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Painting of a tennis championship

Shot from 2007′s Wimbledon tennis championship. What I’ve done here is converted from an original photograph into a painting-style piece. I wasn’t too happy with the original – it was basically a reflex shot and not particularly in focus. But I thought the composition was pretty good and took the option to play around with it a little more and perhaps give it another look. I’ve tried many variations but thought this one came out best.

The player is Klara Zakopalova from the Czech Republic in her game with Hana Sromova against Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Tatjana Malek of Germany where she and Hana eventually lost. The part of the match we saw was great, even with a small rain break in the middle but this is Wimbledon so you wouldn’t expect anything else.

I went with my brother and it was our first time at the tournament. It was a superb experience and we’re hoping to go back in 2008. My brother has this idea of tenting outside the grounds overnight to get centre court tickets the next day, but will just have to see about that.

For a more detailed report on our day, head over to his entry and head here to find the better pictures of the day. And it’s well worth looking at a larger version of the picture to see the painting detail.

Here is the original has and it been used on a home page for a outside television broadcasting company:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

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Day out at Wimbledon tennis championship 2007

A couple more ‘event reports’ from last year…

My brother and I went on the first Friday of the Wimbledon tennis championships (6th July 2007). We’ve never been before but it was great and we’re hoping to go next year (centre court here we come ).

I train’ed it up from Thatcham while Neal travelled from Croydon – guess which one of us had to get up at 4am? Eventually we met up at Wimbledon tube station where it started to rain, typical!

Luckily we hopped on a shuttle bus that had just turned up. It started to really chuck it down as the bus filled with people. The bus got under way but because of the stupid one-way system and major traffic jams it took us 20mins to go down the road, up, around and back on the road we started just to turn around! It did get quicker as we got closer and we finally arrived at the grounds – wow! They were excellent!

Off the bus we walked up the hill and got on the end of the already huge queue at about 8:30am. We were handed our “queue ticket” to basically say yep you’re not too late and you’ll definitely be getting in today. 2 hours later we were in the grounds!! Some tips for queuing here:-
- take a snack ‘cos you’re gonna get hungry
- make sure you go to the loo beforehand as it could be ages before you see one and
- don’t buy anything while in the queue as you’ll either be told you cannot take it in when you get to the gates or will find it cheaper inside, ie. the event guide.

We, of course, had a security check then went through the turnstiles surprisingly quickly to buy our tickets. £12.

Then we were inside proper. Bang on time for the gates to open and for a mass of people to hurl to their prime spot near a court. No centre or Court 1 seats for us – you have to be either lucky with the ballot months before the tournament or extremely early at the gates (ie. get out your tent and sleep the overnight) to buy them on the day. For us, it was the side courts.

First things first, we were both very hungry by now so grabbed some snacks and drinks from the canteen then sat and watched all these people pour in. It slowed down eventually so we got up and had a walk around.

It was packed! The walking area along the side courts were pretty narrow and we struggled to get down them a lot of the time. We got to Court 9 (ladies doubles match) but it wasn’t too long before the heavens opened up again and we all ran for cover. It chucked it down, so much so that we had to step 10 metres away from the edge of the covering as it blew in – another tip: have a good umbrella (I got one but as we were leaving – doh) and a light raincoat. As soon as it looked like it was about to stop we quickly got back to Court 9 and got seats near the middle (the net). In hindsight perhaps not the best place, I would have perhaps gone for one of the corners but we couldn’t complain. And I think we were on coaching seats but the coaches didn’t turn up do we didn’t have to move. The players soon came out for warm up then the match started proper. Great match, lots of great pics but the Germans won again, lol.

During the match, my brother said the Williams sisters walked behind us. My brother saw them but I missed them – it does help to be 6 foot plus sometimes.

Then this chap called Andy Roddick popped up on the court behind us. He was training with his coach, Jimmy Connors. At this point everyone switched over. A load of us stood up on our seats to then be shouted at to get down by one of the young stewards. Didn’t matter as by then I had loads of shots. I did get a few more from the corner.

Afterwards, we had another walk around, popping in and out of a couple more matches. We were running out of time as I had a train to catch but I made sure we got up to the ex-Henman Hill. Very cool and massive screen but you could tell there was no British player playing as the crowds were pretty quiet.

Sadly we had to leave, so after a little confusion on what was the exit we got off the grounds, round the corner and eventually back on a bus to Wimbledon station.

But as soon as we thought the day was over we saw Roger Federer doing some sort of promo in a small area in front of the station on a specially-built mini-tennis court! We weren’t 100% certain but it must have been him!

Then guess what, yep it started to rain, so as soon as I had my camera out and snapped a couple of pics, Federer stopped playing, packed up and disappeared. I guess we’ll never know…

A great day out and dreaming of getting Centre Court of Court 1 tickets for 2008 already.

More pics of the day are here.

Wimbledon:
www.wimbledon.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Championships,_Wimbledon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Wimbledon_Championships

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Mind-altering media

Another good article from New Scientist was ‘Mind-altering media’.  This is something that touches me personally as I’ve worked in the computer games industry. Myself, I find it very hard to believe that players and viewers of violent videogames and movies make for violent people. I think if you’re violent it will come up regardless of experiencing modern media. What I don’t like to see is violent games sold to underage children, someone somewhere needs to take responsibility for misselling these games. You can’t let a 12 year old play an 18 certificate game! A child will imitate, far more than an adult, what they experience, if they interact with a violent game then they are more likely to copycat the experience in real-life.

The article is mainly inconclusive, the one thing it seems to conclude is the more exposure to modern media the greater the change in our minds, especially at a younger age. It makes us smarter and better at some tasks, for example, more complex pre-planning and problem solving is required with the increasing complexity of media presentations and games and their multiple plots and sophisticated layers, but makes us dumber and worse at others. It also says that we can’t get away from the fact that on screen violence fosters off-screen violence. One media it doesn’t mention is music. Music has been said to alter our minds too (for good and for bad) but this, as well as art, are not within this article, shame:

Games:

Regular computer gamers have improved visual attention and can take in more information. They are better able to pay attention to things further apart or rapidly changing and can switch attention more quickly. They have a reduced brain response to, suggesting people begin to see such imagery as more normal. And young people are more emotional aroused when playing violent videogames (though it doesn’t say what emotion, good or bad). Children learn best by demonstration and then imitation, with rewards for getting things right. By way of interaction this is exactly what video games do.

TV:

People are more educated from watching TV programmes, yes even soap operas teach us things (!). A large study confirms previous small studies that high levels of TV viewing when young may contribute to elevated levels of verbal and physical aggression, difficulties with sleep, obesity and long-term risk for obesity-related health problems from a lack of physical exercise and attention and learning difficulties. Basically the more TV watched as a child the more aggressive acts committed as an adult.

Internet:

The Internet amplifies are natural personality traits. The extroverts get even more social and introverts more isolated but it is hard to assess the effect of the Internet on us as it is so varied. We might become more isolated socially but then become more open within online forums.

You are who you are largely because of the way the brain cells wire up in response to the environment and the things you do. If you change the wiring you will change how we think. Young, developing brains are affected the most. But there is no real way to prove anything. The ideal experiment would be to divide a large number of children into groups, expose the different groups to different types or varying amounts of TV or computer games for several years while keeping all other experiences identical, and then follow their progress in life. This will never be possible or, more importantly, ethical.

The article can be found here, again subscribers can view the whole article.