Gary Anderson starting 2024 with another Players Championship win re,minded us of this fabulous pice from our Ally Pally special. Lawrence Lustig’s One Shot column features some truly superb imagery:
Around every sporting contest, as well as what is going on in front of you, there is more often many other photo opportunities for a photographer to capture around the event.
The excellent Times Chief Sports Photographer Marc Aspland and his colleague Bradley Ormesher, capture these moments so well in their regular photo led feature “Sport Unseen” where images which are not used in the daily edition to accompany a report are published to give a more in depth look at sport.
In 2019 I was privileged to be asked by the Times to be the first non-staff photographer to do an “Unseen Gallery” and it would also be the first time darts had been featured in the series.
I chose the photos I thought would make an impact on the page and be interesting and informative to a readership that ,in reality, would probably not be followers of the game.
Fan participation has always been an important part of a night at “The Darts” and their enjoyment is something I always tried to portray.One such opportunity arose at the 2019 World Championship Quarter-Finals and I felt it had to be part of my portfolio showcasing darts at it’s best.
As Gary Anderson took on Dave Chisnall for a place in the semi-final ,along with his wife Rachel, in the players section, he had his number one fan, his young son Tai, decked out in a replica of his dads shirt and wearing foam fingers on his hands.
The bond between father and son was clear for all to see as Gary waved to him from the stage at every break and Tai cheered every shot, standing on his chair to see over the barrier waving back with ,what seemed on him to be, the two giant fingers.
Just seeing the shear joy on Tai’’s face as he watches his dad in action, makes this image, one of my own personal favourites of all my darts photographs.
For the technically minded I used a Canon Mk11 1dx at 3200 iso with a canon ef 300mm 2.8 lens at f3.5 at a speed of 250th of a second
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Lawrence Lustig is a former official photographer of the PDC and has had a ringside seat to most of the modern game’s iconic moments…
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