Barcelona lift the Champions league trophy

I haven’t photographed a football match for a few years now and the last time I did regular football was at Yeovil Town. Manchester United against Barcelona felt very different!

As I am a news photographer I wanted to concentrate on famous faces in the crowd and the Man United fans. This was hard as there were 180 photographers and my position couldn’t have been worse. I had one chance as we were allowed to the opposite side of the stadium to photograph the teams as they came out. Instead of doing this I concentrated on the crowd and managed to snap some famous faces including Prince William and Roman Abramovich with his girlfriend Daria.

Roman Abramovich with his girlfriend Daria

Prince William at the Champions League Final

Some of the picture agencies at the match had pitch side broadband to send their images around the world within seconds. Other photographers had runners to take their cards and send them from the press room. I had to wait for the half time whistle before running half way around the Olympic track to the press room and editing, captioning and sending my pictures within the ten minute break. I just about made it back in time!
During the game I shot some of the action and managed to get a nice shot as Samuel Eto’o scored the first goal.

Edwin Van Der Sar watches as Eto'o scores for Barcelona

I shot all the action on my 5d Mk11 and although this isn’t a fast camera I was very impressed with it.  I only had a 300m lens and took this picture of Barcelona’s second goal from the other side of the pitch.

Lionel Messi scores the second Barcelona goal

At the end of the game we were escorted to the podium area of the stadium and as the photographers picked there positions I concentrated on dejected Man United players before pushing my way through to snap Barcelona lifting the trophy.
Although I would have liked to have seen Manchester united win It did mean that the players wouldn’t be drinking and celebrating that evening and I didn’t have to sit outside the players hotel all through the night. I was secretly pleased!

Christiano Ronaldo is close to tears at the end of the match

Page 3 girls Nikkala and Danni in Rome

Hardly testing my photography skills but great fun all the same I spent the last two days with Page 3 girls Nikkala and Danni in Rome ahead of the Champions League final. On the Monday I didn’t manage to see one Manchester United fan to pose up with them anywhere. On Tuesday the fans arrived in their thousands and I spent most of the day on ‘Fergies Field’ which is a campsite full of fans.

Page 3 girls Nikkala and Danni in Rome

It took me ages to persuade a Champions league press officer to let me pose the girls next to the Champions league trophy and to do it we had to turn the girls tops around so we weren’t advertising the Sun! Very stupid!

I’m off to the Olympic Stadium…

Former Gurkha Ram Bahadur Gurung in Intensive Care

This is 62 year old former Gurkha Ram Bahadur Gurung pictured in the intensive care unit of St Georges Hospital in Tooting. He suffered a stroke and died the day after I took this picture. Yesterday I photographed the funeral of this former Gurkha and met his daughters who say the last time they saw their father was when they looked at my photograph on Sun online as they were not allowed in to the UK to see him. I have never been into an Intensive care unit and found it a little shocking but spent about ten minutes photographing him. He was totally unconscious and I shot every angle possible before shooting some video on my Canon 5d Mk11 camera.  At his funeral yesterday the body was not covered up and this made some very interesting photographs.

Former Gurkha Ram Bahadur Gurung

This was my best shot. I did some photographs of his face but It did feel slightly wrong. I was on a small step by the side of the coffin and I was just hoping I didn’t fall!

This is Rafael Josef at the Psychiatricka Lecebna prison/hospital in Havlickuv Brod in the Czech Republic. I was sent to the specialist unit to cover a feature about castration for the Sun. Reporter Oliver Harvey and I spent four hours with four of the Czech Republic’s most violent sex offenders.  At the hospital they castrate a lot of their patients and they believe that this stops  their sexual need. We interviewed each criminal individually and then I photographed each one in their cell.  All four men looked exactly how you would expect a paedophile or sex attacker to look and I got the feeling that most of them enjoyed telling us how they attacked and killed their victims.

For each portrait I used available light and tried to capture the evilness of each person. I noticed this man’s terrible cross-eyes and wanted to shoot lots of close ups of his face. With the padeophile (pictured above) I noticed how badly he was dressed and his deadly stare.  I noticed a teddy bear on his bed so I shot it quite wide. He continued staring  and I found this quite intimidating. I was pleased to leave the hospital but found it a very interesting experience.

See how the story was used in ‘The Sun’