'You wait for the action,' says Andy Hooper. 'It's about getting yourself into the best position and anticipating what will happen so you're ready to shoot it.' Which is why we have been sitting in a small boat in Weymouth Bay for a good half hour waiting for some sailors to race towards us, while I try not to let waves splash the £6,000 camera I have been lent for the day.
Two sailors in a 49er, a two-handed skiff, speed towards us. 'Hold it until they get nearer,' says Hooper. We start shooting, the quick clack-clack-clack of the shutter making a satisfying sound. Within seconds they have charged around the buoy and are heading back out towards open water, our chance over — you want to be able to see their faces in a photograph. It all happened so quickly, I don't know if I got anything. We look at my pictures on the screen on the back of the camera. 'You've got it already,' says Hooper, encouragingly. Because my pictures aren't bad at all. Sure, some of them are out of focus, but there are a couple where you can clearly see both sailors engrossed in their sport.
Hooper likes a picture of the sailors swooshing past with lots of spray from the sea, but I've managed to clip their heads off. 'Standard photographer's mistake,' he says. 'But you can see movement, which is important. If there's nothing to suggest that in a sports photograph, it can look tame.' I don't tell him I had no idea what I was looking at, I just held down the auto focus and the shutter button and hoped for the best.
Hooper is the Daily Mail's chief sports photographer and winner of countless awards for his pictures, the man who has had a ringside seat at some of the biggest sporting events of the last 20 years. I had imagined all sports photographers to be brash and pushy, but Hooper is serenely calm and patient. There is a lot of waiting around for the action — that split second it takes to kick the ball that scores the winning goal, cross the finish line, the knockout punch, the fingertip finish of a swimming race. We've now been out on the water for an hour, but taken pictures for less than two minutes. 'All that time is building up to that moment,' he says.
