Another day, another press conference in the media tent in Lugano. It really is like some kind of mental test to see how many times you can shoot the same person with the same backdrop in the same tent saying the same thing to the same people and still try to think up something different. When you’re working in a press environment, it’s both a challenge to find that extra something that makes a decent shot and then, equally importantly, to shoot it without drawing everyone’s attention to it so that they copy your idea. Two weeks into shooting these press conferences and most photographers spend the time scouring their immediate environment for any new ideas and/or watching out for others who have a decent idea. I’ve always done my very best to think of my own ideas when I think there is more than one angle and in those times when someone else’s idea is just too good, I’ll ask the photographer who thought of it if I can do something similar. I’m sure it fades with time but it still bugs me if I put in the thought and effort to do something different then find a queue of people behind me, doing all but asking me my settings.

When I’m back on home turf and I’m working with friends and colleagues from other papers and agencies, this isn’t a problem as it’s understood that it’s a bit off to just duplicate someone else’s shot but while I’m over here, there isn’t the luxury of that code. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I’m an eternal fountain of ideas which is a shame as life would be soooo good as these “Groundhog Day” press conferences would be a breeze..

After following the Swedish team through rain and drizzle at tedious press conferences and wet training sessions on pretty much a daily basis, today I bumped into five of the players in Lugano town centre. They were all sat on a wall, in their regular clothes and, for the first time, I actually saw a picture involving them that would have been something out of the ordinary. I wandered over, put on my most friendly and approachable face and asked if it was ok to get one quick photo. “No”, was the blank and abrupt response. Thanks. I’ll savour standing in the rain to shoot your practice sessions even more now, knowing how friendly some of you chaps are. *meditates into internal happy place*

Up to that point, I had a vague connection with Sweden to do well in the tournament but I can’t say that I’m that enamoured any more. I guess my patience is wearing thin as my tour of duty slowly reaches its end. However, with Dutch fans such as the one below, how can I help but follow them now? Come on, how many of YOU guys has a folding t-shirt with a flap on that reveals the inside of a lion’s mouth? I thought not..

What better way to start the shooting of my penultimate game than with a bunch of cigar-chewing blokes in drag and a French man showing off his cock. Marvellous..

At least this time, not only were there goals scored (LOTS of goals, thanks to a formidable show from the Dutch team..) but I was also in a new position in the stands looking down on the action. Not being a natural sports photographer, it’s certainly easier to shoot from up there as you can follow the game more and see how things are playing out a little more clearly.

It saves you from being in the crush of things but I have to admit that, compared to the pictures on ground level, the football shots all seemed a little detached. Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to seeing everything and being able to shoot comparatively wide (a 200mm for wide goal mouth stuff and a 400mm for mid-field action).

However, with only one more game and a handful of training sessions to go, I can almost smell the smog of London again. Huzzah! All this Alpine fresh air can kill a man, I tells ya.. Look what it did to Arsene and he’s only 22..

So the miles rack up and the EUROs plod on. After last night’s frantic battle to see who could be less inspiring to shoot between France and Romania in Zurich, I’m making my way back down to Lugano to shoot fans watching tonight’s match at an outdoor arena. As the thunder clouds rumble outside my hotel room, I’m not overly confident.

Anyhow, following Mute’s comment on another post that the was interested in the “behind-the-scenes” side of the job, I thought I’d share how the system works when shooting sport for an international agency. The reason I stress the “international agency” part is not a lame attempt at bigging my job up but more to show the difference in speed that is necessary when thinking for a global market. As someone once told me, the deadline for print is always minutes away SOMEWHERE in the world so it’s always worth getting your shots out fast..

Having previously only shot football in the UK where it’s just a case of wandering up a few hours early and shooting the match, the organisation involved in international championships such as these are a totally different thing.

Firstly, the whole area around the stadium is closed to traffic hours before the match begins so pre-allocated parking/transport passes are issued and you’re generally expected to report to the venue around 4 hours before the match starts. On arrival, I have to wear one of the branded bibs and my personal pitch pass that displays my allocated position. In regular matches, it’s just a case of arriving early and putting a monopod down to mark your spot but here, my seat will be waiting for me along with a power socket and a LAN cable.

First job is to shoot the fans and any interesting aspect to the event that makes it different. New venue? Unexpected team playing? Die-hard fans in full team colours? This should be considered from the moment you get near the stadium so I always make sure I have a camera ready to shoot any fans on interest who are loitering with intent to support on the streets outside.

When it comes to editing, captioning and sending the pictures, this is where the main difference appears; instead of performing the tricky skill of balancing a 400mm lens on a monopod, a 200mm around my neck and a computer on my lap as I frantically choose, crop, edit, caption and send the images back to the picture desk, I now have to shoot small bursts of maybe 2 minutes of action, scroll the images on the back of the camera, lock two or three that I like and delete ALL the rest. Then the card is slotted into my reader where the images are automatically ripped, identified and sent straight to Paris where someone else will choose, edit, caption and release the images that they want. Yikes. This goes against everything that the vast majority of people reading this will know or be used to (including me) The feeling of having to decide there and then what pictures work from a 2″ screen before sending the images off into the ether, hoping that someone a few hundred miles away has “seen” the same thing in the image that you have is a hard one to get used to.

The other new development for me is using remote cameras behind the goal. Anyone who watches football may have seen all the cameras on the floor behind the net but not realised that they are triggered by either a foot switch that you fire whenever you think there may be a goal or a transmitter from another camera that simultaneously fires the goal camera whenever you take a picture. This results in some unique style of tap-dancing whenever there’s any action near your goal as you quickly change from your long lens camera to your shorter range, swing the long lens to your side so you aren’t blocking other photographers and watch for the chance to press your foot switch. Craziness. Thankfully, here at EURO2008, all of the images from the camera behind the net are also transmitted directly to Paris without having to take the card out so someone else has to wade through a card full of shots of sky with no action to find one worthwhile..

After the match, there’s a quick scan of the terraces near you for celebrating/sobbing fan reaction pictures then pack it all up and begin the long walk back to the car..

Couldn’t have put it better myself..

Kilometres! The measurement of choice for the MTV generation! Gasp as the units fly past! Laugh as the satnav talks in metres for once rather than “yards”! (I mean, WHO knows how far a yard is?) Feel all tough like Kris Kristofferson in “Convoy” as what was only a quite short journey feels like a marathon session as the odometer goes into four figures!

Yes it’s been another day of travel as I headed back down the length of Switzerland to Lugano to shoot a press conference with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the star of Swedish football (apparently). I only figured this out after hearing bursts of shutters going during the training session and judging who was near a ball whenever the bursts went off. I’m dead technical, me.. *shakes head*

Anyhow, as the conference was over before I knew it, it gave me the chance to wander around Lugano for the first time so after a quick look in the centre and finding it mainly closed (Sundays, eh?) I headed up to the top of Mount Bre and the fantastic little village of Bre. Tiny cobbled streets are broken up with random pieces of art ranging from sculpture to stained glass to carvings. A really beautiful place with a totally unique feel.

Tomorrow sees the second of my four games to shoot with the edge-of-your-seat action of France v Romania BACK up in Zurich. How am I going to remain sane for another ten days, people? I’m not sure even the mighty power of kilometres will help this time..

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..

Anyone who knows me well will be aware of my huge “love” of football *cough* so being asked to head out to Europe for 15 days to cover the UEFA EURO 2008 event had given me sleepless nights for some time. A wonderfully stressful combination of visiting new areas, covering a sport I don’t really follow and trying to understand how to use a whole new distribution system for my images even though what instructions I’ve managed to get are mainly in French was really proving quite challenging. A period of being so far out of my comfort zone that I actually need breathing apparatus is always a good thing to some extent but these two weeks ahead are going to potentially prove to be quite a logistical, physical and mental test.

After a smooth flight, my arrival in Lugano went smoothly aside from trying to enter a roundabout in the wrong direction. Eejits drive on the wrong side out here! Someone should say something..

Not having my accreditation yet results in me being essentially useless so my first evening was spent wandering around my local area, finding out where the Swedish team is based and where they train. I’ve been given the task of following their training and press conferences but shooting the Swiss v Czech, France v Romania, France v Netherlands and France v Italy matches.

My first full day arrived and I managed to blag my way into the Swedish training session where the fun begins. Picture the scene; you don’t follow football, you particularly don’t follow the Swedish National team, they all run around on a field with no numbers or names on while you take their pictures, then you have to caption the shots up with names. Erm.. Help? The only one I’d even vaguely recognise is Freddie Ljungberg and as he wasn’t running around in his Calvin Kleins (thank Christ) even he was proving difficult..

Thankfully, the Swedish press office must be used to football-ignorant types like me and helpfully provided a pretty good crib sheet so the training edit went reasonably smoothly.

The next job was to collect my pass. Now, logistics being someone else’s idea of a good chuckle resulted in my accreditation point being literally at the other end of the country so I jumped in my car and headed up to Zurich. Having already been pre-warned about the somewhat strict nature of Swiss driving rules (including a note that warned that even if there are no Police around, it’s common for members of the public to ring the cops to report traffic violations!), I duly rumbled up the motorways at a reasonable approximation to the speed limits. Despite my best efforts, I rolled into town after a three hour journey at dead on 9 minutes past 6, precisely 9 minutes after the accreditation centre closed. Arse. A quick call finds that the centre in Basel is open a little longer so I head even further away from my base and arrive an hour later at the centre. Pass collected, sandwich bought and legs slapped back into life, I began the journey back through the pouring rain..

A wonderful eight hours sitting in the car today with no breaks. Eight hours. I hurt. The best thing is that tomorrow, I move up to Basel anyway to shoot the opening match. Logistics, eh?