Photographically this has been a challenging – and somewhat disappointing – event to cover. Whilst some improvements have been made since the 02 Arena staged the 2009 World Championships, there has been a real decline in the standard of the lighting. The fact that there was no live TV coverage no doubt had some influence and I’m sure that the economics of staging the event played a part. Not only was there a low level of light but there were some very strange colour casts – possibly the result of the running down of the lamps as they age. They are due to be replaced for the Olympics but it was a pity that the new ones weren’t in place for this event. I did careful checks during the first day of training but even so the only way to deal with the shifting colours was to shoot on Auto White Balance and resign myself to a lot of editing. It is not an easy arena to work in and finding clean angles almost impossible. Things were further complicated for us by the choice of colour scheme for the event – yellow mats, red on apparatus, pink on the surrounding area and a deep mauve on the carpet (which threw up some very unpleasant colour casts and shadows on the skin).

The colouring of the arena was a common complaint heard throughout the week, in particular the use of a pink carpet against the red and cream Gymnova colours, although rumour has it they may decide to switch to black for the Olympics. Kyle Shewfelt explained that Beth Tweddle had told him the reason behind pink being chosen as the carpet colour. Each Olympic Sport was assigned a colour to be associated with. Gymnastics is associated with the colour pink. I think someone didn’t really think that through enough!

Eileen should be posting up her gallery of pictures soon from the Test Event, I’m really looking forward to them.

Eileen recently wrote an article for Official Publication of the International Sports Press Association titled ” The End of an Era – The golden age of sports photography is no longer with us”. She conveys her “disillusionment and concern” at the current state of the sports photography industry.  Whilst Eileen welcomes the new developments in photographic equipment which enhances the quality of the finished product, she  feels that any audience member thinks that they can “shoot sport” and expect to be given the right to access events that were previously the “domain of the pro”. In doing so and giving away their pictures for free on blogs and websites, she feels that this is undermining the work of the professional.

She discusses working at the 2010 World Championships in Rotterdam last year:

Working at the recent World Gymnastics Championships, I found it really hard to concentrate on capturing moments as the relentless noise from motor drives affected my own sense of timing. Goodness knows how the gymnasts coped with the racket as the photographers were positioned immediately behind their seats. I even saw some of these happy snappers poking gymnasts in the back and asking them to turn round and pose for a picture – incredible – but I’m afraid the system is now in place in many sports allows this to happen and I fear they will end up the photographers and the coverage they deserve if they don’t take steps to rectify the situation.

She continues in the next paragraph to discuss the behaviour of the amateur photographers, claiming to have been pushed and thumped in Rotterdam.  Eileen would like to see change in how the events are run and encourages event organisers to experience the unprofessional behaviour for themselves.

It’s evident from the article that Eileen feels very strongly about this and it is sad that it angers her so much. It’s an interesting read (page 47 / 48) and I encourage you to read it. I’m not quite sure where I lie on this, I appreciate Eileen and any other professional photographers pictures and feel sorry that the likes of Eileen are angered so much and appreciate that it the unprofessional behaviour makes her work difficult. I also appreciate the amateur photographs, it’s something different. I think the amateur photos can often show us the gymnasts personality just a bit more, seeing them smiling and laughing which we wouldn’t see as much in the professional photos.

I’d like to hear some opinions on this, especially from those of you who were in the press / media area at Rotterdam.

Eileen has a photography website and has some great photos from Worlds up. Rotterdam Worlds 1 has some fantastic pictures of the British men’s team. Rotterdam 2 has gorgeous pictures of the GBR women’s team. Rotterdam Worlds 3 contains lots of photos of all of the other gymnasts in the Team and Individual Finals. Finally, Rotterdam Worlds 4 has some generic images, I absolutely love this album.

Nice work Eileen! Check out here website here LangleySports.com

You can view a list of all of the inductees to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame since 1988 here.