Ben Peters Photography

To say that the last eight months has been tough has been a massive understatement, but there has been something else that has been troubling me. At Ravensbourne, the first thing my tutor said to me is what type of photographer do I want to be? Sport photographer right! Well that isn’t the case anymore, I’m prepared to admit it, sports photography is no longer the same to me. When I get home from a shoot, if I pull my laptop out and show my images to my parents, I know I’ve had a really good shoot. This is something that hasn’t happened to me that much this year.

There was actually one match which I feel was a big moment or at least a turning point in me being a sports photographer. 19th January, Charlton played Accrington Stanley. I got to the 80th minute and there was one question in my mind, what is the point of this? At that point I had virtually no images that had inspired me, I was feeling down and I just wanted that match to end. Two minutes after that, Charlton scored and I’d finally captured an image of a goal, ending a tough patch of four months where I was missing every-single one, only for the goal to be ruled out for a foul. That just summarised my luck. But in the final 10 minutes, that match had a disallowed goal, an eighteen man brawl, two red cards, a last minute penalty and winner for Charlton. I also came out was a set of images of the fans celebrating that I was very happy with. It seemed funny how for 90% of the match I writing it off and then the final 10 minutes was possibly one of the best moments I’ve captured. I did think that this would be the match that turned me back towards this genre however it just never felt the same. I was starting to capture goals again but I was no longer saying to myself Wow!

A few weeks ago, I put up a poll on my professional Instagram asking what I should post on my account going forward. Portraiture is a genre that I’m really enjoying, it has been filling the void. So I asked my followers whether I should post solely portraits or sports. Criss-crossing didn’t make for a good account. Well 100% of people voted for sports, ok it was only 17 people but I was still shocked. I think my best friend hit the nail on the head with why that happened “the audience you’ve built on the account is primarily sports based”. The poll made me feel very low because now I thought I was going to let my followers down, they wanted me to continue doing something which I was no longer passionate about. This in turn did also make me realise that I was creating work for others rather than myself.

Over the summer I’ve had a lot of contemplation, I did try to give it another shot, I’ve covered three out of nine matches which I easily could’ve attended and unfortunately sports photography just is not the same to me anymore. I do agree with my best friend who said “I think we all have a piece of ourselves that doesn’t want to let go of the thing we’ve done for so long because it’s scary right? to let go of the thing you’ve known forever”

Going forward, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m currently planning a project to shoot from January onwards where I’m going to be documenting Charlton fans for my Final Major Project at Ravensbourne. I said to another one of my best friends that “this will be last hurrah with sports photography” It was fun whilst it lasted, but I think it is time to let go, as my friend said “maybe if you don’t view it with such finality? you’re not letting it go necessarily, just branching out for now.”

So, hopefully that has cleared up some things, to all those who are still here, thank you for taking the time to read over my thoughts.

Benjamin Peters