My ideas experimentation

Originally I had planned to look over many different football programmes to try and find out what sort of programme would suit my programme that I would be creating. I eventually decided that I would create a magazine based around a special on the clubs promotion. To help me in designing my programme I got a copy of the programme the last time Burton got promoted, this really helped me when I was designing my programme, I did have a few ideas but this helped me gain more and more ideas when I was creating it.

I thought to myself what could I do, originally the plan was to a programme for the Cambridge United match, the last of the season for both Cambridge and Burton but I decided not to bother as by the time I had completed the programme it would have been over a month since the match ended, so I thought it best not to bother doing this and to do something different, so I decided to base my programme around the clubs promotion and title success as it would be a special occasion for the club.

Football HQS

Football HQS are a company who post their football images onto Tumblr. Their photographers have been to many of the worlds biggest events, as shown by the images below all three were taken during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

 This is the only image of the three that wasn't taken during the 2014 World Cup final. This was most likely taken during the semi-finals, this photo I love mainly because it shows the emotion on the players face. As the player is most likely not moving or moving slowly so as most photographers normally a Canon 5D Mark III with a 24-70mm or a 24-105mm lens to take it. This photo may have more simple than most football photographs but it doesn't take away any of the brilliance of the photograph. This photo is one of the best photographs I have seen mainly due to the pure emotion on the face of the player. I believe this photograph was taken just after this players team, Argentina made the World Cup final so you can fully understand why the player would be showing this short of emotion.

This photo shows the German goalkeeper and an Argentine player going for the ball. This shows the goalkeeper almost taking out the Argentine player. I really love this photo mainly because it shows how desperate the players are to win the match and to get to ball. This photo would most likely have been taken on a 1DX or 1D Mark IV when it comes to Nikon cameras I wouldn't know what sort of camera would be required as I only shoot on Canon. I would say this is likely to have been taken at 1/500 in terms of shutter speed. This one photo in my opinion shows off what can happen in football and it also shows that you are capable of getting truly incredible photographs such as this.

This photo above is probably one of the best I have seen mainly because it shows the pure emotion on the face of the player after he scored the goal that won the World Cup for his team. This would have occurred quickly so the shutter speed would have been fast but not as fast if were a goal as that would have occurred at a much quicker speed I would guess this was taken at around 1/250-1/500 of a second. This photo is easily the best of a player celebrating that I have ever seen, this would be a photo I would taken inspiration from when I take my football images to try and produce something similar when a player celebrates.

Matt Bunn

Matt Bunn is a British photographer who is best known for his football images. Matt works for Corbis Images and has taken a wide range of football photographs from England internationals to the lower leagues of English professional football.

This photos is probably one of the best football photos I have seen, it has the ball and he player perfectly in focus and there is no major blur on the ball, this would have required a shutter speed of around 1/750 of a second the f number would have probably been either 3.5 or 5, when I take photos similar to this they normally on f5 with a shutter speed at eight 1/750 or 1/1000. Since its isn't that sunny where the photo is being taken I would guess that the ISO settings are likely to be around 200, this is probably the ISO I would use for this photo.

This photo shows a goalkeeper trying to save a shot, this is probably the best football photographs I have ever seen, this is because Matt has capture the ball as it passes the hand of the goalkeeper. Looking at it Matt would have been at the other end of the pitch so he would have had to have a large zoom lens on his camera, I would say it is likely that he has taken this and all of his images shown here with a Canon 1DX, he doesn't specify this on his website though. This incident would have occurred very quickly so he would have required a very fast shutter speed around 1/1000 of a second to be able to capture this as well. It might just be the computer but it does look a little grainy, whereas if it was in a programme it would look perfectly fine but this isn't a major problem for the image.

This image shows two players in the same game as the one above battling for the ball. This is also is one of his best image as it shows the tackle being made as some attempts of these sorts of images do actually miss the tackle or the ball is out of shot, whereas here he has the ball in shot perfectly and the tackle is being made. This incident would also have occurred quite quickly so Matt would have had to be using quite a quick shutter speed to be able to capture it, I would guess around 1/500 or 1/750 of a second, not of much as the top image.


After looking over a lot of Matt's different photography that he has done at football matches, he truly is one of the best football photographers around at the moment and I am sure I have not seen some of his work that is even bettered than this, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are many better images as that is the sort of photographer Matt is.

Magazine evaluation

When creating my magazine, I had a couple of ideas of what I could do for it, to gain inspiration I decided to get a programme that was created the last time that the club got promoted. I looked through this and thought to myself what could I do to my programme to make it look as professional as the ones they produced. I feel that the one I have produced is pretty good as well. The plan for the programme was to do a month-by-month review of the season as is normal with these sorts of magazines. So what I did was I went on to the BBC Sport website to find all of the clubs fixtures for the current season, and using these and what I can remember from the games I went to, to create the review of the season. Unfortunately I didn't go to games in every month of the season, so for the early months of the season the photos aren't from the months they are part of but for the months of November, December and all from February until the end of the season are from the months indicated during the season review. When it came to the middle of the programme, I decided that the best thing to do was to put in a photo on the double page with the twitter hashtag they were using #BAFCareChampions. I decided to write a few words before the review and throughout I used different quotes that managers Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Gary Rowett or assistant manager Kevin Summerfield had said to BBC Radio Derby and also a few words the chairman said to the Burton Mail following promotion.

I would have to say that I am really happy of how it has come out, as long as it looks as good when I get a copy of it then it will be a really successful programme.

Getty Images

Getty Images are a company who photograph a very wide range of football matches they have photographers at a pretty much every major game.

This first image shows two players battling for the ball in a game, the sort of shutter speed that would have to be used wouldn't have been that quick as the two players at this point wouldn't have been moving that quickly, but the photographer probably would have had a high shutter speed at a likely minimum of 1/500 of a second to capture the players when they were in full sprint.

Here the players are not likely to have been moving that quick so you wouldn't need a quick shutter speed but because the action before it was moving quite quickly the photographer is likely to have been shooting using a fast shutter speed, one of around 1/250 could easily get this as they have done during the action the speed would have likely to have been around 1/500 of a second. I feel that regardless of shutter speed used this would have created a brilliant image like the one he has got.

This image would have been taken at a fast shutter speed this would have to be done because the ball is likely to have been moving at such a speed that a high shutter around 1/750 to 1/1000 a second would have to be required to get this image, you can attempt it at 1/500 of a second but it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as good, it might bean ok photo, but it is not worth risking it.

Rob Sambrook

Rob Sambrook is a football photographer who is the official photographer for Colchester United. As I am created a programme looking over his images are likely to help so that I know what goes into it.

This image would have been taken with a high shutter speed this is because if he hadn't the ball would have been blurred because of the speed it is travelling it is likely that the shutter speed would have probably been around 1/1000 a second it will be at least set at 1/500th of a second. In my opinion I feel that this is a really good photograph as he has managed to get the ball in shot without any major motion blur on the ball. The image also has a narrow depth of field as it blurs out the crowd the only thing about it is some of the crowd are wearing quite colourful shirts and are a little bit distracting but it isn't a major distraction.

This image would not have required as fast a shutter speed as the top image as a shot is not being taken though as the players are probably running so the speed would probably be set around 1/500th of a second. This image is made better by the background being blurred out and no real distracting elements in it. What I like about this photo is it shows a lot going on with one player with the ball trying to get away from another. The only thing about this that I could criticise is the fact that the bottom of the ball and part of the players feet are missing and that is a little bit annoying.

Marc Aspland

Marc Aspland is a photographer who is best known for his Premier League and international football photography.

This first image is of a match between QPR and Man City, here the photographer would have had to use a very high shutter speed in excess of 1/750 of a second especially if the keeper hit the ball out of the net, this is because the shot and the reactions would have occurred very quickly and the photographer would have had to take a couple of images quickly and then achieved this specific image.

This image wouldn't have been as difficult as the top image to capture. This is because the action wouldn't as quick as the top image but as he jumps into the air celebrating would have occurred quite quickly and this is where the photographer would have had to have a quick shutter speed to be able to capture the player whilst still in the air and I feel that they have Marc has done a really good job in capturing the photograph as he has done as it is easy to try and capture this image and get it wrong and the player is blurred.

This technique used in this image, tilt-shift give it the effect that it looks like an inanimate object like a toy someone has put together but this is an actual England match at Wembley. This technique is not often used at football matches, but I do feel that it would be brilliant if more photographers attempted this at football games. This makes the photos really interesting, I would love to see more photographers and not just Marc attempt this sort of image at football matches.

Photo Shoot 2 Evaluation

The second photo shoot I did was at Burton Albion after the final day of the season as they were presented the trophy as champions and celebrated with the fans.

This image was one of my favourite from the shoot as it shows the players lifting the trophy, this was one of my main priorities when I was shooting. This image was perfect for the middle of my programme as a similar style to what the club had in the middle of the actual programme.

This was a pretty good image it was not as sharp as I would have wanted it on the players behind the board, but on the player spraying the champagne it is exactly how I would have wanted it, but despite this I still really like the image. If it was sharper on the other players then I would really love the image and it would be one that I could have considered for the front or back cover of the magazine nonetheless it does feature in the magazine as I felt it needed a place in the programme.

This was my favourite photo from the entire shoot, this is because all of the players in the image are actually looking at me as I took the photo. This was easily going to be used in my programme at some point, I didn't know exactly where I could use it but I decided to go through it and try and find a place for it. I did find a place for it and I feel it was the best place for it.



Overall I would say that the shoot was brilliant I did find out on the actual day of the shoot I would be able to do it which was brilliant. Just being able to go to the ground on the day was a brilliant experience especially with it being Burton Albion, I enjoyed every moment of the experience and got some brilliant photographs for the project and for my portfolio.

Photo shoot Evaluation

The photo shoot that I did at Burton Albion on April 25, 2015 was a really successful shoot during it I took somewhere between 900 and 1000 photos. I came away with ten really strong images, I believe that this was a successful shoot due to the amount of images I have gained compared to previous shoots.

These images I believe are some of my strongest that I have taken during my time at Burton Albion, all of these I took on the 1DX and were using the 70-200mm lens. This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second, one main reason I like this is because you can see the rain pouring down, one thing I feel I could have improved on in this photograph is the fact that the ball is a little bit blurred this is probably because of the speed it is moving had this image been taken using a faster shutter speed that probably would have helped it a lot and kept the ball looking still whereas here it is quite obvious that it is moving.

This image was taken using the same shutter speed as the image above but this image was a lot easier to capture as the player in the image wasn't moving. Looking at it the image at this size the fans in the background look quite clear and distracting but looking at it at its normal size the rain blurs out the fans, this image is also quite good due to the rain in the image it has been pointed out to me that it looks a little bit like snow and it does. With this image the rain hasn't distorted the player and is still very clear, the quality of image on the player is the same as if there was no rain at all on it and it was a normal image.