Sport Pictures

The wheels of opportunity and circumstance were turning in my favor this last Sunday. My first ever confirmed press pass was for a Beach Volleyball competition in Lausanne, Switzerland around 2005, but alas the fact I only found out about this two days before the tournament, I was actually unable to fund the flight to get out to Switzerland on that occasion.

Now in the UK Beach Volleyball tournament only ever happen on the South Coast in places like Brighton and when you live in Manchester its far enough away to think twice about the journey. So it was to my great surprise that I found out that there was going to be a tournament in Blackpool of all places in early September.

Confirmation that I’d be able to shoot for womensportreport.com only really happened on the Saturday evening prior to the final day of finals.

So I packed up all my gear and made sure that the correct lenses would be on the two D200s as I’d already worked out that changing lenses on sand was not really an option. So I jumped in my little smart car and made the 55 mile journey to Blackpool.

The day started brilliantly with lovely bright sunlight through hazy broken clouds. Regardless of the fact the clouds became thicker during the day and turned into a rather dull day by the end of the day, but for a week when the weather has been really poor for a total week it was great that the good weather came out at a weekend for a change. Women Sport Report used a few of the pictures which I was able to wire straight from the media tent on the afternoon. There report can be found here.

This picture is the one of the ’standard’ shots from Beach Volleyball that has intrigued me since I started photographing sports all that time ago.

Exhausted, originally uploaded by sportpictures.

When you have ran as far as these people you would not blame them for taking a few moments rest at the end.