For a long time I’ve been looking forward to the start of the Swedish football season. During the winter I have much less to photograph for Pic-Agency. I jump in and cover hockey matches when other photographers can’t make it, but I don’t have a hockey team I get to photograph week in and week out. I shoot a lot of basketball during the winter, but there is very little media interest in basketball. Most of the basketball pictures I sold during the winter were to small newspapers and to websites.
With the Swedish football I’m assigned to Djurgården IF, one of the Stockholm teams, and I get to photograph all of their home matches. It means more opportunities to be out photographing and more opportunities to try and sell some pictures. So I’ve really been looking forward to the start of the football season, plus I’m now going into my second year photographing for Pic-Agency and I’m really excited to build on my work and try to improve on my previous year.
The football season started a week ago, but Djurgården started on the road so I didn’t get to photograph that game. This weekend, on Eastern sunday, they had their home premiere. The panorama picture at the top of this post is from their stadium. Stockholm Stadium is the oldest stadium in Stockholm, originally designed and used for the 1912 Olympics. This should be the final season they play at this venue since starting next year it will not meet the requirements set by FIFA and UEFA. As a photographer I don’t have much a problem with this, the fans are far from the pitch and have an awful view. The lighting is really bad and makes photographing night matches a bit of a nightmare. Plus the stadium is pretty open leaving you completely at the mercy of the elements. And despite what people say, the famous Swedish summers can be filled with rain.
The match itself was a bit of a snoozer. They played against GIF Sundsvall, a newly promoted team, that seems content to go there and hope for the best. Djurgården took the lead in the first half, and even after the referee Daniel Stålhammar sent off a Djurgården player it seemed impossible for the visitors to get back into the match.
I’ll leave you with a few more pics and as always remind you that you can see more images on Pic-Agency’s website.
