This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be invited to take photos at Paspaley’s Polo in the City event at Albert Park, Melbourne. I was a guest of Chique Events, shooting with my friend Kathryn.
It wasn’t the first polo match I’ve seen, but it was more compact and the event itself a little more than a regular day at the polo in Werribee. There were extravagant marquees full of glamorous people. It was a great day.
Chique’s marquee was sponsored by Vodka Cruisers and guests were treated to food by Blake’s Feast; the tiny hamburgers were the cutest things I’d ever seen. Chique were providing Jurlique treatments and make up by éllie make up.
The day’s itinerary went:
- Greeting and drinks
- Polo game: Paspaley vs Coopers
- Divot Stomping
- Ladies’ dash
- Men’s dash
- Polo game: Victoria vs NSW
- Divot Stomping
- Presentation of the awards
- After party
- Drinking throughout
After the first match I ducked over to the horsy area where a small group of spectators were learning about polo from one of the players. I was interested to hear that in Polo the horses are generally allowed to mature to around 3-4 years of age before training begins and have a long life as a polo pony. One of the horses there was twelve! Each rider will have between 4 and 6 horses on hand to play throughout the 4 chukkas of the match. At half time, after two chukkas, the spectators come out onto the field and “stomp divots”. Divots being the holes made by the horses hooves and the players who sometimes hit the ground rather than the ball.
Sadly my day came to an shortly after the second match. My Achillie’s Tendon took some damage a few weeks ago and is still trying to recover, it was giving me grief all day and walking around and around a polo field wasn’t doing it any good, so I called it a day early.
All up, I still got images I’m happy with, I present some of them below and more on my Flickr photostream. I’ve been doing a fair bit of event photography of late. I think I’m really starting to enjoy it.
