Right.. now I've got the obligatory Action Shots out of the way... I can get onto the more interesting stuff!

With this event I wanted to capture more than just the action, and I found the setting of such a highly-charged event such as this was great in bringing out elements that made it great for portraiture.

Here are a few of my favourite portrait shots taken during the week:


1. One of my favourite shots of the whole event, South African goalie Hayley Duncan glances at the scoreboard during a break in the heat against New Zealand.


2. The photo I posted earlier, this is Canada's Aaron Feltham climbing out of the pool in the heat against Australia.


3. Friends and supporters of local player Gemma Hadley cheer the Australian women during the Gold Medal final.


4. Jenna Santoromito listens to the Australian coach Greg McFadden during a time-out against South Africa.


5. Australian captain Thomas Whalan during the warm-up before the heat against Singapore.


6. Trent Franklin and Christian Hoad watch from the Australian bench as the South African coach is ejected from the stadium for arguing with the umpire (with 3.5 seconds to go in the match with 10 goals the difference).


7. One of the die-hard junior supporters who (along with a few mates) provided much crowd entertainment during both days of the finals.

My thoughts only here, but i love all these shots.... in my mind they are all posing questions making you think more about the shot. What are they thinking? How are they feeling?? etc etc. Love it Kombi.

#1 is excellent, but #4 is fantastic. The rest are merely stunning.

Love your work - I'm sure the players would be rapt to see them... are these going to be published or used somewhere?

My favourite is #4 - the composition is perfect, and the eyes are absolutely stunning.

hi

i think you are in the wrong proffesion...i think you should be a full time waterpolo photographer greast stuff im impressed. number 1 is also one of my favorites on your series.

Just a question did u make any money? how many did u sell?

thanks

christian

Very nice pictures!
The colour pictures are nice, and the black and white pictures are nice! I like the tones in the black and white pictures, and the colours in the colour pictures. The exposure and composition look good to me!

I love them all. You caught the emotion and mood of the day equisitly

Truly fabulous shots, love them all.

echo the above mate well done. The crowd shots make you proud to be an Aussie

Aussie Aussie Aussie

wow, wow, wow, and wow. fabulous shots.
#4 is one of my favorites, I love her eyes, they dominate the picture.

What lense did you use?

I don't really like the line running through #1 (the other side of the pool?), have you tried cropping it? I know, it changes the format and the depth....

anyway, grant work.

uli

Thanks again guys..

Jules, some of these shots will be used by our marketing department to promote us and the WA athletes, some might be used by Challenge Stadium to help promote the venue, and both Australian teams also know they are welcome to prints. They aren't being published anywhere though, but I am building a gallery for them at hgalleries.broughtonphoto.com.au/Sports/Water-Polo-Commonwealth/2044591_gpZDXL
But mostly they are shots I took for myself. I pretty much had other people's requirements covered after a day of shooting, but I wanted to do the whole event to the best of my ability. If nothing else I guess it is something I can put in my portfolio in case one day I should need it.

But even if nothing else comes of it, I have to say the hard work of last week was absolutely worth it. It's rare that you get an opportunity to shoot so many shots in a day, go home and review them all and learn what works and what doesn't, and then go back the next day to shoot the shots you wish you had shot the day before. And to be able to repeat this every day for a week meant that I had heaps of opportunities to try out new things without caring too much if they worked or not. Every night I set myself new challenges for the next day, so in the end I was working far more intuitively than consciously. And that's exactly the way it aught to be.

Having said that, in amongst these few decent images are thousands of total duds which none of you will ever see... but without them I never would've got these shots.
I read something somewhere recently (on luminous landscape I think?) from a person who had the opportunity to browse through some of Henri Cartier-Bresson's discarded shots, and he seemed very relieved to find out that Henri's dud shots were just as bad as those of us mere mortals (and there were plenty of them too). It appears that perhaps good photos don't require devine intervention, and that good photographers are human just like you and me!

And Christian, I'm not making any money out of this. It's partly related to my regular work so I was given some flexibility with regard to time to shoot it.. and certainly I got the access I needed to take these shots because of my regular job.. and I'm happy for the photos to help the athletes, teams, and Australian water polo in general... but none of this involves any money, which is kind of nice as there aren't many things in life which don't involve money. But having said that, it would be nice if somebody else was paying for my gear! :/

Uli, all these shots here were taken with the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0L. Its a bit long as a traditional portrait lens, but when you have some distance between yourself and the subject it is wonderful.
I'm not quite sure where I stand on the whole issue of using telephoto lenses for candid shots though, as it can be a bit voyeur-ish (and is a bit of a cop-out compared to taking wide-angle candids which force the photographer to engage in the scene). But there are definately times when it is more appropriate than others.
I also have some group portraits in my gallery for this event in the "Team shots" section that were taken with a Sigma 10-20mm wide-angle lens for quite a different perspective on things.

And as for the line running through #1... well I can see why you find it distracting.. But sorry, in this particular photo I like it! ..and I like the little splash of red above it too.. I did try cropping it out, but much prefer this version. Feel free to crop it out if it pleases you though.

ooo.. sorry.. this is another long post. I must be making up for not posting anything at all last week.

Yes, I was thinking that you would have had a hard (wet...) time at this event with a wide angle.
I think I like the lenght you used very much here, and there is still depth to the pictures, which would be my prime concern with too long a lense.

Some of the team shots in the gallery are really neat, too. I love #1 and #6 in the team shots (what an obvious choice:o but that's just the way I am .....).

Uli

Excellent. Again, a cut above, with 4 and 5 being in my outstanding category...and very interesting on the Cartier-Bresson aside: so many spot-on "decisive moments" here.
You raise that crux point about telephotos for candids: I remember tales of Bresson scooting about furtively with Leica, trying gamely not to affect the situation he was trying to capture/observe yet almost tripping people up whilst getting in there...and it is a truism that there is an easy voyeurism about teles that arguably removes a sense of intimacy and relationship with the subject.
On the other hand, I suppose it's equally true that the very act of observation changes the dynamic of what one is observing...and thus a tele is maybe least likely to change the action by its presence(unless it's shoved up their snouts!). The quality of your shots I reckon stands far above any such debate.
I wonder if the following is true: it could be said that your colour photos here arguably fit into the "sports" category before the "candid" one, yet the mono ones into "art" or candid.... I'm thinking that the sports genre is typified by high quality fast tele colour shots(in fact as soon as I saw your first such colour shot I thought of Patrick Eggar, the cricket photographer...yet I thought "Magnum" when I saw the mono).
Just thinking aloud really; end of all, I confess to being inspired by your selection.
Do you know much of Sebastiao Selgado's stuff, by the way?

I don't know what to add that hasn't already been said Adrian. These are all simply fantastic. #2 still being my most favorite of the lot.

wow.. Thanks again guys.

Uli, I really enjoyed getting in there with the wide-angle. Apart from it being a nice break from the thousands of telephoto shots I was taking, it was fun to have to get close enough to intereact with some of the teams. I got the occassional puzzled look with some of the shots/angles I tried, but they were all quite relaxed and some people would play up for the camera. I never got a dirty look or negative comment. A few smiles and a bit of politeness goes a long way I think.

Zig, there are some very interesting points you make in your comments.
You're right that the whole tele vs wide argument for candids is not as clear cut as it might seem, and really it has nothing to do with focal length and everything to do with the photographer's ethics.
Its also interesting that you noted a distinction between my colour and b/w shots... I use b/w as a device quite often these days, but I used it a bit differently for this particular assignment. It was quite a deliberate ploy here to try to influence how the viewer looked at the images. Many of the b/w images were converted from colour to monochrome simply so the viewer wouldn't treat them as an everyday sports photo. They tend to be the photos that rely more on subtleties rather than jumping out and grabbing the viewer. I wanted the viewer to ask themselves "why is this b/w instead of colour?" and by doing so hoped they might look a bit closer and start to pick up the little things I wanted them to see. Of course there are other images that I just think look better in b/w.. and others that clearly looked better in colour... and many shots that I haven't posted here... But I hope you get the idea.

and.. umm.. I hadn't heard of Sebastiao Salgado (or Patrick Eager?) until you mentioned their names, but I'm googling as we speak!

And Peto, thanks.