Yesterday we had a sporting event here in Germany.  Chances are few people heard about it, there was not too much advertising certainly outside of the field.

Every year there is an athletics competition, in the town stadium in Herford, near Bielefeld.  The only people that probably get to know about it are those units that are invited to field a team.  Many of the athletes are probably selected little more than a couple of days before it happens and in some cases, the athletes are actively taking part in their [chosen] event for the first time on the day.

As awful as that sounds, the reality is that for many of these competitors (although not all), their level of experience is largely irrelevant.  The truth is that competitions like these are not really about the level of skill or the ability of the competitors.  These contests are in plain terms military competitions rather than athletic.

They are about guts, determination, team work, effort and overcoming yourself.  So the opportunity came up to photograph the event, not because we were tasked to but because we could.  In the absence of a formal request I decided it would be a fantastic opportunity to use this as a training day.  Try some new things free from the usual expectation that can lead you to the safest route.

Photography is subjective as I have said before, and this is not an excuse to show the crap and try to market it as art.  I invited the other two photographers from over here to join me with a brief to submit only five images from the day.  Their choice, but they should mean something to them.

Now five images is not a lot but it can be plenty.  Once I had been through all the  images choosing the final images was not all that easy.  The ones I chose would probably not be the choices of others but that is the point.  This day was about observation and thought.

My final choices are those in Sepia as when it came down to it I felt I wanted to unify them in some way.  There is one colour image though.  An image I liked for its use of focus but when converted to sepia, it lost some of its elements.  It stays here though because it’s my blog and I can do what I want.

The truth of the matter is that when you push yourself, photography is never easy, after concentrating so long and hard, I went hope tired that day……..but content.