Andrew Daley
Photography - CPW | Coventry Pro Wrestling
Tonight I was working as a photographer at a local indie venue, shooting 'CPW' or 'Coventry Pro Wrestling' which is an indie/underground Professional Wrestling label based in Coventry. I got the work, funnily enough, through my driving instructor, whilst it wasn't paid im hoping it leads to bigger stuff in the future (as it's a bit of a niche sector), however I'd definitely love to go back and do more stuff for them at upcoming events!
If you don't know, one of my guilty pleasures is Pro Wrestling, as I just love getting absorbed in it and allowing myself to just... 'enjoy' for awhile. Thus I combined that with my passion for photography and worked at their first 'NextGen' event, which was an event where all their new and upcoming wrestlers fought in front of an audience for the first time. It was incredibly interesting, not just the wrestling, but also discovering different styles of shooting whilst on the job and adapting yourself to the situation whilst retaining that sense of awareness (shooting through the ropes but moving quickly when they come towards you as you're lying on the apron, or spending most of the time crouching or leaping up to take a shot and then back down as you're in the way of the audience, or even different camera settings changed manually on the fly depending which side of the room you're in because of lights and bounce reflection off the windows).
This is one of the absolute things I love doing in Coventry, shooting things around the City which would otherwise go unheard of or never get seen, giving publicity to the unpublicised and taking a real proactive part in engaging with the community via providing a service for free with skills I already have. I'm hoping to get a lot more 'freelance' (eg: unemployed/unpaid) work in whilst still looking for a job, to explore my city and skills more, and go to a range of new experiences. I've uploaded a selection of my gallery below, so you can get a feel for what the event was like, and see some of my 'favourite' shots!
