THERE’S AN ENORMOUS amount of skill and know-how involved in taking the perfect photograph at precisely the perfect moment. But there is a large portion of luck required too.
INPHO managing director Billy Stickland has captured too many iconic images and too many duds to believe anything different.
Yet his is the name beside one of the most captivating images from Ireland’s Six Nations victory over France in Paris last March. Not the shot directly below here, that may have been a story to tell on another day.
His photograph of a celebrating/retiring Brian O’Driscoll on the full-time whistle was a moment of rare unbridled joy from Ireland’s most-capped player.
The Kearney brothers plead for the mercy of a TMO after France cross the try-line. Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO
“If France had scored that try it would be exactly the opposite,” Stickland says philosophically to TheScore.ie.
“Remi Tales would be jumping in the air and Brian O’Driscoll would be pissed off. You just have to go with whatever it is.”
Stickland was on ‘BOD duty’ in those final, frantic minutes as Ireland scrambled to hold Les Bleus at bay and keep their hands on the Six Nations title. It’s a job description that had become a regular fixture in the life of sports photographers, but now they are left to follow other figures in his absence.
Stickland camped behind the French try-line, his long lens trained on the number 13 for the final five minutes of the game.
“Over in the far corner, France should have scored a try, it was a forward pass, but I wasn’t concentrating on that. I was just on O’Driscoll.
“Basically it was just a matter of concentrating and waiting on the final whistle. Normally, you’d be amazed that they don’t actually celebrate, but the tension was great at the end of that game that he just exploded when the final whistle went.”