Roller Derby at Earl's Court
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to pop along to a Roller Derby bout in Earl’s Court. Getting down there was uneventful enough except for trying to find the hall itself. Little did I realise that besides Earl’s Court 1 and Earl’s Court 2 there lies the lesser known Brompton Hall. However, once I pointed in the right direction by a member of staff everything else was simplicity and on arrival Erin, the London Roller Girls (LRG) photographer liaison, talked me through the details of the match such as where I could stand.
Inside there was quite a crowd gathering, getting the best spots and organising refreshments. I did the same and located one of the marked spots on the 1st corner near the start line as a place to begin. Initially there seemed to be plenty of light but it soon became apparent that the nasty fluorescent wasn’t going to be enough with the action so I cranked up the camera to 1600 and stuck on the 50mm f1.8.
Looking around there were a couple of other photogs, who seemed to be part of the LRG, judging from their nicknamed t-shirts and the fact one of them had “official photographer” stenciled on the back. They also had nice big lenses on the front of their kit and one had an interesting shoulder/chest rig to hold his body. I wondered if he was filming the action in HD. Considering the lighting, what the other guys were likely to be shooting and that I didn’t want to start blasting flash on this first trip I thought I’d travel in a different direction. Therefore I decided to head down a narrative track and portray something of the atmosphere, the competitors and the audience and with that in mind I set about looking for shots to tell the story. With something like that it’s easy to load the piece with images but as I didn’t want to bore my audience before the halfway point I’ve tried to present just enough shots to be informative and yet still brief.
I hope you like them.
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