Essendon had won five of their last six games but conceded five of the last six goals on a dreary Sunday afternoon against Collingwood. The result left the Essendon two wins and significant percentage outside the top eight. While coach John Worsfold suggested there was still plenty for the Dons to gain this season, you sensed that Michael Hurley and his teammates know their finals chances are bleak – a feeling perfectly captured by the AFL Media’s senior staff photographer Michael Willson.
Willson is a man who loves football. But more than that, loves what the game represents – what it means to people.
“I think that appreciation I have for the game comes from having grown up with it in the country,” says Willson, whose work has featured in newspapers and magazines around Australia and the world. He played footy since he was about six through until he was 30, winning a premiership with Lake Boga along the way.
“I love football and have a real appreciation of what it can do for small towns and what it means to communities. It’s a social platform that’s so important to so many people. And having grown up around that enables me to communicate that emotion of our game.”
It is Willson’s intimate knowledge of the game that has helped give him an eye that can put a different spin on the game. Before finding work with the AFL, Willson spent years with his camera, shooting VFL games and country footy as a hobby. It helped him to build his skills, get his eye in and try a few different techniques. But it was always that appreciation of what the game can provide emotionally for people that has underpinned his work.
“I think I’m really in tune with players and their children and the family kind of settings that a lot of football clubs throughout Australia lean on,” said Willson.
This awareness helps Willson to communicate through the lens and take people to a moment and what it meant to those people involved.
One images that stands out is one of Mitch Clark and Chris Scott from 2015.
“Quite a few people know that image, it was taken at the MCG a few years ago when Mitch was really struggling with his mental health.”
It’s a striking, bold black and white image that captures a simple gesture. The shot is isolated, and the corridor Scott and Clark are walking down feels like it could go on forever.
Another image of Willson’s that perfectly captures a moment, albeit a happier one is his shot of a barefooted Sam Mitchell and his family following his 300th game.
“I like it because it’s not often a scene that most get to see after a game,” says Willson. “It’s just something simple – walking back to a car – but it shows a togetherness and a real family feeling that exists in our game at every level.”
But ultimately, it is the action shots that are demanded by news desks.
“Editorial will want an action shot that’s more newsworthy and not so pretty I guess… not so ‘arty’.”
Willson is finding there is an appetite for the “arty” shots though, and that is through social media.
“A lot of my followers on Instagram and Twitter, it’s those photos that are a little bit different that tend to appeal to the general public more. But I would say the news desks don’t utilise them as much as they’re running a news service as opposed to a pretty picture service.”
Though to say that Willson’s photos are more at home in a gallery than on the back page is to underestimate his considerable strengths as a news photographer.
While many may think the athleticism of Australian Rules automatically lends itself to great imagery, capturing that in the form of photography has plenty of challenges.
“It can be tough with backgrounds, you obviously want to try and keep your background as clean as possible, so it doesn’t detract from the photo, but sometimes that’s impossible with the amount of signage and LEDs that are present at most of the games now.”
The main lens that Willson uses for action shots is at a fixed focal length. This means it doesn’t zoom and leaves him at the mercy of how far away the player or the action is. He has a second camera with a smaller zoom lens – a 70-200mm lens – which makes it a little easier to compose shots on the fly and zoom in as tight as he can.
But regardless of the camera he uses, Willson knows when he’s got the shot.
“You can almost sense that you’ve got something special before you even look at the back of your camera,” says Willson.
One of those moments was three years ago when Chris Judd’s career ended on a buckled knee.
“I saw him coming over and as I was looking at it through the lens I thought that knee is on a really nasty angle, and sure enough he’s gone down and it’s the last game he played. I knew straight way that as sad a frame as it is, it was a very consequential moment – a moment where the career of one of the greatest players of our era came to an end.”
On the more joyous occasions, Willson can tell when he has a great mark “in the can”.
“You know straight away,” he says. “You can tell by the sound of the crowd. You usually know that you’ve got a pretty special frame in there.”
But still there are nagging doubts as a photographer, like a footballer, is at the mercy of umpires.
“There are times when an umpire can run in front of you and ruin your shot, and there are a lot of other variables that can come into play,” says Willson. “But barring all interference and that your camera’s done its job in keeping focus, you pretty much know straight away that you’ve got something special.”
