George Herringshaw
George Herringshaw has been photographing sport professionally since 1970. His work has appeared in almost every British daily newspaper (pre Internet there were over fifty) and in numerous magazines and books. He has travelled extensively capturing his sporting images, covering ten Summer Olympics Games and every World Athletics Championships. To date he has photographed eight football World Cup Finals and countless 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 in the 1960s (200 metres nowdays). He formed the press photo agency 'Associated Sports Photography' in the late 1980s (previously known as Provincial Sports Photography) and is married with three grown up sons. For over ten years he was an officer of the U.K. based Professional Sports Photographers' Association.
The advent of the auto focus camera 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 earlier images on sporting-heroes.net are stock photos) but the development enabled him to concentrate more on the composition of his pictures. Indeed, all photographers were able to do this and let their equipment do the mechanical things, like exposure and focus.
The development of professional digital cameras, which George switched over to in 2002, has also allowed the expansion of the montage pages on sporting-heroes.net. He currently uses Nikon mirrorless equipment but switches to Canon (and vice versa) when the need arises. The demise of film was a revolution. Not for Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Agfa, but the for pockets of photographers World Wide. Mobile phones ? That is another story.
Nigel French
Nigel French began his career as a professional sports photographer in 1989 after studying photography at Leicester College. Since then he has photographed three European Football Final Tournaments, Champions League finals, the Open golf championship, Wimbledon Tennis, the European Athletics Championships, Cricket's World Cup, The Ryder Cup and Rugby Union's World Cup. Plus over a thousand English Premier League football games. He has twice visited the West Indies including the infamous 1998 test at Sabina Park, Jamaica, that lasted barely two hours.
His father first took him to see Leicester City F.C.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 ! More recently he has seen Leicester City win both the Premier League and the F.A Cup.
He plays golf off a handicap of 10 during what little spare time he gets and currently works as a freelance.