Front Pages: Boris Johnson Becomes Prime Minister
Month: July 2019
Front Pages: England’s Cricket World Cup Victory
The imagery from England’s Cricket World Cup Victory
15th of July 2019 is a day that will live long in the memory of British sport. The prestigious Wimbledon Championship saw Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in the longest-ever Wimbledon final. Lewis Hamilton became the record winner at Silverstone with his 6th Grand Prix, beating the record held by Jim Clark and Alain Prost. However, there was another sport which stole the front pages of the national press. It was the England Cricket men’s team winning the Cricket World Cup on the very last ball of the super over. I’ve decided to take a look over the photography that was used by the press, which was image did the press use to tell the story? The Daily Telegraph and the Metro dedicated the entire front page to this story. The I, The Independent, FT, Daily Express, The Star, The Guardian & Daily Mail had the story as the main headlines. The Sun [my thoughts on them are known] came out with a fantastic front cover to tell the story, as captured by their staff photographer Dickie Pelham. I feel the Guardian had a very strong image as well, it showed the batting hero of Ben Stokes and the bowling hero of Jofra Archer. This was shot by Gareth Copley-Jones of Getty Images, who is the official photographer for the ECB. One front cover I don’t particulay like is the one of the Daily Mail, they went with a long shot of Ben Stokes being kissed and I feel it doesn’t really tell the story that well.
So there are some strong front covers but there is one publication that made me write this blog post. It is the front cover of the Times. They are the only publication that didn’t include an image on the front cover, they went with the tennis. Instead, they included the cricket on a fantastic wrap around.
As a composition, it is fantastic, Jos Buttler fills the frame on the front cover, middle of the frame leaving loads of room for the type. It is the exact moment. However, my problem with this image is that it isn’t a still photograph in the conventional sense. It is a screen grab from national television. So in a technical sense, it isn’t as good. But as regards to capturing the moment, it is better than any piece of photography can do. A pitch-side photographer couldn’t capture anything like this, there isn’t anywhere in the stands that would get an angle like this. Pitch-side, the background wouldn’t work with the type, even cropped in with a 400mm 2.8. The image simply wouldn’t be as strong, as regards to working with the typeface.
So, we’ve got an image that works brilliantly, however in the bigger picture, it does make me seriously think that sports photography is seriously under threat at being replaced by screengrabs from television. All sectors of photography are but it was thought that fast-paced sports photography, wasn’t under threat of this. However, it does seem that it actually is under-threat.
I think I might do a post similar to this in the future, there are some big events coming up which will see different publications go with different imagery. New Prime Minsiter, a potential General Election/No Confidence Vote, Britian Leaving the EU, Rugby World Cup, Protests etc. and seeing on how picture desk/picture editor is a role I’m giving strong consideration towards, this type of observation would probably prove to be beneficial.
Ben Peters Digital Photography 