So very tired - Netherlands vs Cameroon

So I've just finished the Netherlands v Cameroon game and I am officially dead on my feet. After the excitement of the England game last night I fought to get to sleep only to be rudely awakened at 6.30am this morning to start the 8hr drive back to Cape Town in time to get to the match.

As Holland were already through and Cameroon already out the game was a bit of a dead rubber so I have to admit to being less than enthusiastic about working it. As soon as we walked into the ground though the atmosphere inside was amazing. The Dutch and the Cameroon fans were here to party and the carnival feel to the ground was something else.

The game itself wasn't particularly great but seeing the sea of fans in Orange dancing and blowing their bloody Vuvuzelas made it a pretty memorable night.

So now I'm off home to bed as I have to get up tomorrow morning and drive the 8hrs back to Port Elizabeth for the first of the 2nd round games.

The great escape - England vs Slovenia

Just a very quick blog tonight as have to get on the road for the mammoth drive back to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth for the Netherlands game tomorrow night.

All I can say is job done, with a relatively confident performance from England. Has to be said I was a bit sweaty in the closing minutes but England defended well and certainly deserved the win.

The one downside of England qualifying second is that I now have to set off on Friday to drive from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth for Uruguay v Korea then to Bloemfontain for England v (probably Germany) and then back to Cape Town for the last 2nd round game, a journey of 2400km in 3 days! Nice.

*Thanks to Shaun and Mark for the company, the driving and the Brandy*

Anyway here's a few pics from tonights game.

The Ronaldo Show - Portugal vs Korea DPR

I suppose the only thing to say about tonight is.... 7-0. That scoreline says it all really. What started out as a a fairly tepid game with a backdrop of Biblical rainfall turned into one of the most impressive displays of the World Cup so far.

Anyway I won't bore you too much with the detail but suffice to say I've got kit hanging all over the flat trying to dry, trench foot from wearing stupid shoes and a big smile from having seen a classic World Cup demolition.

Oh and seeing the "Democratic" Peoples Republic of Korea (don't call them North Korea or else!!) was a real pleasure, if not for their footballing skills. I just hope the whole team isn't sentenced to a life time of hard labour the minute they get back home.

Flying without wings.. but with rotors

Today was a really great day in Cape Town. Not only was it 21C with not a cloud in the sky but my only job was to wander round soak up the sights and sounds and try and capture something of the spirit of this World Cup.

As I did when England came to town I headed down to the fan zone on the waterfront to see if I could find some Portuguese or (unlikely I know) North Korean fans. Disappointingly they just didn't seem to be out in force or if they were there they weren't wearing their colours the day before the game. The locals more than made up for it as a great portion of them seem to have given up on Bafana Bafana and have decided to support another nation. As such there was South Africans decked out in the replica shirts of virtually every nation in the competition. Unsurprisingly there was loads of Rooney shirts on show, the lad from Croxteth done good eh!

Having mooched about in the sunshine for a couple of hours I headed off to do the really exciting bit of the day. I was booked onto a helicopter to try and get some aerial shots of Green Point stadium with Table Mountain in the background. Suffice to say it was a bloody awesome experience and reinforced my opinion that Cape Town really is the most beautiful city I've ever set eyes on. Flying out over False Bay and Fish Hoek as the sun went down was bloody marvelous.

Tomorrow is an early start for Portugal v North Korea, a game I've really been looking forward to, if only to see the fake North Korean fans chanting for cash!

England vs Algeria - Clash of the minnows

I don't really know where to start with last nights game. Obviously my first World Cup game was a great personal moment but what followed definitely took the shine off it.

Having spent the day shooting England fans around Cape Town I arrived at Green Point Stadium 4 hours before kick off in what I thought was plenty of time. Wrong. I picked up my bib and pitch pass and was asked to choose a position from a map of the stadium. Choosing was surprisingly easy as of several hundred there was only two positions left. Fortunately they were both pretty good or I would have been forced to throw a major tantrum.

The press facilities at Green Point are pretty good and from speaking to guys who have been out in SA from the start they seem a lot more organised than the Northern stadia. The one downside being that Sepp Blatter is no Jamie Oliver and the FIFA food was pretty bloody awful. Watching Graham Taylor and Allie McCoist pick their way through the dry lifeless Lasagna was certainly more entertaining than watching them on TV.

Out on the pitch the atmosphere was pretty incredible. The Vuvuzelas I had been warned would be deafening at pitch level were pretty subdued which gave the England and Algerian fans the opportunity to ramp up the tension in the traditional way. It really reminded me of a European away leg which is no bad thing.

You can tell the following pic was taken before kick off as I'm still smiling!




I won't go into too much detail of the game itself except to say that it was a truly awful 90 mins that I really hoped I'd never see from England.

As a photographer the story of last night was Wayne Rooney on two fronts. Firstly his pretty awful performance and the body language that showed his frustration with it and secondly his outburst at the end of the game. Scanning the papers online today it was pretty much all that was used excepting the obvious pictures of the Princess gurning their way through the game.








So it's North Korea vs Portugal next and hopefully I'll get to see some real World Cup worthy football.

It's OK you can start now, I'm here!

Let me start with an apology, no not for England's performance last night I honestly had nothing to do with that, but for not updating this blog since arriving here in Cape Town. I've only just got online in my little apartment and prior to that I was a using UK 3G card at 1 Meeellion Dollars per MB.

So the journey over from the UK went about aswell as it could have done with Virgin Atlantic kindly turning a blind eye to my 23kg of excess baggage (still don't know how I wangled that) and giving me a great seat with extra legroom. Being 6'5" is prefect for reaching top shelf magazines (apparently) and changing lightbulbs but it sucks when you have to fold yourself into an airline seat and sit for 11 hours in a position normally reserved for Guantanamo detainees.

Arriving in Cape Town (+18C), after a connection in Johannesburg (-5C) I was blown away by just how stunning the setting is for the city. Surrounded by mountains on one side and the ocean on the other it is one of the most scenic cities I have ever seen, including Birmingham!

Moving on a day I got my accreditation sorted and headed into the centre of town to try find some England fans. Not that I had to try very hard as they pretty much covered every square inch of downtown Cape Town. Apparently there were 30,000 England fans in the city yesterday but when Germany got beaten it sounded like twice as many. I found a good few interesting people on my travels, here's a few of them.






Now as for last nights game well I think that needs a post all of it's own so I'll finish now while I build up the strength to write about one of the worst 90mins of football I have ever seen, and I've been to Cardiff City!

Packing, packing and more packing

A couple of weeks ago before I went on holiday I offered £100 on Twitter to anyone who would come round and pack for me, well I reckon I'm ready to up that offer and provide a blank cheque to anyone stupid enough... I mean kind enough to pack my stuff for a month in South Africa. I know it seems churlish to complain but I really hate packing!!

I'm lucky enough to have traveled a fair bit for my job and packing camera gear is a bit of a minefield. To illustrate the problem here's a quick pic of some of the equipment I'm taking to Cape Town with me:



As a rule when we fly, sports photographers will try to take at least the minimum they need to do the job with them as hand luggage. Normally this means the long lens, 70-200mm, at least one body, laptop and connectivity. As Virgin only allows 6kg of hand luggage and the 400mm 2.8 weighs in at 5kg on it's own it looks like I'll have to chuck that rule in the bin and hope the baggage handlers do their job with the skill and gentle touch that they are renowned for. Hmmm.

If anyone is interested in what I'll be taking with me here is a very dull list:

3 x Nikon D3's
Nikon 400mm 2.8
Nikon 70-200mm 2.8
Nikon 24-70mm 2.8
Nikon 17-35mm 2.8
Apple MacBookPro 13"
4 x Pocket Wizard Multimax
Nikon SB900
Nikon SB800
Think Tank Airport International
Peli Case 1610
Monopod, mini tripod (for remote)
2 x Card Readers
10 4gb CF Cards
Walk Stool
A whole mess of leads, chargers and adapters
2 x Giant Vuvuzela's

As with all posts in this blog feel free to ask any questions you might have about any aspect of the job, the World Cup or anything else you can think of and I'll do my best to get the correct answer from Wikipedia!