Sports Photography Award - London

The Societies' representative Mick Jones and myself with the glass globe trophy 

This posse of  lady photographers from Scotland, including Thurso's Julie Fraser (centre), pose in front of  the camera for a change

Jules MacDonald (right) and her sister Jill kindly allowed me to join their table at the awards.
See Jules' website for fantastic fashion pics www.jmstyle.co.uk

Face Box had a photo booth at the awards, along with lots of props. It got busier as the night went on!

I attended the SWPP Photography Convention at the Hilton London Metropole for 3 days last week and was delighted to win the 2012 Sports Photographer of the Year award at the Saturday night awards dinner in front of over 400 photographers from the UK and abroad.

The SWPP website has a list and photos of all the winners, the link to the sports category is:

http://www.swpp.co.uk/convention/photographic_competition_12/sport.htm

I was shortlisted along with 3 others from Ireland and Malta. The winning pic was taken at the Caithness RFC vs Hillfoots game last February and shows Hamish Coghill getting a painful hand in the face.

The week long convention attracted around 15,000 people, so it was pretty busy! There was a trade show with over 200 stands and dozens of talks and demonstrations from the best UK and foreign photographers.

There were two talks on sport photography. One by Dominic Aquilina from Malta, who is an official photographer for UEFA and has photographed the last 7 Champions League Finals. Dom travels all over Europe taking sports pics. His website is;

http://www.fotoaquilina.com/

The other was by Ian Cook from Wales, who is the director of the sports photography agency CameraSport:

http://www.camerasport.com/

Ian travels all over the UK and has photographed the Ryder Cup and the London Olympics.

Both talks were excellent and I picked up lots of useful tips. I attended 9 other talks ranging from fashion to portraits to cars to weddings. The top class speakers were:

John Denton
Damian McGillicuddy
Sam Sciarrino (Canada)
Adam Duckworth (two talks)
Lenny Smith
Dennis Orchard
Beverley and Barrie Downie
Damien Lovegrove