Whether it’s rugby, sailing, cycling or running, the British Army has traditionally been a great source of top sporting talent, often representing Britain at the Olympic Games and making history by winning gold medals for Team GB.
This was the case in 2012, when Major Heather Stanning OBE RA, a Battery Commander, alongside her rowing partner Helen Glover became the first British female rowers to win an Olympic crown. It’s moments in history like those that make Service Sport so special. Thanks to the power of photography and digital asset management, they can be captured and shared with audiences across the globe in real time.
Documenting Women’s Sports History at Twickenham Stadium
At The PhotoShelter Summit: UK/EU Edition, we talked to Geraint Ashton Jones, who served with the Royal Navy and is now Director of Alligin UK, a company that works with British army sports organisations. He shared with us the visual storytelling strategy behind capturing the first-ever women’s Army Vs Navy match played at Twickenham Stadium. He also showed us how PhotoShelter is at the core of the photography workflow that powers it all.
The women’s match opened a new chapter in Army Vs Navy rugby. Although the women’s game goes back to 2003, this was the first time that the match was played at this world-class stadium. It was important to document this historic moment for posterity, so Geraint and his team made sure they captured the story on and off the pitch. This included special moments like when the two women captains led their teams out into the stadium and a candid behind-the-scenes moment of a player lost in thought after an injury forced her to leave the match.
How Instincts + DAM Help to Document and Share the Story
Geraint and his photography team were tasked with capturing the game as it unfolded as well as telling a powerful story beyond the action. Photographers were encouraged to follow their instincts. Instead of just capturing ordinary images, they photographed intimate moments that added to the story. In order to do this, one of the photographers followed the players from both teams in the build-up to the game, travelling to France for one of their international matches against France’s Marine Nationale team.
The photographer then joined the rest of Geraint’s photo team for the RAF Inter-Services Championship.
But Geraint is a man who likes to keep busy. While at the RAF Inter Service match, he was managing 5 concurrent live events that were happening across Europe!
This, he explained, is all possible thanks to PhotoShelter’s dynamic asset management capabilities, which allowed Geraint’s team to get images into their library via FTP and use Galleries to share live or curated images with their stakeholders, audiences and more.
So how is this all possible? In this video, Geraint shows us how PhotoShelter enables him and his team to collaborate in real time:
From the Camera to the World in a Flash
For Geraint and his team to do their work successfully, they know they need to get the images from the pitch to the hands of their stakeholders as quickly as possible. They have four PhotoShelter libraries to help them manage the visual content of the various British Army Sports Organisations they work with.
He explained that their live workflows are set up to allow images to be uploaded straight from the camera via FTP into the proper PhotoShelter library or using the DropBox integration and PhotoMechanic.
Geraint also takes advantage of the PhotoShelter Hootsuite and Canva integrations.
Working closely with the Army’s Director of Communications, their team can access their images in PhotoShelter galleries and, using Canva, create custom templates and branded graphics to share iconic moments from the games to social media. With these tools, they can ensure that the content they share to tell their story is consistent and always on brand.
Let’s watch this video of Geraint giving us a breakdown of the British Army Sports creative content workflow:
Cross-Continental Collaboration and Real-Time Content Workflow
Since I left the Service one of my aims has been to bring more of that sporting excellence, camaraderie, and joy of living, to life through sporting images and as importantly the availability of sporting photo stories.
Geraint Ashton Jones
Geraint and his team don’t just document the stories of British Army sports games in the UK and Europe. His content workflow powers the British Army sports visual storytelling across continents. By this, we mean team collaboration from the remote Isle of Skye in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand!
During the International Defence Rugby Cup, hosted by New Zealand Defence Force, Geraint and the Alligin UK team achieved another first on their quest, when they made images and stories available from Auckland and Aldershot in real time on the same day.
The event was running concurrently with the women’s rugby world cup, and Neil Kennedy, who was the photographer in Auckland and was attending the rugby world cup with the USA rugby team, was supporting Alligin’s photography requirements from the International Defence Rugby Cup. As Neil was turning in, images from Scrumpix attending the British Army indoor Inter Corps Hockey in Aldershot, England, were beginning to be distributed to those looking to tell their sporting story.
Maximising the Versatility of Multiple Libraries
Delivering this in real time from their corner of the Isle of Skye in Scotland where Alligin UK is located, is made possible through excellent connectivity and a powerful digital asset management system.
“PhotoShelter is very much part of our extended and widely distributed team, their software is at the heart of our vision.”
Geraint Ashton Jones
Alligin uses PhotoShelter libraries to provide managed access to British Army sports organisations to tell their story. They include:
- The British Forces Broadcasting Services, a key partner to the UK Armed Forces providing broadcasting into every corner where the Services are deployed.
- The UK Armed Forces Rugby.
- The Army Sports Control Board’s Hockey Association.
- In addition to those, the Navy and Army Rugby Unions and the RAF News.
Alligin’s longest main client is the Army Rugby Union. They use the PhotoShelter library as a resource, so images are recycled and repurposed for other roles when they do not have current stock. They also use PhotoShelter’s real-time workflow functionality during matches, when they share summary posts on their Instagram accounts at half time and full time or for bigger games at 20 mins.
In addition to the Army Rugby Union, Alligin more recently started using PhotoShelter for their work with the Army Sports Control Board. Although this latest library is still work in progress, with some sports now live, Geraint and his team are providing both the workflow and advice on what is possible. They have also set up a workflow for the British Army’s magazine, Soldier Magazine, using PhotoShelter that allows their staff to self-serve images from their library. They are planning to set up a similar workflow with the British Forces Broadcast Service so they can share their images in real time when promoting their streamed events and other video content on social media.
Geraint went on to explain that the Alligin UK library also includes all their workflows in professional sports where they audit referees and also concussions. This is done through extensive use of PhotoShelter Workspaces, which allows teams to collect assets from various areas of the Library, the Portal, and from direct user uploads to view, share, comment on, and approve them all in one place—without ever leaving PhotoShelter. Users can gather assets from different galleries and add them to a Workspace, then invite other users to work with those assets.
He concluded: From Unit Sport to gala Sports Award Presentation evenings. From Auckland to Aldershot. From rugby to netball. Service Sport has a great story to tell. A belief that a picture paints a thousand words remains core to that original idea. The plan has been revised many times, but we remain on track to get those stories out there. Well… more or less on track!
Watch All Sessions from The PhotoShelter Summit: UK/EU Edition On Demand
Want to explore how professional sports brands and other organisations use digital asset management tools to organise their media and share content in real-time across international markets? The entire PhotoShelter Summit: UK/EU Edition is available on-demand! Watch 8+ inspiring sessions with industry leaders from brands like YHA, Match Hospitality, FIFA, Alligin UK, LaSource and more…
