My name is Brendan Moran,
I’m a Sports Photographer
with Sports File Photo Agency in Dublin
and I've been a photographer for over 25 years
I'm from County Kerry, a big GAA stronghold.
I have three sisters nieces and nephews
which are brilliant to switch off
from work they really take you down
to a different level.
My dad would have encouraged me
an awful lot in my job, in my career.
I bought my first camera when I was 13 and a half,
so then I decided actually,
I like sports and I like taking pictures
so why not take pictures of sports
and from there it progressed
to working for a local newspaper
when I was 16.
When I was 18 I went to Dublin
and I got a job with Sports File
and I've been here ever since.
If I'm shooting a job
usually we'd have
done the prep the day before,
whether that be lighting,
gone through the brief,
liaised with the client
and discuss some ideas of what we're doing.
If there's no event on,
I'd be involved in quite a lot of admin,
in scheduling finding out fixtures,
travel, accreditation and all the logistics
that need to be done
but people don't necessarily think about.
Most of our work would be sports
photography but because the industry
has changed so dramatically,
even since I've been here, I
gone from film cameras
into digital and now we’re fully digital
it's very much more commercial
commercial based nowadays,
but we do a lot of editorial work.
A lot of our editorial work now is
supplemented by commercial work
whether that be working for the sponsor,
the governing body
you know, TV people.
There's a myriad of people now,
so most games,
most sporting events we go to now,
there is a commercial element
that might only be the match
or the man of the match
or the signage around the field
or it's not just work for newspapers
and magazines, it's work for social media.
It has diversified so much over the years
and a lot of our work would be for governing
bodies. We work for the likes of UEFA,
the FAI, the GAA, Basketball Ireland.
They'd have press conferences
or they might have launches
or the might have feature things
they want to do on for their own channels.
They wouldn't necessarily be in
the newspapers but they'd be for their
own media outlets.
They're not necessarily relying on television
and radio and newspapers
that they put up their own content
so we would be involved quite heavily
in that type of stuff as well.
My favorite sport to photograph
a toss-up between basketball and hurling.
Hurling because of its unpredictability.
You just don't know what's going to happen
catching something at hurling
because of it's hand-eye coordination
particular to the highest level,
it's incredible, like I have a story about
there was one picture I took there
about two years ago,
where a player broke his teeth
like there was a head-to-head clash
and what looked like to me
just a bit of saliva or whatever
actually turned out to be his teeth
and the guy, you know, got a stitch in his lip
or his gums and then played the rest pf the game.
I like pictures that are unique that
can't be recreated
particularly Hurling as well when somebody breaks
a hurl you can't really stage that,
so you got to be really on top of your game
because a lot of the time,
it's a bit like boxing as well,
you nearly got to be ahead of time,
so like some of our colleagues
that shoot boxing nearly need to be
anticipating the punches.
Catching people whether it's a emotion
or whether it's just some sort of action
that can't be replicated
that's a, I find that they're are much better
pictures to me now. I'd like to think I can
maybe take a step back
and see the bigger picture at times.
The bigger skill nowadays I think
is learning to edit
because with digital photography
you can take as many pictures
that will fill a hard-drive
but then you have to be able
to pick out the good ones
from the other ones
and that's, it's a huge skill
so I would like to think that
the through experience
I'm a little bit smarter
and I can see sometimes
a picture that will stand the test of time
rather than just straight obvious picture
that everybody else gets.
A lot of times because pictures get used on Twitter
and on the internet very early
like as the matches live on TV or whatever,
a lot of the times pictures get consumed
really quickly and therefore
a lot of the pictures,
kind of, have a short lifespan
and a lot of the time I'd be kind
of trying to even read the game,
you know if one team is dominant
over the other,
how do you get a picture to reflect that?
Because if the journalists are talking about that
in the morning or later on
you got to be able to cope with,
have you a picture of that
and if you understand the laws of game
and the flow of the game
and the teams that are involved
sometimes you'll get a picture
that doesn't seem all that important
or it might be a great action picture
but it might be totally relevant to the story
that you're talking about
and therefore if you have something
that will illustrate that,
there's probably a better chance of it being used.
Our workflow would vary on the event.
Nowadays with technology
we would send some pictures from the camera
directly back to our picture desk
and they would caption them up
and send them out.
If it's a commercial client
sometimes they want to approve stuff
so you download them onto the laptop,
they'd have a look at them;
they like this, they don't like that.
Their message might have to be shot
a certain way
or it has to be live a certain way
or whatever you know,
it's got to do with brand guidelines
and all these sort of things
that we wouldn't necessarily be privy of at the time
whereas for matches,
more often than not,
we would we would edit ourselves
just laptop pitch side for instance in Rio
at the Olympics my colleague Stephen McCarthy,
there was three of us on the Olympic final that day
and just for the craic
we wanted to see how quick we could be,
while there was no way
Irish competitor in it,
we were still there
and I think we had the picture out
within about 90 seconds.
I've seen a lot in 25 years
there is a couple of moments that
the hair stands up on the back your neck.
A big example would be
Ireland won the grand slam in Cardiff in 2009.
Photography is recording history
essentially and that's what we do
and you don't think about it
until after the event.
Another one would have been
Katy Taylor's Olympic final in 2012.
It was kind of I suppose
a bit of a standalone picture,
it wasn't a boxing picture as such
it was a medal presentation
but because they had the medal presentation
in the ring, not everybody could
photograph it.
Another one which would
be a bit the closer to home
was the time Kerry won
the All Ireland in 2014, I think,
and I was asked to go in
and take some pictures for the players
and I've been a big fan of Kerry football
and everything
it was a bit of a privilege
to witness that because
they generally don't let the
media into the dressing room afterwards.
But it's an interesting insight into
the world of sport
and even into the world of people.
What I'd like people to take away
from my work is that,
I'm not really sure to an extent
but I think as I matured
sometimes I actually go for the more
emotional picture,
in that like,
there would be a few pictures
I would have taken over the years
of people happy or sad
and sometimes they get more
of a reaction to the general public
and to people that don't know
an awful lot about sport
or don't know a lot of the photography
and sometimes they can be,
it's nearly a window into the people's lives
but sometimes the picture
that's far more relevant
or far more iconic,
is sometimes the emotional picture.
If there's a bit of resonance to a bit of humanity
well then that's a good thing.
If I can only take one piece
of equipment with me
it would probably just
a camera 50mm lens,
I have a f/1.4,
so you can play around with that a bit
and it's bit quirky
but it's just, it's the old kind of lens
that says look this is what life looks like.
It's not distorted,
you're not zooming in or anything,
its just nice and simple.
In terms of equipment that we use
we're all Nikon users in this house.
Standard cameras will be D5 now
or D4 'S, they would be,
that's kind of the bulk of what
we would use. As a day-to-day
I suppose my go-to lens for action
would be a 500mm lens.
It's light, its a good all-round lens,
sometimes 400mm can be a little bit
short sometimes a 600mm
can be a little bit long.
My go to long lens
would be a 500mm lens
after that 24 - 70mm, 70 - 200mm
85mm, 50mm
we'd have a plethora of stuff with us.
If I was to give tips and advice
to aspiring sports photographers,
I'd say enjoy it.
I've seen things and been places
I never thought I would be.
I started off going to local sporting events,
I'd the run of the place,
I could stand where I liked,
I could walk here, sit there, do this
do that and nobody really said anything
to me and that's sometimes that's been
far better, in terms of pictures
like a lot of sports events,
they're not plastered with advertising,
a bit more creative freedom,
for example in Sports File
we've done our hundred best pictures of the year
and probably had about a 150,000 pictures
to go through,
the fact that 30 percent
of the best pictures
that we did this year
are taken at smaller events,
it means any photographer can get a good picture.
Small event ca be more and more actually
smaller events can be better pictures
because they're not overly
commercialized.
Keep an eye on the smaller events,
the picture could be right there.