Football from another angle + dramatic team shot

I've mentioned before about shooting football from a low angle but what if you're working with ugly backgrounds? That low angle will only exaggerate them. What you can do instead is get up high and shoot the action from above to use the grass as a background.

The worst football pitch around here for backgrounds is Invergordon. Shoot from one side/end of the pitch and you've got a background of houses, industrial buildings or fairground vehicles that seem to be permanently there. Shoot from the other side/end and you're shooting into the sun. But the Ross Sutherland rugby club pitch is right next door, complete with a large pavilion, and conveniently the pavilion has a flight of steps leading up to the second floor:

Okay so it isn't much but it's better than nothing. The papers don't pay enough to hire a cherry picker for the afternoon. Here's a view of the pitch from the top of the steps. You can see that you really want to be a lot higher than this but any height advantage is better than being at ground level.

Here's an example shot taken from the top of the steps:

Another new thing that I tried today was putting a bit of drama into a team photo. I'm second-guessing the papers here because they keep running the same formulaic team photos every year and I think the time is right to push things a little. I didn't get too adventurous with this one but it certainly has more impact than the usual line-up photos. Also my first time using a voice-activated light stand and thanks to the kind volunteer who did a perfect job.