"Every sport has its hot moments and hot spots: those times and places where the action peaks. Scoring a goal or crossing the finishing line are obvious ones, but there are plenty of others – and the way to anticipate them is to take your knowledge of that sport and apply it. There might be a player who celebrates scoring a goal in a particular way, for example. Sport is unpredictable, so it might not happen in exactly the way you think, but if you're prepared then you can get yourself to the right spot in good time and you won't miss it if it does," Tom says.
Key to capturing decisive moments is having the right kit, set up and ready to go. "It's all over in a flash, so I try to widen my point of view and extend my chances of getting a picture. So I have remote cameras set up at two different angles, and then I'm at a third angle, triggering all the cameras with a remote trigger...
"The new autofocus technology has given me a far higher hit rate, too," Tom says. The Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and Canon EOS 5D Mark IV that he typically shoots with both boast 61 selectable autofocus points and the advanced EOS iTR tracking system, which makes it easier to track moving subjects and achieve sharp and precise autofocus. "If there's a racing car going at 200 miles an hour, I'll get everything in focus, and I just couldn't do that before. Now it's almost like, if one image is out of focus, I'm thinking, 'Blimey, that's incredible. What's happened there?'"