"Life is a game of inches. Like American Football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is small. Half step further, sooner or later, and you don't quite make it. Half a second slower or faster, and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are at ever break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails that inch, because we know when we add up all those inches, that's going to make the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying.
In any fight, it is the person who is willing to die
who is going to win that inch. These inches in front of our face.
Look at the person next to you. Look into his eyes. You are going to see someone who will go that inch with you. You are going to see someone who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him. That's a team." - Al Pacino's speech in the movie "Any Given Sunday"

Having been introduced in 2009 in Portugal, the American Football continues to be a renegade sport, put aside, disregarded, often unknown the existence of their practice. It lives of his passionate minority, who tries to win their inches prominent in the sports scene, in a country dominated by a king game, football, not the American, who despite everything, this first in the United States earn another name, Soccer.

"The Renegades" is a photographic project that search to give emphasis to American Football. It was intended to create some portraits, so that the focus is primarily on the elements involved in it. From inside of the darkness emerge those who want to impose, the Renegades.

The Renegades
Porto, Portugal
© 2014 Igor Martins