Does travelling up and down the country following your team home and away week in week out sound like a great job to you?
Well, thats the job of Nizaam Jones, Cheltenham Town’s club photographer, to capture the highs and the lows of life in the EFL.
Having photographed the Robins for the last 13 and a half years Jones took on the role of club photographer at the start of the 22/23 season capturing both their penultimate and final heartbreaking season in League One before the club suffered relegation on the final day of the 23/24 season.
An often-overlooked job club photographers work tirelessly on match days often being one of the first members of staff at the ground and usually one of the last to leave.
Tasked with capturing: “a variety of images including action, sponsors, mascots and man of the match awards” Jones is expected to be in two places at once throughout a match day cosplaying as an event, portrait and sport photographer on any given day.
“You need to be versatile as a club photographer. You need to be in the right place at the right time, ensuring you get the right content for the club to use across socials.” Club photographers are required to send images within a couple of minutes of the action happening to feed the fans desire for content.
To many Jones’ job sounds like the dream role however in a highly competitive industry it is imperative to stand out from the crowd.
“I would say to anyone starting out in this industry you need to build a strong portfolio of images and gain a good rapport with different clubs. Starting at grass route level, shoot as much content as possible, making sure to use social media to share your photos and gain recognition with different contacts in the industry.”
Being tasked with following an EFL club like Cheltenham Town up and down the country understandably comes with its highs and lows, but Jones has plenty of fond memories from his three seasons at the club: “My favourite memory working for Cheltenham was capturing Issac’s debut goal against Accrington Stanley.
The emotion in the photos speaks for itself and I really enjoyed capturing those set of images”.
As difficult and demanding Jones’ job is he’s always the most passionate on the sidelines, a passion which is projected in his incredible work.
