First Cricket Shots

Back in the 1980s I spent entire summers at the County Ground in Northampton watching cricket, and in 1986 I started taking a few photos - eventually leading to the hobby I have now. These are my first cricket photos, taken with my dad's compact camera - I didn't move on to action photos until I got my first SLR in 1987 and borrowed his 300mm lens. There are some big names, so not a bad start - legendary West Indies stars Clive Lloyd, Joel Garner and Viv Richards, as well as a certain Ian Botham. The Garner/Richards/Botham shots were taken at Northants' annual trip to play at Wellingborough School. In the Sunday League match, Botham (just back from a ban after he admitted smoking marijuana) hit 175no including 12 4's and 13 6's - remember that these were 40 over matches, and he only batted for 27 of them! OK, the ground was very small, but it was probably the most amazing innings I saw.  ...
Read More

Been a while…

Been a while since I posted - mainly explained because I haven't taken any photos... Anyway, I recently invested in a 10-stop ND filter - it only lets through 1/1000th of the light, so a 1/30sec exposure becomes 30secs, making it easy to get long exposures in broad daylight. I spent Monday morning wandering along the Grand Union Canal just outside Northampton. Took me ages to find it, as the roads bear no relation to what they were when I last went (probably about 25 years ago), and it's mainly a big set of distribution centres. It's one of the places I can genuinely look at and say "I can remember when all this was fields". A 15 second exposure 30 seconds - really annoyed by the smudge top-centre. I cleaned the sensor before the rugby on Sunday and still ended up with it. Really annoying. As the canal passed under the M1, there was an interesting juxtaposition of the old canal and the stark...
Read More

Getting all Historical

Thinking about published photos of mine, it reminded me of by far and away my most successful picture. This is legendary Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee being carried off the pitch in Northampton in 1988, after he'd slipped and knackered his ankle ligaments. Basically, I scooped the world on this one. I was the only person on the ground with a camera on a fairly dull day in a match against Leicestershire. I offered the photo to the resident journalist from the Chronicle and Echo, and they published it on the front page. It was also printed in Wisden and Cricketer magazines. I must have made all of £30-40 out of it. Mind you, to a student 22 years ago, that was a decent bit of cash! And it's in Lillee's autobiography "Menace". When the book came out, I just happened to see it in Borders and had a flick through. And blimey, there was one of my photos! I rang up the publishers and...
Read More