Olympic wrestling

Many years ago I worked in many differing areas of sports photography. One of those was Olympic Wrestling. Although I've not done any of this for a few years, I have plans to extend the range of sports I cover over the next few months, so would like to give it another try. Wrestling was fantastic to shoot, and watch. These are old photos and have been recovered from 35mm negatives so please understand the quality of image will be affected.

Contact Youth Theatre, 1993

Another organisation I occasionally worked for was Contact Youth Theatre. The following are from one of the community productions they did this year.

More 1992 Youth Theatre

Some new photos below. Having gone through my negative files there are large numbers of  group shots that were taken for publicity purposes. They show people who came from the same area and were used for press releases. We only did these one year, or maybe two, but they cover literally hundreds of people.

I know a lot of ex MYT people visit this blog and I'm happy for them to download any of the photos they want. But there are simply too many of these to put on the blog (over 100). If people wanted to I could put them onto an image hosting site with a link from here so they could be downloaded, without overwhelming the blog. If people want me to do this then let me know.

In the meantime, some more photos. Enjoy

Manchester Youth Theatre again...

More from 1991. I've only rehearsal shots from a couple of years, but I'm realy pleased to have found the first photo in the group, since it shows Geoff Sykes at the end of auditions. One of the few of either Geoff or Hazel that I have, though I'll continue to look for further examples.

Manchester Youth Theatre in 1991

This is the youth theatre in 1991. More shots from this, and other years, to follow. The first one is the group photo from this year - taken on the steps of what was then Nicholls Ardwick High School. But the great thing about this shot is it shows Geoff Sykes (bottom of stone balustrade left) and Hazel Sykes (bottom of stone balustrade right).

Manchester Youth Theatre again

So these are the second batch from 1992, and I'll look at doing some from another year next time. Hope you enjoy. The first is a general view of the whole cast/technical crew etc which was traditionally taken in the first week.  What is great about this is that you can see Geoff Sykes (half way up on left, stood in front of end of the stone rail), but I can't see Hazel anywhere.

The next photo is of the wonderful Benny Rothman, with Mike Harding and the cast of one of the plays from that year which was based on the mass trespass of Kinder Scout

And finally a couple of rehearsal photographs

Manchester Youth Theatre

Not all my photography has been about sports - for a long time I worked every year for a real Manchester institution - the Manchester Youth Theatre run by Geoff and Hazel Sykes. Unfortunately it's no longer in existence, but for over 20 years it allowed young people from Manchester to experience the reality of theatre work. These young people would work throughout their school summer holidays, then taking over such venues as the Library theatre and Green Room for their productions - which they frequently sold out. The photos here are from 1992 and are the first real archival shots - hence their in black and white - but there's more to come!