A chance outing on a Sunday afternoon

Having seen a Facebook post about the start of the American Football season in the UK and that Telford now had a new team, Shropshire Revolution, and their their first home game of the year about 10 mins drive from the village the following afternoon.  That started a stream of thought as the window for Close Encounters was open and my other ideas weren’t really coming together.

So kit and chair in hand I set off to watch and photo an afternoon of crashing and clashing well padded humans.

Thought this one might be a bit cheeky for the FM 😉

Not really done much sports photography so it was a learning opportunity as well.  The chair was soon abandoned in favour of wandering up and down the sideline – or at least just behind the keep spectators out rope.

Sometimes they start out spread out and you can actually see who has the ball.

Sometimes its definitely spot the ball whilst the rest just go at each other!

He definitely has the ball!

As you can see from these shots there is a lot of background distraction and you have to get in really close to avoid these.  After this play there was a bit of a conversion between the senior referee, the players and their coaches!

So this is the original version of the entry, which as you can see has a lot in the background – like the grey floodlight pole with the speakers on – which distracts from “close encounters” including the colours of the team’s kit which is why I converted the file to BW and then applied an IR filter.

Although the missing foot is very annoying as I nearly did a very narrow letterbox crop to really focus in on the body contacts.

Well that’s how I got to the entry and what I would change now.

Will definitely go back to have another go, and this time hopefully my local team won’t get thrashed by the opposition!