Czech mate
My first of four matches arrived today and I was dumped squarely in the deep end of learning with remote goal-mouth cameras on pocket wizards and VPN-based remote editing software. If that means nothing to you, don’t worry, that’s the last time I’ll mention it. Suffice to say that the remotes didn’t work so I essentially spent 90 minutes pressing a useless button but thankfully the second thing worked and the editors saw my pictures so all is well.
Switzerland v Czech Republic certainly brought out the nationalist excitement but unfortunately for the Swiss, their early hopes came to nothing after a decidedly tedious game. It’s a fine line for a game of “soccer” (as the ILP readers among you may know it) to actually be interesting to me but at the very least, it needs goals. 1-0 does not a fun game make.
It really is a challenge to be inspired to write about what I’m experiencing at the moment. Boo to football.. The only news to buoy the day was hearing through a colleague that I got an honourable mention in the Press Photographers Year awards. Huzzah!
An interesting aside came over dinner with other AFP photographers when we discussed what we had eaten. One photographer mentioned that he couldn’t eat fillets of meat anymore, partly due to him spending time in Indonesia where it’s not that common and partly due to seeing too many burnt bodies in combat environments. Made me wonder how regular an occurrence it is for people who’ve seen charred corpses to suddenly become vegetarian.. In his words, it suddenly dawned on him that we were exactly the same thing and once cooked, we look identical. He’s not been a fan of red meat ever since..
After this conversation I was suitably embarrassed to find myself surrounded by people who could switch from French to English to German to Italian without any thought. Growing up in Europe really does leave you with a far more useful language-base to work from. The only thing that I could gather from the conversations were that a) none of the people present ordered a chocolate ice cream b) none of the people present were from Sheffield, North England or c) none of the people present mentioned greengrocers shops. I feel totally stupid and WILL open the teach-yourself French book I bought a while ago when I return to England..
Tomorrow sees me taking the long route BACK down the country again to Lugano. I’ve only been here a few days and tis will be the fourth time that I’ve driven the distance of this place. I have a strange feeling that, despite it’s beauty, I may dislike this country by the time these two weeks are over..
aw, L. What a day you had. Still got great shots out of it though… sign of a true professional
and yay for the Press Photographer mentions!!! (I spotted two, were there more?)
Yeah just those two. I was blown away by Dan’s winning portfolio. Really strong pictures, damn him!
Well done on ‘taking one for the team’ and doing an assignment that appears to pain you. If it’s half as dull as it looks on the tellybox, then you’re in for a long couple of weeks.
As for languages, I tried learning dutch once as I was working in the Netherlands a lot. Now I know why recreational drugs are so popular, as it’s the only way it makes sense.
yeah he did very well. x
Kirsten was replying to the previous mail, not congratulating me..
It is, indeed, a wonderfully entertaining experience if you get satisfaction from attending press conferences, driving a lot and shooting very dull games. As it happens, I don’t so am struggling a little!
Congrats on the mention, and I think it’s about time you learn a new language, rather than ‘Sheffieldess..’
Une glace chocolat, sil vous plait… Oh, how I chuckled at your comment.
Yay! Cheers, Sis! I thought of you when I put that in actually.
x