Photography Life

Action on the field

An electrical storm approaching a desert town in the Kalahari with the late afternoon sun beaming orange light in on a hard, dry, rocky soccer field where two teams are about to play. It was perfect.

We approached the coach of one of the teams to ask if we could take photos of the soccer game and he immediately lined up the players for team photos, no problem!

Suddenly a spectator took us back to our car and showed us the tyre, an unmistakable hissing sound was coming from it. Unbelievable, three weeks of driving through three African countries with pot-holed roads and thorn-spattered elephant dung and our huge, hardy Pajero had succumbed here, in a seemingly car-friendly township just out of Upington, Northern Cape of South Africa.

We looked back at the perfect soccer scene longingly, jumped into the Pajero and gunned it back to Upington. At our friend’s place (whose Pajero it was), the tyre was quickly changed and re-fired by his enthusiasm we zoomed back to the town, our friend’s cry in our ears “go go go!”

loving the camera

The game was only at half-time and the light was still good! We grabbed a camera each and started shooting. At my end, behind a goal, children were simultaneously playing their own game and stopping in the middle of my view to pose for photos.

Spectators sat in front of their homes and along the sides of the field, be it on chairs, old paint tins or the rocky sand, it didn’t matter. The game and the spectators were passionate, as we’ve come to expect from soccer games of any calibre here in South Africa.

The game at a draw, the teams decided for a penalty shoot-out and immediately the spectators drew themselves right in onto the field to form a semi-circle around the goal.

the crowd goes wild!

As each team’s player took a turn at a penalty, one or another side of the crowd would go wild! And it’s a different kind of wild to what I’m used to in Australia, here it means running forward, jumping, screaming and dancing back to your spot for the next shot. As more and more shots are played, the excitement builds so that the anticipation dancing continues as the players swap and get ready for the next shot, then an explosion of energy consumes everyone and the winning team’s player is swamped in celebration.

cheers

Keturah de Klerk, Photography Life