As the Championships’ photographic manager, Bob Martin appreciates the finer details of the images which every day capture the essence of Wimbledon. In this series celebrating the best of the AELTC’s talent behind the lens, he nominates his Picture of the Day.
NICK KYRGIOS TWIRLS HIS RACKET
“A little bit of detail from a tennis court, shot in as interesting a way as possible, can create a graphic, illustrative picture,” says Bob, nominating this picture taken by Joel Marklund of Nick Kyrgios’s hands and racket in the second round of the men’s singles last year as a spectacular example.
When you cover a sport a lot as a photographer, you see these details and you want to show them because they are part of a player’s personality
“Kyrgios has a habit of spinning his racket. Joel has seen this trait and knew that he could get a striking image using a slow shutter speed to capture the blur of movement of the racket strings,” he says. “For me, this is a very special picture. What I love is that Joel moved around to find a specific place that would give him a completely plain, dark background. On a busy, busy tennis court, he found this tiny bit of black to frame his photograph. The sunlight catches the spinning strings to create an amazing effect of colour and movement.”
The image ranks as one of Joel’s personal favourites, too. “Every player has their trait, their ritual. Nadal touches his face a lot, Kyrgios flips his racket. When you cover a sport a lot as a photographer, you see these details and you want to show them because they are part of a player’s personality. This is a very technical photograph. I had taken a lot of action shots that day and, well into the match, I started to experiment with a long shutter speed to try and create a special effect. The light was very nice. I experimented with a longer and longer shutter speed until I achieved this. When you expose your subject to a high level of light, the background darkens. Here, I wasn’t looking for the colour, just the movement.”
Technical info: This image was shot on July 1, 2016, at 4.11pm on a Nikon D5, at a shutter speed of 1/25th of a second with an F4 aperture using a 400mm lens and a sensitivity setting of 50 ASA.
