... down is pretty much the only way I can describe the orderly chaos on the Broadcast Centre roof yesterday as Mahut and Isner battled their way to exhaustion and yet not to the end of their match. An historic event as far as tennis goes, and one that will continue to be played out today. I wonder, of the two of them, which one will rise the stronger this morning, shrug off the aches of such a marathon match and take the glory.
I went up to take some photos, and really did not consider that the roof would already be rammo, four or five deep up against the railings. I managed to get to within two of the front, and had to shoot the match using gaps between people, taking photos through the glimpse-sized spaces. However, I felt it gave the shots a bit of an edge, made them more interesting to me, the blurry human forms lending a soft framing to the images. One of them I was very pleased with, the American player Isner looking straight up at me as I fired off a burst of frames, the whites of his tennis attire flanked by blurred red and blue of the people in front of me providing an interesting take on the colours in the US flag... It could even be seen as the French flag (I know that the colours on their flag 'read' the other way round), and then his haggard expression would fit perfectly if he is in the end defeated by the Frenchman Mahut. Happenstance, serendipity, right place right time? To some extent yes, but, I could have missed it entirely if I had decided I couldn't be bothered to fight my way to near the front. Or if I had thought it was a pointless exercise trying to get photos in such a scrum... I'm glad I had the presence of mind to go for it.
It was very interesting watching the pro photographers. By this time (at something like 40 games each in the final set) they had long since got the action shots in the bag. The ones courtside were sitting looking around at the thronging crowd, cameras for the most part lying idle on the grass. The ones up where I was were also seemingly bored with the display, often pointing their long lenses at Court 19 where another tensely fought battle was taking place. One of the photographers stood for perhaps half an hour with her back to the match. I can but surmise that they were all just waiting for the money shot, the end of the game, capture the winner and loser in their agony and ecstasy and then take off to recover themselves.
I doubt we will see the like of it again, well, not in the near future. The courtside scoreboard gave up at about 47 games all, with the scoreboard we run on the site not long behind it. Flaws in systems exposed by a one in a million occurrence. The team here worked late to engineer a suitable fix. We will see how far that gets pushed today as the two players recommence battle later.
First though we have to get the Queen out of the way. It looks like being another very interesting and hot day here on the lawns at Wimbledon.
I went up to take some photos, and really did not consider that the roof would already be rammo, four or five deep up against the railings. I managed to get to within two of the front, and had to shoot the match using gaps between people, taking photos through the glimpse-sized spaces. However, I felt it gave the shots a bit of an edge, made them more interesting to me, the blurry human forms lending a soft framing to the images. One of them I was very pleased with, the American player Isner looking straight up at me as I fired off a burst of frames, the whites of his tennis attire flanked by blurred red and blue of the people in front of me providing an interesting take on the colours in the US flag... It could even be seen as the French flag (I know that the colours on their flag 'read' the other way round), and then his haggard expression would fit perfectly if he is in the end defeated by the Frenchman Mahut. Happenstance, serendipity, right place right time? To some extent yes, but, I could have missed it entirely if I had decided I couldn't be bothered to fight my way to near the front. Or if I had thought it was a pointless exercise trying to get photos in such a scrum... I'm glad I had the presence of mind to go for it.
It was very interesting watching the pro photographers. By this time (at something like 40 games each in the final set) they had long since got the action shots in the bag. The ones courtside were sitting looking around at the thronging crowd, cameras for the most part lying idle on the grass. The ones up where I was were also seemingly bored with the display, often pointing their long lenses at Court 19 where another tensely fought battle was taking place. One of the photographers stood for perhaps half an hour with her back to the match. I can but surmise that they were all just waiting for the money shot, the end of the game, capture the winner and loser in their agony and ecstasy and then take off to recover themselves.
I doubt we will see the like of it again, well, not in the near future. The courtside scoreboard gave up at about 47 games all, with the scoreboard we run on the site not long behind it. Flaws in systems exposed by a one in a million occurrence. The team here worked late to engineer a suitable fix. We will see how far that gets pushed today as the two players recommence battle later.
First though we have to get the Queen out of the way. It looks like being another very interesting and hot day here on the lawns at Wimbledon.
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