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Starting 2011 with a bang. Kicking ass and taking names, I headed to Amsterdam with the as ever friendly, funny, all round nice guy and super talented photographer Glen Burrows as well as an excellent art directer turned accent impressionist Chris. Check out Glens blog at http://glenburrows.posterous.com/ and thanks to him for useage of some his images in the gallery below.
The job was to photograph 4 national dutch hockey players (the hockey equivalent of the Spanish football team). We kindly had a Volvo XC70 on loan to us from Volvo and squeezed a truck load of kit into the car, providing us with all the kit we could be prepared for the unprepared with. After heading off early on Wednesday morning and travelling via the channel tunnel, France and Belgium, we finally reached Amsterdam in the early evening to prepare for the shoot early the next morning. Fortunately we had time for a beer and education in Dutch food too! Although apparently lentils aren’t fungus harvested from the troughs of pigs feet as my colleagues told me when lentils turned up on my plate that evening with me clueless as to what on earth they were. Thanks guys… I ate them anyway.
Come the photoshoot, we were up and at the hockey stadium nice and early. The place was pitch black but 15 minutes later we had the pitch floodlights fired up as we set up the photography gear and tested various set ups before deciding on a schedule and series of shots to get done. Rain was relentless from morning all the way through to the end so my recent purchase of an umbrella was handy (see below)… as was bringing plastic carrier bags to cover the equipment before it went BOOM. Or something to that effect. I didnt want to find out.
Assistants Tip: Be prepared for rain, particularly in winter naturally but all year you should have some preparation too. Superclamps and big golf umbrellas are the best solution but carrier bags with little holes in can work great for covering the heads without cutting off the fans and overheating them as is it useful to carry any umbrella you can fit in your kit anyway.
The shoot went great. We were working with 3 gorgeous dutch women, I possibly made too much of a point as to how gorgeous they were but thats not my fault. They were fit. And one guy, who is the Beckham of hockey, renowned for a shot type he has finessed to mastered. Before I knew it we were headed back and it was a great way to start the year.
