with Ryan Johnson, as mentioned in the last blog entry, but something that I've been working on more regularly has been a series of profile articles about the people who make the whole Phoenix operation run as smoothly as possible - the staff and the volunteers. Writing these articles has given me a chance to exercise my typing fingers in the form of online interviews with the articles' subjects, but the experience has also given me a reason to get more photos of people fulfilling their roles in their working environment on a match night:





The shots are often taken quickly, with very little set-up time, but personally I think that shooting like that adds to the photos, it shows these people in their 'natural environment' and hopefully they add an extra dimension to the articles!


This time of year is a time of general lethargy for most people. We wake up in the morning and it's dark, we go home in the evening and it's dark. Our beds have never been more comfortable, our duvets inescapable! The central heating goes on, the fire goes on, and the fleeces and snuggies come out of their summer retirement. Finding topics and subjects to photograph becomes harder, as you don't venture far from home. So you turn to familiar subjects who are feeling the same sense of lethargy and love of the warm that you are!:





This coming weekend, I have a shoot set up. It's a big one too, and there's a lot riding on it. I was as nervous as anything before the Ryan Johnson shoot a few weeks back, and that shoot paved the way for the one I'm about to undertake. To say that I'm nervous is an understatement. I won't lie, I'm very much on edge for this one. I've borrowed a nice lens, I've borrowed some lights, and I've tested and planned as much as I can. But there are some elements of the shoot that are totally beyond my control, and that's what's making me so nervous. Time will tell on this one!

However, the elements that I can control, that I can test, I've been controlling and testing. The lens that I've borrowed for this shoot is a rather nice 35mm f2.0 prime lens, and today I did some tests with the lens on a Nikon D90 which I will be shooting with this weekend, and I'm fairly happy with the results:





I think the shots are pretty good, but I'm always open to feedback! The small album of test shots can be seen here on Flickr.

Wish me luck for the shoot this weekend!