AFL at Aurora Stadium

The siren sounds and boom the first bounce and I think I just reamed off 9 frames nervously...

Armed with my trusty Nikon D700 and a Nikon 400mm which I'd never used I sat on the boundary line of Aurora Stadium, Launceston to shoot Hawthorn V North Melbourne .. Just 12 months ago I was itching to shoot AFL!

Everyone would be sitting on the couch watching the game giving the umpire what for and I'd be playing spot the photographer on the boundary line. I was interested..How the images were taken and where from.. I was no Pat Scala of The Age (now Getty Images) or Michael Klein of the Herald Sun who do this every weekend,

I was shooting AFL footy! I filled two memory cards in a game of footy, with some ripper shots and PLENTY of duds, praying that I had enough and that this game wasn't my last..

- If you don't know the player.. you need his number, so you've got to wait for him to turn around, to match name and number.

I thought at this stage maybe focusing on the game not the photographers might have been a game changer for me,

Filing in the press box, I was slow, I was under the pump, deadlines creeping up on me, assignment filed now the slow drive through traffic, pondering how it will all look tomorrow...