What a day I've just had! Went well though…

I had to be in Dingwall at 5pm to do a photo of a group of kids who are learning to play cricket, but I also wanted to do the Invergordon vs Balintore football match which kicked off at 2:30pm.

Not too difficult you might think, but remember that I don't drive and taxis were going to be prohibitively expensive, so it was bus all the way! That wasn't the most difficult aspect of the day though…

I was expecting 100+ kids in the cricket group and for a group of that size in a big sports hall I wanted to use the 1Ds, which means shooting at ISO 200 max to keep the noise down, otherwise you lose the benefit of the resolution. Shooting at that ISO meant taking my studio strobes along so I had to pack everything into a suitcase and two bags and drag the whole lot around with me all day!

But it turned out that all the effort wasn't necessary. When I got to the cricket group there were only about 60 of them, and by the time they were set-up for the group shot I still wasn't happy with the lighting so I just went ahead and did the shot with the good old 1D at ISO 800 with a single flash. Worked a treat.

There's another mad rush next Saturday, going from an event that I can't mention yet to the Balintore vs Thurso game. Thankfully I won't need to take a suitcase for that job though!

Okay so here are today's pictures, starting with the football.

Tough competition for action shots this week with Andrew and Callum both there, so who knows what the papers will use? Andrew was away even earlier than I was but I expect Callum was there for the whole game so if anything spectacular happened later on then he'll have it.

Invergordon vs Balintore

And here's the cricket group. Info from the press release: "Under the guidance of Adam Park-Elliott the Cricket Scotland Development Officer for the Highlands and Islands local coaches have been working with these boys and girls readying them for the coming season. Many will have the opportunity of playing in trials for the North of Scotland teams which will play in the summer festivals in Edinburgh."

Cricket Scotland group