140 characters or less.

Australia versus Canada at the 2014 World Cup.

January 2017, time to dust off the camera and get ready for the new season. Arguably 2017 will be practice for the World Cup in 2018. Having shot Derby for more years than I care to remember one is always on the lookout for a new angle, a new approach.

This year I have decided to concentrate on editing, posting no more than 40 images per bout. Photographers have tended, and I am guilty as the rest, to try and get a little bit of everything, include everyone. But on reflection, looking at the images I post, those that I feel are good, nobody likes, stick a cute puppy or popular skater in the frame, well, it’s a recipe for success. Social media plays with populism and it’s not a game I care to play any longer. If it wasn’t for running the Facebook page and keeping tabs on what bouts were coming up I’d probably get off Facebook.

After reading about how many revisions President Kennedy’s reply to the 1961 Berlin crisis orchestrated by Ulbricht and Khrushchev went through before being released, it makes one realise the importance of editing, getting the tone right, an art that many current politicians seem to have forgotten.

With this in mind, editing one’s own work takes on a greater importance. Post only the best that reflects and documents the sport, step back from the mechanisms that drive social media and concentrate on one’s own discipline. Not that I will shoot less frames at a bout, just be more ruthless in the final edit.

With the World Cup coming to Manchester in 2018 hopefully the sport will start to generate interest further afield and with that in mind how it is depicted visually will be ever more important. Hopefully being more ruthless in the final edit will give a more critical eye on how I shoot, which may in turn lead to more compelling images.  

Well, I’ve got a year to try and get myself sorted, so before I start, time for another cuppa.

www.roller-derby-on-film.co.uk