By Neil Cunningham.
Taken in the changing rooms after Eltham RUFC won a VRU Grand Final. It is very much a ‘being there at the right time’ kind of shot. Being an old player of the club, I had full access to the team from the warm up to the piss up. I took many, many shots that day and this is the best of the lot.

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Adonis Triumphant, by Neil Cunningham

Canon G10; 1/80s @ f/3.2; ISO 320

B&W conversion in Photoshop CS4

Don’s response

As anyone who’s tried to do this sort of work will tell you, you can easily shoot all day without scoring anything approaching the quality of a picture like this one.

The massive central character is almost in a spotlight thanks to shadowy background and the fact that the others in the picture are looking down or away from the camera means there are no faces to distract us from the triumphant hero and his tinny victor’s chalice.

By choosing black and white and vignetting the picture, photographer Neil Cunningham frees the image from colour cast issues and thereby ensures all attention is on our cheering hero.

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