Scenes from a Bike - Edition 23 - Some Australian Rules Football

Welcome to The 23rd edition of the series - Scenes from a bike

This Edition facts:

Location: Something different today. Australia's local football - Australian Rules or AFL. And my local team - The North Melbourne Kangaroos. Now they play in the AFL which a national league and on Good Friday they played at Marvel stadium in front of just shy of 50,000 people, but although I was there, I didn't have a camera and I didn't have a bike, no we are about 4 hours before that game and we are at North's training ground, Arden street for the reserves (basically the 22nd to 44th best players on our list) - They are in the Royal blue and white stripes

Date & Weather: Good Friday- weather is disgusting, it's cool, it's raining, that's why there is maybe 500 people here, and why I'm so happy the Marvel stadium has a roof

Equipment: My Fujifilm X-T5, mated with my do anything 70-300mm Zoom - A AFL oval is big, about 160 odd metres long and about 130m wide so you need a zoom and even then it's still really only workable for about half the field.

The Concept & Finances: The concept is simple, I've bought an electric bike, on this bike I explore my hometown, Melbourne Australia and take photos, Priority 1 - Finding new places in Melbourne, Priority 2 - taking better photos, Bonus - Earn back the cost of the bike by creating content and getting paid for it on HIVE. The bike cost $1,100 USD. So far I've earned $137.58 from the previous 22 paid out posts meaning I've paid for about 12% of the bike and I have $962 to go. This is going to take some time, but this is all bonus money, the joy is in the taking of photos.

Other stuff: Photographing Football is different, it's a game that happens in 3 demensions, following fast moving action is difficult, I was really struggling with the auto-focus. which I'm sure is a user problem rather than the camera or lens. More work is needed before I get this right.

Let's see what shots actually turned out okay

The game is simple enough - the skills are Kicking

Which of Course can look awkward if you slip

The Handball - where you punch the ball off you open palm

But again you will look really weird once the ball has left the frame

The Mark - which is where you catch the kicked ball - often by flying for it in a pack of people (and no one marked this by the way)

And when it falls you want the little guys and ground level to be ready to grab it and run - known in the business as being 'front and centre' (no one marked this either)

Or this

And finally someone hangs onto one

This one was pretty impressive as well

Other skills needed? Running, so much running, with the ball occasionally which needs to stay within the boundary, and yeah you are going to need to bounce it every 15 metres or so

And tackling, which of of course stopping the guy with the ball

but most of all it's concentration for the 120 minutes of play - regardless of the weather, regardless of the guy constantly grabbing at you

Of course sport can be messy - but the most elegant photo of the day was of one of the umpires - In particular she is a boundary umpire, which really just involves and insane amount of running around the boundary line - but somehow looking really ordered doing it.

And for those of you still not understanding what this game is actually like, becuase it is hard to tell from still photos - here are some highlights from the AFL Game later in the afternoon. North are now in the weird lighter blue uniform with a green piping - it's a long story, and no they didn't win.