Sunday, a day...

... of rest. It's been a long week. Everyone in the team is tired. I had scant chance to post yesterday as the flow of photos to prepare for the writers to add to their articles was a steady one, and the 'free' time I was generously afforded me by my colleague Rob was spent taking more photos...

On Friday I took a walk to the Broadcast Centre roof, the long way round, out from the entrance to the Press Building, along past Court 14, then between 18 and 19, up the steps through hordes of thirsty fans waiting to refill their water bottles from a tap that sits almost hidden by bright green ivy. The spillage runs down the sloped walkway, petering out after twenty feet or so, wetting the sole of every passing shoe. I wondered how long before those dark footsteps would be evaporated by the beating sun. The hill was crammed with fans, floppy hats, umbrellas, and towels employed to prevent dessication in the heat. The camera equipment was heavy, and getting heavier by the minute.

Up top, walking alongside the queue for the Ticket Resale point I was struck by the number of people in it, their dedication rendering them willing to move a few steps and sit back down, move a few more, sit back down, just to get a seat on Centre or No.1. Then I am walking the rail above Court 18, not bothering to seek a vantage point there as it is very busy. Instead I passed through the gate that stands between fans and people working at the event, and onto the roof where I plotted up at the end of the Court, almost in line with the middle.

I took a fair few photos of the match between Jarmila Groth, an Australian player, and Kerber from Germany. The Australian contingent in the stands (which from what I could tell numbered 4) were very vocal in their support, and it rose to a peak when she won the match. Here are some of the images I captured...

Hot, Dogs and Early Birds

Another hot day...

Two hot dogs first thing - which put a smile on my face, especially as the puppets appeared to stay in character long after the cameras had stopped turning. 

A quick roam around the grounds revealed the security guards were warming up long before any tennis players.

And two early birds, sharing the solitude - and the suncream.

New balls please... and lots of them

You didn't know there was going to be a quiz, did you? No, nor did I.

But when I was on Number 1 Court today, a little under an hour before the first match was due to start, I saw these three fellows. I watched them as they took a basket of balls and then began laying them out across the court. They studiously laid them out, first one half, then the other. And no sooner had they laid them out, than they started to collect them all up again.

I asked three security guards and two members of the public what they thought was going on. The replies I had included 2 x "Don't know", 1 x "Don't care", 1 x "It's performance art" and 1 x "It's to do with satellites overhead".

So...now it's your turn. Add a comment to this post and let us know what you think is going on. Don't be shy - there are no 'wrong' answers (well, ok, yes there are, but that's not the point). Have a think and post your ideas/guess as a comment.

I'll reveal the answer in a day or two. There is no prize - just my admiration. And money can't buy that (again, not strictly true).

And gypsum? You're not allowed to comment on this one, because I think you know :o)

She came...

... she saw, she concurred. Well, I am speculating that she might have done if I'd had the chance to discuss liking the game with her. By 'she' I mean the Queen, who as my fellow blogger pointed out, hadn't been here since 1977. I have heard that she isn't a great fan of tennis, and so sits in the 'oh if one must' camp, a bit like me. Nevertheless, yesterday she graced the lawns with her regal presence, and to me it seemed, wore a rather fixed grin (I would use the word rictus but it sounds a little too Teutonic). But then, what do I know, I was up on the Broadcast Centre roof with a hundred million other people, straining to get any sort of decent view. After a brief exchange of differing opinions with a large Dutch TV cameraman who seemed to feel that he owned the roof and the entire view from it I managed to get a couple of nice hat shots. Honestly, sometimes I am dismayed at my own stupidity. I had a view of the walkway that runs past the building, and could see there was plenty of space to go down and stand right next to where she would walk. But no, I stayed on the roof, and blew any chance of anything more than hat shots. Hohum. Nice hat though. Millinery at its finest, if you like that sort of thing.













I was still buzzing from the day before, the madness of the match to end all matches, and I wasn't overly bothered about getting great shots of royalty. It was an interesting experience, watching her walking through the thronged masses who lined the perambulatory route. Her Maj was preceded by a TV crew and a single official photographer, and accompanied by club dignitaries and some low-key security. There was almost no fuss at all. An anti climax? Perhaps...








History now, as are the photos that I captured yesterday. I did a swift walk around the grounds again, snapping this and that. Submitted myself to another sharp-elbowed jumble sale melee of paying punters and paid photographers waiting for Isner and Mahut to leave Court 18 once their epic battle had finished. The victor looked suitably chirpy, the vanquished understandably down.






I am hoping to get out there again today and continue to record this year's event, especially as from now on the doubles matches start to ramp up, spreading like a plague of eight-legged tennis bugs across all the courts, and I do not enjoy taking photos of doubles matches. Difficult to frame from the vantage points that I can get to.








Oh, and about that not liking tennis thing... I was pretty good at sport as a kid, but never played tennis, so perhaps that is why I am not a fan of the game. I am, however, a massive fan of the whole Wimbledon Championships experience!

By Royal approval

So today The Queen is visiting AELTC for the first time since 1977.

The route that she was to take on arriving was neatly lined with security long before the gates were open, so the eager fans who queued extra-early to get into the grounds were all perfectly positioned. The pathways were swept extra clean, without even a single flower petal to be seen to blemish her route.

Soon enough, she arrived and began her regal walk down past the crowds to meet some of the players, before her lunch and on to watch Murray play on Centre Court.

In 1986, The Queen went to Chichester on the day before Good Friday to distribute Maundy money (stick with me...there is a point to this...). The crowds on that day were ten-deep, if not more. I was stood at the back of the crowd, a friend standing on my shoulders to afford at least one of us a decent view. There was palpable excitement rippling through the crowd as the allotted hour approached - a ripple, which turned into a cheer as she arrived. I remember thinking "She must be right in front of me!" so loud was the crowd's jubilant cheering, but no - she was still some way off. The noise grew and grew, cheering and applause in equal measures. As she passed in front of my section of the crowd, the crescendo peaked until the noise-baton was picked up by the next section and so on, down the entire route.

It was, indeed, a jubilant - and noisily-cheering - gathering.

How strange it was, then, to witness her procession through the fans at Wimbledon this morning to a mere comparative murmur of appreciative applause; but instead of clapping, there was a forest of arms held aloft as cameras snapped and whirred to get a myriad of individual photos. So intent on getting 'their' shot of The Queen, that the crowd were unable to clap. It was a little eery in fact, exacerbated by the close proximity of the fans, their cameras just a few feet from Her Majesty.

Still, she looked happy enough.

But in this modern age where cameras are so ubiquitous - be they state-of-the-art pocket masterpieces, or smartphones with the ability to instantly update Twitter and Facebook accounts - have we forgotten to cheer and clap? Maybe we need media devices that have recordings of applause that can play while shutter buttons are pressed.

Is there an app for that?

Scrum...

... 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.