It's a Millwall Movember

Movember
So a few of the boys were taking part in Movember which is about raising money and awareness for charity -  prostate cancer.  This is all about ‘bringing the moustache back and having some fun for a serious cause’.
Cue Lily with the camera….

Got a few of the boys together for a photo-shoot, but unfortunately due to transport problems not everyone could make it or reschedule. So we were not able to do group shots and execute some of the original ideas I had. I was hoping the boys would dress up in their old ‘tour’ gear (i.e. can-can girl, monk, pirate, knight, cowboy etc) I was then going create a surreal HDR type group shot where they are getting ready in the changing rooms …but nah, I did individual shots instead as we didn’t have enough time for ‘dressing up’. All good though as a few people bought their aviators and cowboy hats along!

I took some shots at the clubhouse of Larry and Andrew and then I went back to the paddock just after rugby training to capture whoever was still left.  I was pleasantly surprised with the results of the shots in the club house.  There are halogen spot lights in the clubhouse ceiling and by experimenting with the ISO, aperture and positioning people directly under the light we managed to get a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ look!!  For the guys at the paddock - this was more tricky to do and we had to make the most of the floodlights.  So I had taken the shot so that the floodlight was coming in from the left.

Here are the ‘better’ shots (different montages were created and I can’t remember why!)

All good fun and look forward to a Millwall Movember again this year!!

Big thanks to Andrew, Larry, Olly, Luke, John and Shaf for taking part and being such fantastic models!! Thanks to Olly for arranging it all!

Millwall Calendar

Better Late than Never!
So…yeah there was no way I had time to do a 2010 Millwall Calendar in time before Christmas 2009 and it was late November already.   However, I did manage to do a Movember photo-shoot for the boys so I could include that.  For the rest of the months I decided to use my old photos.

So I ordered about 20 (or was it 40? I can’t remember) and they arrived late January 2010 (Oops!).

This time I used vista print who were surprisingly good (although beware you will be bombarded with email offers everyday)  I did try Snapfish and I was really disappointed with the quality of the calendars as I have ordered photo prints from them before and they were of excellent quality - so don’t know why they decided to skimp on the calendars.

Even though the calendars were late, they went down a storm!  All sold! done (and stupid me sold them at cost price! Well at least I know they will sell well next time).

I used the Millwall montage photo I had created for the greeting cards for the front cover.  The rest were various shots I had taken over during the previous season.

Millwall Greeting Cards

Cards you like
Ok so I can’t remember how this all started,  but it was back in late November 2009, an email conversation between the Millwall Chairman, Treasurer, Social Secretary and Venus Manager and I got copied in later and was along the lines of…”wouldn’t it be great if we could send some Christmas cards to our sponsors…the girls seem to be a bit more creative, and it would be good to get some photos in there” (or something like that - the email thread was quite long) So to cut a long story short I ended up providing 3 photo based cards. Here are the designs….

Millwall on black

Millwall on white

Millwall Montage

Print Options
Time was tight as it was already late November and to find a suitable printers/supplier was difficult.  I ended up using Moo as I had used them before for my business cards and they link to Flickr really easily.  Look out for seasonal discounts too as well as the discounts based on larger order volumes.  They were really good and delivered before stated date (1 to 3 business days).
The process is quite simple.  You upload your chosen photo, and you can choose to add text inside and on the back.  We opted for a logo and Millwall website on the back. We decided not to include ‘Merry Christmas’ or any other message as we would be stuffed if we could not order them in time before Xmas

Well they all liked the result, and asked ‘Can you do Calendars also?’…..grrrrrrr like I said, it is late November

Millwall Rugby

Not just for the boys!
Yes you read that right, I play rugby. Well, when I mean play, I’ve played a couple of games so far.  The ladies team is called Venus and they are part of the Millwall Rugby Football Club.  I actually started out playing touch rugby on Sundays about 2 years ago. Touch rugby basically means no tackling/less likely to get hurt (in theory).  The Venus team were wanting to increase numbers and build up the recruiting momentum, so I said I would come along to training not thinking I’d actually have to play!  I did have to play and I was fly-half the first time and inside centre/winger next time round! I had no idea what I was doing - but hey it was actually really fun. Although I hurt allot after and actually now I’m off with an ankle injury.  When rugby season ends, allot of the members play the touch tournaments which is what I enjoy the most.  The Sunday crew entered a team for the first time last year and won the Summer league which was pretty cool! (Go Mudshooters!!)

Sports Photography
But anywho…I thought…why not mix my photography with the rugby?!! No - not taking pictures whilst playing rugby, silly!  Taking pictures of our lovely rugby boys!
I took my camera along to training one night (Back in March 2009) and it was quite cold and bloody dark.  The coach thought it a bit odd that I was dressed for training and that I had a camera in my hand. So I did no training and took loads of pictures. Even though we had floodlights, I did not get to grips with my camera settings then and came up with this….oops!.  (This was still with the Canon 450D by the way)

Ah well, live and learn.  I did take some ‘better’ ones in the end (see here) and that’s when it was suggested that I should tag along to one of the games to take some action shots.

Milwall versus Writtle March 2009
So off I trek with the 3rd team to watch them play Writtle. Quite nervous as I had actually bought a new lens for this! Canon 55-250mm f4.5.6IS the more ‘affordable’ zoom lens…..and what a great day I had, but also realised that sports photography is bloody difficult and is more about quantity of shots rather than taking the time to set up the shot.  So after I finally figured this out, I had to find a suitable setting (and yes sorry I used the sport mode on the camera) - but that was a good clue as to what sort of shutter speed/aperture I needed to aim for.

You will also see in the shots that some of them look a bit yellow. That was my fault - I had set the tone* to a more greeny yellowly feel trying to be clever.  I will never touch that setting again!  Afterwards, I used picnic, a photo editing tool to add the black bars on the top and bottom to give it a ‘movie’ feel.  I also added a vignette style which darkens the outside of the picture of which looking at again - I might have gone a bit OTT on this!

I had learnt a new thing…panning shots (which I kind of did by accident!).  This is basically where you move your camera along with the moving subject and take the shot, the subject will be in focus, whilst the background is blurred, or has a feel of speed.

Nice work if you can get it
Well the rugby boys were pleased with the photos I had taken and asked me to turn up to other games too
Millwall V Bancroft (2009)
Millwall v Campion (2009)
Millwall v Gravesend (2009)
Millwall v Thames (final 2009)