The Photographers and Writers

George Herringshaw has been photographing sport for nearly forty years and professionally since 1970. His work has appeared in almost every British daily newspaper (there are over fifty) and in countless magazines and books. He has travelled extensively capturing his sporting images, covering all the Olympics since 1976 and every one of the World Athletics Championships. To date he has photographed six football World Cup Finals and numerous European Cup Finals of various kinds. Other sports he has photographed include Golf, Tennis, Rugby (both codes), Horse Racing and Cricket.

His favourite sport to photograph is athletics, not entirely surprising as it was the sport he personally most enjoyed - he was a Leicestershire senior men's 220 yards champion.

He formed the press photo agency 'Associated Sports Photography' in the late 1980s (previously the agency was known as Provincial Sports Photography). He is married with three grown up sons. For over ten years he was an officer of the Professional Sports Photographers' Association and edited their newsletter.

The advent of the auto focus camers systems in the very late 1980s radically altered sports photography. Skilled follow-focus exponents like George, who specialized in 'stock' photos, became common place (most of the images on sporting-heroes.net are stock photos) but the development enabled him to concentrate more on the composition of his pictures. Indeed, all photograhers were able to do this and let their equipment do the mechanical things, like exposure and focus. The most recent development has been the expansion of professional digital cameras which George switched over to in 2002.

The photographs of Ed Lacey featured on sporting-heroes.net cover the period 1950-1976. One of Britain's best known professional sports photographers of his generation, Ed was sadly killed in a car crash in October 1976, a few weeks after returning from photographing the Montreal Olympic Games. It was the fifth Olympics at which he had worked.

He had been a runner in his youth and was a member of Belgrave Harriers (London). Athletics was probably the sport his work was most closely associated with though he also covered Golf and Tennis during the summer months. Most of the sporting-heroes.net 'photo pages' for the 1960s of Golf and Tennis are the work of Ed Lacey.

During the winter he divided his time between photographing Cross Country running, Rugby Union and Football. His photographs were published in all of the English national Newspapers and they won him many awards. Few books of the period do not include some of his images. He was then one of a hand full of sports photographers shooting colour.

However, his most often published photograph is in black and white, taken at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. It is a stunning picture of USA long jumper Bob Beamon 'in orbit' shattering the world record by an amazing one foot 9 1/2 inches/55 cm. It won for Ed the international sports picture of the year award (Beamon's jump to this day remains the Olympic record).

It was Ed's photographs in 'Athletics Weekly' that caught the eye of the young George Herringshaw and influenced his approach to sports photography. They both worked at the Montreal Olympics, Ed's last Games and George's first : it was there that George was able to see, in close up, how the seasoned professional worked. When out on location, always pack some food, was just one of the valuable non photographic lessons he learnt from Ed!

Nigel French began his career as a professional sports photographer in 1989 after studying photography at Leicester College. Since then he has, virtually every summer, photographed the Open golf championship and Wimbledon Tennis, along with countless cricket matches. He has twice visited the West Indies including the infamous 1998 test at Sabina Park, Jamaica, that lasted barely two hours.

He has covered each of the various British and European football finals as well as Euro 2000. Other major events at which he has worked include the European Athletics Championships, Cricket's World Cup, The Ryder Cup and Rugby Union's World Cup.

He has yet to photograph Leicester City F.C. winning the FA Cup Final. As it happens no one has ever photographed Leicester City winning the FA cup!

His father first took him to see Leicester City when he was seven and his affection for the 'Foxes' has remained. Needless to say football is Nigel's favourite sport and for his 18th birthday he was given a Leicester City season ticket. That same year he joined Associated Sports Photography and every Saturday that season he ended up elsewhere. His younger brother made good use of the season ticket! He plays golf off a handicap of 10 during what little spare time he gets.