A few weeks ago, I was approached by AFC Rushden and Diamonds with regards to a possible sponsorship deal. This local club is growing fast and it now needs some additional funds to invest in more equipment and to enable it to grow and bring football to young boys and girls from Rushden and the surrounding area.
Because I continue to run M4Photo as a not for profit entity, I don’t have profits to share in this manner. However, supporting local clubs is ‘exactly’ what M4Photo is all about and I’m really pleased to begin supporting AFC Rusdhen and Diamonds.
My first photographic opportunity was to cover their Fun Day this weekend. Held over at Bozeat, the event was within my catchment area and because the games would all be played in house – different age groups within the club playing each other, there was no concern about gaining permission from visiting clubs.
So early Saturday, I found myself parking up in Bozeat and making my way up to the playing field. I thought that I would only be photographing one small group, but the club is a lot bigger than I had thought and the coaches are bring football to a very large number of local kids.
Very quickly I found myself checking my anticipated camera settings whilst the players warmed up. This would be my first outing shooting football, so I knew that I’d be on another steep learning curve. It’s not just the camera settings, but more about the action, how best to capture it and mostly how to anticipate it. All in all, I think that I did OK, but a little more practice will result in better action shots, better timing and a little more use of depth of field to make the players really stand out. For today, it was a case of playing safe.
Thankfully the weather held fine and I got to work capturing some images from an initial couple of games. It was then over to the awards table to capture some of the many awards being given out to the kids. There is some real talent in the club and many of the lads wore their medals and held their trophies with pride and huge smiles.
All in all I had a great morning with the players and coaches and I hope that I will have caught some good photographs for the players and parents. As always, a percentage of every .jpg file and print sold will be donated to the club and, in some small way, I hope that the cash raised will help the club to grow and bring football to more and more of our local community.
So, for those of you who are associated with the club and interested in seeing the images, the gallery is now available from www.m4photo.co.uk. As usual, there is a link from the Home Page and this will prompt you for a username and password which is available from Gary at the club – please don’t email or ask me for the login details because my Child Protection Policy does not permit me to share the details and I’m very strict on only giving the login details to club officials that I am authorized to give them to and who I have personally met.
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