As many of you know, I LOVE football.  Everything about it excites me, be it adding new parts to your kit, learning new grooves or finally nailing a fill you’ve been working on for a while…  Erm.. Hang on.  That’s drumming.  Oh, FOOTBALL.  That’s the one I don’t like at all.

Pushing this from my mind, I had the pleasure of heading up to Sam Platt’s bar in Manchester to cover football fans as they watched a live broadcast of the Champion’s League final between Manchester United and Barcelona in Rome.

When you’re shooting this kind of thing, you have to constantly read the crowd’s “vibe” and react accordingly to how the game is going. When the local team is winning, then you can happily shoot away as the fans celebrate but if it turns, suddenly covert photography is the name of the game.  With Manchester 1-0 down by the half-time and goal #2 coming soon into the second half, the mood soon became more delicate as a few guys started to become slightly more “camera-shy” with stern words said to any photographer heading their way.

With the match over and Manchester United finishing in silver position, it was back to the hotel before heading to Manchester airport to catch the team as they returned home. It’s not often that I get to say this but I have to shout praises for the media team at terminal 2.  Not only did they send out a mail with a plan of the arrival area and how it was expected to happen, upon arrival they would do anything they could to make everyone happy.  A really great team to work with.

Talking of great things to work with, the same cannot be said for my Nikon 70-200 f2.8G lens.  I’ve heard a reasonable number of people moaning about it with some going as far as selling the new one and searching shops to buy one of the previous models but I’d always been happy enough.  Admittedly, the focus is a little slow on the uptake when comparing it to the 400mm f2.8 but once it’s locked on, it’s always done me proud.  Today was all different as the lens searched and failed to lock on constantly as the team walked towards me in arrivals.  Editing the shots afterwards, I had to delete at least half the shots from the card as they were so far out of focus.  Very poor indeed.  I’m certainly open to the suggestion that I may be missing some settings that can be tweaked to improve performance but on yesterday’s performance, I’m beginning to side with the grumblers.  If anyone does have any hints, please do get in touch!