I’ve never really gotten in to most sports. Tennis is different. The interest started from looking - for reasons I don’t remember - at tournament brackets and results, and thinking ‘I could do stats with that’. I never actually did the stats, but I do enjoy watching it. Something about the 1:1 nature and the variety of possible play-styles and what that means for matchups appeals to me. And it’s also a good opportunity to take pictures, so that helps.
This year, I was at Queens on Monday and it was mostly damp. Play eventually started around 6PM, and we got a match and a half.
Sometimes it’s nice to do something explicitly arty with an image.
Here I desaturated, upped the contrast, and added a linear gradient mask on the background with a massively raised exposure and haze.
The idea was to separate the player - here, Qinwen Zheng - to try and emphasise how on the court, it’s her alone, with everything riding on her performance.
It’s not something I have experience of, but I imagine it’s quite isolating.
