Running After Superstars

Okay, photojournalism "paparazzi" style is not easy as pie. We found it out last Saturday when we were commissioned to shoot two tennis stars at a game sponsored by Sony Ericsson at The Walk in Jumeirah.
The email came on a Thursday confirming that we will be one of the photographers to shoot the event on Saturday. We were excited as this will be our first time to cover a sporting event. We blocked off Saturday evening and we made sure we our cameras were fully charged.
Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova were supposed to appear around 7pm. We were there at 6:00pm but we couldn't find a parking space until 6:20pm. With cameras on our shoulders and speedlites on hand, we ran to the venue to receive our briefs.
Brief: to get the best possible shots of the tennis stars with the branding in the backdrop. Easy,... not!
For one, both these tennis divas are well guarded by their body guards and noone could get an inch closer to them. Plus, there were a lot of other paparazzis who kept blocking your view. So after a lot of pushin' and runnin', we felt like each proper photo was a gem.

After that Saturday night experience, we realized how much effort, skill and preparation it takes to compete in the world of photojournalism. We salute all all photojournalists out there risking it all to capture the truth at its best.