Ice Life for UCLan student

A University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) student has taken to the ice to complete his dream placement as an international sports photographer.

Tom Rowland has left the warm studio behind and travelled to Gangneung, in South Korea, to cover the VoIP Defender World Junior Curling Championships 2017.

The 19-year-old, from Blackpool, is spending two weeks covering the 10 teams in all rounds of the competition.

He said: “This is giving me the experience of what is expected of being a media photographer, when images need to be turned over quickly and handed to the rest of the team so the images can be published.

“I’ve met some incredible people and I'm working with an amazing experienced team who are helping me along the journey. So far it has been an amazing experience and I have learnt and developed new skills.”

Tom, who attended St George’s High School and Blackpool Sixth Form, had no experience of curling before he got out there. He started photographing sports in college when he worked with Blackpool BMX Club and did this alongside photographing music and bands around Manchester.

The second year student beat off stiff competition from photography students from across the globe to land the prestigious role.

He said: “I heard about the placement through my course at UCLan so I applied by sending off 10 of my sport images. I was over the moon when I found out I’d been picked, it was unbelievable.”

Jonathan Purcell, photography course leader and Tom’s tutor, added: “We are pleased that he is able to demonstrate his photographic awareness at this international competition. Tom will gather a huge amount of creative and practical experience and we hope that this will support his future aspirations. Once Tom is back in the UK we look forward to Tom telling us more about his experiences in South Korea.”

Tom is also blogging about this experience so visit http://www.worldcurling.org/wjcc2017/smtp-blog to find out more.