Purple Clouds Photography – Phil Oldham’s Photoblog

Manchester Airport once again closed to air traffic due to the excessive snow unloaded on the region over the night of the 4th January. Looking for something different I went to the southern side of the airport to get a shot looking over towards the terminal building. To my surprise, and despite continuing snow flurries the airport had reopened and flights were slowly resuming.

The weather has also put paid to much of my sporting activities recently. Out of 5 jobs to be shot since New Years day, 4 of them have been cancelled, including both Carling Cup semi final first legs (between Blackburn and Aston Villa, and Manchester City v Manchester United). The fixtures lists will becoming somewhat congested over the next 4 weeks…

James from YNMS rang to say that Manchester Airport had buckled under the pressure of the weather and had closed. By the time I’d gotten there, it’d reopened! The weather was coming in waves, and at least two other heavy snow showers passed whilst I was there. First up was a shot across the airfield, so I went to the south side, however the weather made visibility very poor and I couldn’t see anything! I shot back round to the opposite side and managed to get the above shot of an airport worker de-icing an American Airlines flight on the apron.

Inside the terminals was surprisingly quiet, and passengers were moving through quickly. There were only two cancellations in the time the airport had closed, and I suspect they’d have changed to delayed before long!

Stephen & Laura booked me to do their wedding in the Summer of 2008, and how time has flown since! The weather this week has been very festive, and despite the city centre location (The Castlefield Rooms, Manchester) there was still a good amount of snow around. Its not very often that it snows at weddings – especially in good ol’ Blighty, so I intended to make the most of it!

I chose to post this picture though, because it is also not often (probably less so) that you end up with the Manchester United defence – albeit injured ones – turning up at the same venue for a pint. Probably before watching their colleagues being beaten 3-0 at Fulham! Left to right we have Rio Ferdinand, Johnny Evans, Wes Brown and finally John O’Shea.

More images are available to view from this wedding in the wedding portfolio. See the link at the top of the page!

All in all – a good day!

Sedgley Park score

Having had a cancellation for today, I took it upon myself to get in some practise with rugby union. Geoff Roberts was kind enough to allow me to shoot Sedgley Parks derby match against Manchester.

Manchester are currently bottom of the table, and the match promised to be fairly one sided. One sided it was.

I used the 1D Mark III with the 300 2.8 to shoot the game, the action never came close enough to warrant the 70 – 200 2.8. The Mark III was a life saver today, the light fell dramatically in the second half and I wouldn’t have been able to get anything hand’t I pushed the ISO up to 6400. Even then, the last 15 minutes were not really possible to photograph, as the shutter speed dropped to a lowly 1/250!

A cold, late November evening didn’t stop the stars coming out for the United for Unicef charity dinner hosted by Manchester United at Old Trafford. Many of the first team turned up, including Van der Saar, Giggs and Evra.

Amongst the raft of footballers were a number of TV celebs including the previously shot Ralf Little. We’ll be on first name terms soon.

Shot for Yorkshire News and Media Service.