When Gabriel Martinelli scored against Liverpool in February, most Arsenal supporters at the Emirates were only thinking about celebrating.
But one fan in the North Bank, the end where Martinelli gave Arsenal the lead, had other ideas. Matt Dingle’s mind was focused on keeping his arms in a fixed position above his head, pointing at the corner flag while trying to keep his balance in the chaos.
“That photo will live with me for a long time,” the 22-year-old photographer tells The Athletic. “I knew in the second half, I wanted to be on the lower concourse in the North Bank because I know where the players celebrate — and it happened. I was on the steps in between the sections of the stands and I had my arms raised as I was falling forward because of all the people that run down the stairs to the corner flag.”
(Matt Dingle for Arsenal FC)
Martinelli’s goal, followed by another from Leandro Trossard to make it 3-1, allowed Arsenal to reignite their title challenge.
What made the way Dingle captured this moment different, was where he was located and how he treated the photograph after full-time — a combination that has seen a quick evolution among Arsenal fan photographers who have begun working with the club, players and the Premier League itself.
Being in position to capture Martinelli’s celebration against Liverpool has taken years of work and networking. For Dingle, from Atlanta, Georgia, it all started in a conversation with Hector Bellerin, the former Arsenal right-back, during the club’s first post-lockdown U.S. tour in 2022.
“I was still external media,” Dingle, a journalism student, says. “I was shooting for (football media brand) Copa90 and ran into Bellerin at an open training session. He pointed out my camera and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’, so I wanted to get a lot of photos of him because he’s well connected with his off-the-pitch activities with art and culture.
“I posted those pictures on Instagram and he found and shared them. Then him and I just got started talking on Instagram through DMs.”
Bellerin’s interest in Dingle’s camera was genuine. It was the fact Dingle was using a Panasonic rather than the Canons or Nikons used by other sports photographers that caught the full-back’s eye. A purchase made because it was all he could afford on his student budget, it was a spark that would contribute to a movement that resulted in recognition from the club.
The return of full stadia after a year of behind-closed-doors football in 2021 was another. A new energy around Emirates Stadium helped the players build momentum for two successive title races, but this is also when more fan experimentation with photography from the stands took off.
The 3-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur in September 2021 was the first time another photographer, Hepta Outis, brought his camera to a game.
Unlike Dingle, Outis did so purely for fun.
He posted his photos onto his Instagram account, which had about 400 followers, and they were well received. At a time when it was easier to get tickets, Hepta applied what he learned from YouTube and photography books at other Arsenal games as well as at his friend’s weekly five-a-side matches.
“My Instagram kept growing because Arsenal fans wanted to use my photographs as wallpapers,” Outis, a 30-year-old fan from Paris who moved to London in 2017, says. “Arsenal reached out to me at the beginning of last season to do some shots from the stands. I never thought that would happen.
“I was working in finance, so it was completely different. I’m living because of my photography today which is amazing because I love it — it was so surprising.”
As well as Outis working with Arsenal from the stands, Dingle’s photo of Martinelli was taken while shooting for the club. Arsenal’s Creators Club involves supporters shooting photos of supporters while working as paid members of Arsenal’s matchday team across men’s and women’s matches.
It has been more visible this season, with the club tagging the photographers on their social channels like with these photos taken by @shotbykya from the 3-1 win over Southampton:
These collaborations help showcase the work of these supporters. “I love it,” Outis adds. “Everyone is different, so giving the chance to fans to work with the club and show their creativity is amazing. For me, more females needed to be involved and that’s happening now.
“It felt like something new, I hadn’t seen anyone else in the Premier League do something like this before. Even something as simple as tagging the photographers on Instagram shows the respect they have for us. Doing what you love with the club you love is amazing.”
“If I can translate what I see in my head onto an off-the-cuff moment that I have zero control over, that’s a good shot,” Dingle explains. “Similar to what the players like, a candid moment that makes it look like I set it up myself is amazing.
“A perfect example is after Fabio Vieira scored against Bournemouth, I turned around and saw this guy throwing his daughter in the air, and I quickly pointed the camera and got it. When I looked back, it was perfect.”
(Matt Dingle for Arsenal FC)
“My perfect shot tells a story,” Outis says. “When you see it, you feel something deeper. Everyone can take a photo, but you have to take it with the right timing, lighting and subject.
“Last year against Manchester United when Declan Rice scored, every photographer is going to focus on Rice or the team celebrating. I was with the fans and got a shot of one fan crying, wow. When I saw him, I thought, ‘I need to get this. This is deep’.”
(Hepta Outis for Arsenal FC)
When focusing on a player on the pitch, Jerushan Perumal, 23, speaks about the importance of keeping their whole body in frame. This became particularly noticeable with a slight change in approach to his photography at games last season. Rather than just photographing a single moment, catching players in flow has resulted in some of his most popular work.
The first example is a stop-motion video of Emile Smith Rowe dribbling, which was viewed 100,000 times on X.
ESR10
with the right commentary too pic.twitter.com/H9nucI0RHT
— JP17Photography on Insta (@jerushan_17) February 27, 2024
“We all know Smith Rowe is going to run with the ball,” Perumal says on the moment he caught the shot. “I quickly switched to burst mode so I could focus on him and hold the button down throughout his run. All I’m thinking is to follow his head and make sure his feet are in the picture too.
“I wasn’t thinking I would make a reel when I shot that, but I had a dial that allows me to fast forward through all my pictures and that’s when I realised I could.”
Sensing something could happen, keeping focus on the subject and then deciding what to do with the material afterwards was Perumal’s process. Having already practised this on Smith Rowe, the perfect opportunity arose when Bukayo Saka put Arsenal 1-0 up against Bayern Munich weeks later in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final.
decided to do this instead of normal photos pic.twitter.com/Va5RSSWetM
— JP17Photography on Insta (@jerushan_17) April 10, 2024
This edit of his pictures was viewed 220,000 times on X, with the help of the ‘Arsenal Twitter’ community.
Despite how crisp these images came out, there have been struggles, especially in the midst of celebrations. Perumal found that out when Saka scored against Manchester United in January 2023, with a slightly more blurred photo the result of a bump mid-shot.
There is still work to do when a shot is caught cleanly to create a slightly different vibe to those we usually see published.
“I won’t touch any of the photos during the match,” Dingle says. “After full time, I’ll get my laptop out, plug in all my SD cards and open up Adobe Lightroom. Usually I’ll get about 3-4,000 raw photos. From there I’ll pick maybe 200 to 250 and then start editing one by one.
“I’ve got about 30 presets based on what I want the photo to look like. Typically it takes about two to two-and-a-half hours and that all happens the same night, so for a 7.30pm kick-off, I’ll typically be done by one at 1.30 in the morning.”
When done as a hobby, photographing players can come with some surprising benefits.
“Someone from Martinelli’s team reached out to me saying he really liked a photo and asked to use it,” Perumal, who started photography after encouragement from friends, says. “I said, ‘Go for it’. It was just him and Gabriel Jesus in the frame with the whole stadium in the background.”
Another surprise came when Rice used one of Perumal’s photos on his Instagram story last season.
“It’s always been me posting and then somehow they see it,” he adds. “With Rice, I hadn’t posted to Instagram yet but someone reached out and told me to look at his story, so I did and saw my photo. They knew it was my photo because I have a subtle watermark on my pictures.”
Smith Rowe brought a photographer to his announcement as a Fulham player after making the move this summer. Dingle has worked with Martin Odegaard during pre-season tours and gone on holiday with Eddie Nketiah as a fly-on-the-wall photographer.
For the most part, posting photos on social media is now part of the job of a professional footballer. Within brand deals, there could be obligations for a certain number of social media posts in a year to showcase the brand’s latest boots or lifestyle products — and there is a reason why players are gravitating towards this new wave of photographers.
“The more elevated a player’s image aesthetic is, the easier it is for them to align with premium brand partners who share the same values,” Jordan Wise, founder of GAFFER — a media platform focused on athletes and brands — and the agent of Smith Rowe, says.
“A player’s brand identity can carry massive commercial earning potential. Players have become increasingly aware of this and are taking ownership of how they project themselves, even down to the aesthetic of their social posts.”
With Odegaard, for instance, Dingle says: “He likes more of the in-between moments. Players see thousands of photos of them carrying a ball, so they like the more off-the-wall moments that show personality.
“Another player big on that is Ben White. He posted a photo from the Wolves game, and it was just him in the tunnel.”
Dingle has a direct line to some players while with others he will send a folder of photos to someone in their team. As was the case with Bellerin, nothing makes up for the off-chance of a face-to-face conversation.
“This pre-season, I was at the team hotel in Philadelphia and I ran into Odegaard,” Dingle says. “I could tell he recognised my face, but didn’t know who I was. I just went up to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Matt’, and he was like, ‘Oh my God’. We had a quick chat and then said he loved one of the photos by the corner flag. I thought ‘Perfect, you guys play Liverpool tomorrow, I’ll be sure to get one of those’.”
The player-specific aspect of football photography is a developing space, which is why those connections are just as important away from the pitch. When Nketiah went on a post-season holiday to Tulum, Mexico, he made a request for Dingle to document his time away with his friends.
(Photo courtesy of Matt Dingle)
“He said, ‘You’re here on holiday with me. I trust your process and whatever you do’,” he says. “If you imagine just going on holiday with your mates and documenting it for your memories, that’s what it was like.”
Having that relationship established helped when the pair crossed paths later in the summer.
Arsenal played Manchester United the day before Smith Rowe left their U.S. tour to complete his transfer to Fulham. After learning the midfielder was set to leave the following morning, Nketiah came to Dingle with another request — to take a photo of himself, Smith Rowe, Reiss Nelson and fitness coach Sam Wilson. It was the last picture of Smith Rowe in Arsenal colours.
(Matt Dingle for Arsenal FC)
The opportunities that come from being embraced by Arsenal cannot be overstated. Outis has since gone full-time with his photography and started working with the Premier League.
“Sometimes I’m talking to my wife and saying, ‘How is this possible?’” he says. “The Premier League calling me to work with them? It’s unbelievable to be working around football and doing what I love.”
These calls are often for photoshoots with players from varying clubs, where the aim is to make the subjects appear as natural as possible. “The perfect example was (Jean-Philippe) Mateta at Crystal Palace — he was so cool,” Outis adds. “The scenario I gave him was, ‘It’s the last game of the season and you come from 2-1 down to win 3-2 in the last minute, how do you celebrate?’ and he went crazy. Sometimes players don’t give you much, but he went crazy.”
It is not just fans who have been experimenting with photography. Rice set up a photo-specific Instagram account named @dr.jpeg last month to show the ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of his life.
This space has been evolving even before his involvement and where it goes next seems to be up to those picking up the cameras.
(Top photos: Hepta Outis, Jerushan Perumal; design: Kelsea Petersen)
