David Ashdown's Sports Picture Diary: The NFL at Wembley

David Ashdown was at Wembley this weekend to cover the NFL match between The San Diego Chargers and the New Orleans Saints and found the American sport a tough prospect to photograph

On Sunday I was at Wembley for a football match - one that takes an hour to play but in reality lasts about three and a half - yes, I was at the NFL showdown between The San Diego Chargers and the New Orleans Saints.

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It is with out doubt one of the most frustrating sports to photograph. The first decision is where to sit (or where not to sit to be more accurate). If I was to try and go down the side of the pitch there are so many people pitch side - half the team are not playing throughout the game and that makes it almost impossible to get a clear view of the game - especially with all those helmets and shoulder pads!

Sitting at one of the ends is the best bet as the view is clear down the pitch, but the nature of the game means that a lot of the play could some distance away.

I was using two Nikon D3 cameras, one with a 70-200mm F2.8 zoom lens and the other one with a 500mm F4.0 lens. This picture of the quarterback about to throw the ball was taken at 1/650 second at F4.0 using the 500mm lens.

The out of focus players to the left and right frame him and lead your eye to the centre of the picture, so it has a nice shape to it. There are so many players on the pitch that getting a clean view like this does not happen very often - there always seems to be a body in the way.

With all the stops for TV adverts and time outs and the constant changing of players means that the amount of actual play is in fact very small. It is a sport that can make for spectacular pictures but I think they must be very difficult to capture, perhaps that's one of the reasons the look so good.

I don't envy American photographers having to cover this every week. I think you could feel life slowly draining out of you as you sit there waiting for something to happen - give me rugby or soccer every time.

As I was coming back on the train there was a conversation between two people that had been at the game, one was saying he was behind one of the goals and half way up the stand, and his view was so bad he spent most of the game looking backwards at the big TV to try and see what was happening - I felt like saying to him that it wasn't much better by the pitch.