Nolli Waterman: From the Pitch to the Commentary Box
Eighty-two England caps, and now the microphone
I had never been to the Recreation Ground before. Arriving at 8am after a 5am start from London, with the sun coming up over an empty pitch, I had a feeling the day would be worth the drive. We were there for Rugby Journal, to photograph Danielle "Nolli" Waterman: 82 England caps, a World Cup winner in 2014, and the first woman to commentate on rugby for ITV.
She met us with warmth and confidence. There is a calm depth to her that you do not always get through a screen. The brief was to go past the athlete and into the woman she is now, committed, thoughtful, and still driven by the game she loves.
So most of these pictures are not of a rugby player at all. They are of someone at work. The frame I would choose from the whole day is a page of handwritten commentary notes with a microphone held above it: names, numbers, things to say, written out and scribbled through. Her legacy is not only the caps, it is what she does with a microphone now, and you cannot photograph that by putting somebody in a kit and asking them to look determined. You photograph the notes.
We shot the match from the gantry, which is the view she actually works from: the pitch below, Bath's terraces rising behind the stand, the crowd in their bobble hats underneath. These are the moments I am drawn to. The strength behind the softness. The story in the stillness.
There is more work for the same magazine in the Jaz Joyce portraits, more England women's rugby in the Red Roses at Twickenham, and the rest in the sports portfolio. If you are commissioning portraits for a magazine, a campaign or a brand story, here is how commissions work.