Brazil Day 3 - Part 2
I'm writing this at 00:15 having finished the final edit of pics from tonights England v Italy game. Once done I'll turn in for the night and have a bit of a lie in tomorrow as my plane to Rio doesn't leave until 4:30pm. Spare a thought for Ben and Kieran from Back Page Images who are at this moment on the way to the airport to get a plane to Salvador to shoot Germany v Portugal. Their plane leaves at 01:30 and they fly to Sao Paulo (at least 4 hours) to then change for another flight to Salvador (probably another 2 hours) so no sleep for them. And Kieran woke up at 03:00 today to get to Manaus for the England game.Be careful what you wish for! Clearly there are others feeling the pressure too:
So, carrying on from where I left off. Being British, we queue for things. And we like people ot know we queue, and that we are polite and good mannered. Below is the virtual queue for picking your pitchside position for the match.
There is a set way that this works. The big agencies like Getty, Reuters, AFP etc get the first pick of pitchside seats. They are already allocated before we get anywhere near. Then comes the photographers of the countries that are playing who get the next chance to pick. Then comes photographers from other teams in the group & tournament, and lastly those from countries who aren't represented at all.By getting there early I was 5th in the virtual queue. Rather than leave my valuable monopod there, I left a facecloth I use for cleaning things instead. Doesn't seem to matter what the item is, but most people choose monopods from the English league approach where you mark your spot on the pitch with a monopod. An American guy named Gino that I got to know on the plane up to Manaus was laughing about how we queue up - he thought it was extremely funny.With my queuing position established, I went into the stadium to do some more "general views" or GVs. These are important because they are often used as context shots to get an understanding of what the stadium is like, how big etc. Being in posession of accreditation and a photographer's bib, and some big cameras, I was able to wander around with impunity, at one stage taking a wrong turn under the stadium and finding myself deep in the bowels where all the bins and broken desks and chairs are kept. Anyway, I eventually took myself up to the top tier of the seating and used and got some pics a bit like this (as usual you can see more on the Focus Images web site).
After sweating copiously in the heat I returned to get my spot for the match sorted out. I managed to get a good slot on the manager's side in the corner in front of the England supporters - a decent result, well positioned for celebrations and suchlike. I was issued with my pitchside ticket. To get pitchside for an actual match you need a ticket, the media accreditation badge and a bib.
I liked the Canon 1DX and 200-400 so much I borrowed it again. It's great this loan gear thing. This let me use my other Canon body with a 24mm wide lens on in case any celebrations came in really close. This meant juggling with 3 bodies which is a bit awkward at the best of times.Then out onto the pitch to check the spot I had chosen. There were only 68 photographers there, compared to a max of about 250 in the normal configuration, so the corners went first as expected. We are allowed out 2 hours ahead of kick off.
Seeing as it wasn't totally chocka with photographers, there was just enough room to sneak between the chairs to sit down. Under the seat is a 4-socket power gang and a LAN cable. I rigged the LAN cable up to my little TP-LINK wifi router so I'd have my own hotspot, and powered up my PC, and locked my case to my chair using a steel cable and padlock.There then followed a bit of a frenzy of taking pictures of the fans. Everyone was in a very bouyant mood so finding good pics was not a problem.
Then it was time. The photographers were shepherded expertly by the FIFA media team into position for the team lineup. Scanning the posh box for celebs I could only find Greg Dyke, so took his picture. Then the teams came out and Roy Hodgson with them. Headshots of the players in the lineup followed, with the shorter players being somewhat blocked by taller mascots which is annoying. A quick snap of Roy as well seemed too good to pass up.
The back to my seat to send the pics I'd selected on the back of the camera. We're using a remote editing facility which lets me keep my eyes on the game while the picture editing and distrinbution takes place in London. I just slot the memory card into the reader plugged into my PC, and the selected pictures are downloaded into the laptop and sent automatically over the Atlantic to Focus Images HQ where the editorial team caption, crop and send them to the papers.This was working swimmingly before the match and for the first set of pictures. As the match got underway things went a bit awry but I didn't find out until near half time. With nowhere to put my laptop it was closed and under my seat, but still working. I could see the card reader flashing as images were being ingested, so assumed all was OK. After the first goal I thought I'd better double check, and found a message from Daniel (via Skype) that he wasn't getting any pictures.It transpired that the wired connection to my little router had failed, and the laptop had swapped over onto stadium wifi which was dog-slow. I couldn't fix it as the problem was a disconnected cable a few yards behind me. All the pics were there in the queue ready to go out., so as soon as halftime hit I was able to fix the problem and get up and running again. 
With comms up and running again, everything worked smoothly in the second half, though Daniel was probably sagging under the weight of a massive batch of images appearing in quick succession once the bottleneck had been removed. I spent the 2nd half with my laptop half-closed on my knee where it kept slipping off due to the ludicrous amount of sweat mixed with suncream and deet on my legs. Nice.Talking of sweat, it was still hot and very humid. I got through 3 litres of water during the game, probably twice what the players had.With England attacking my end I could concentrate on getting some good front-on images. Sterling was very good I thought, bamboozling defenders on a regular basis. A good desicion to start him.
Balotelli scored the winner as you probably know, which I did get from the other end happily. England slowed down markedly in the last quarter of the game and lost some of their zap and pace, which is understandable as I had trouble walking 200 meters back to the press room after the game. These guys are so fit to play 90 minutes in this heat - incredible.
Once it was all over, I packed my gear and headed into the media centre to edit those pics that I hadn't sent in directly, return my loan camera & lens again, and try and find the mobile phone people from "Oi", one of the Brazilian operators, whose SIM they had sold me wasn't working (it was to replace the Vivo one I had which was very expensive). Then back to the hotel, more editing, pizza and beer with Ben and Kieran who used my shower before setting off to Salvador, and more editing.Phew - what a day. Shame it wasn't an England win, but it reduced my chances of having to go to Recife (should England win the group) so that's a good thing from my warped perspective.
Thanks to the Focus Images team for their help back at the ranch with this game. It was great to prove that the remote editing system works, though I have to be more selective and keep double-checking the comms. OMG is it only day 3? Bed beckons...