Intrigued by Neal Slavin..

As I was doing some research last week for my representation unit, I came across this image below which immediately grabbed my attention..

Neal Slavin. 'Marina Women's Bowling Club,
Eastboune, Sussex, 18th July 1984.

What first attracted me to this was the fact that he is showing lawn bowlers, a sport which I have been playing competitively for about 8 years now.
It is a fairly unpopular hobby for people my age and the sport doesn't get a huge amount of coverage so I think this is something which shocked me as I never expected to see it in a photography book.
I began to examine the photograph in more depth and really liked how the whole shot has been arranged.  It is clearly staged and this works well when having all of the female subjects looking straight into the camera.
What interests me is why the photographer has chosen to take it at night time.  You never play outdoor bowls once it gets dark so what is the meaning behind this?  You can see that he has depicted the models with some sort of lighting kit as without this they would just blend into the green behind.
I have never come across this photographer before and this single image has inspired me to do some further research on him.
Neal Slavin is an American photographer and film-maker, born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York.  He graduated from the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (New York) with a BA in Fine Art before then receiving an exchange scholarship from Lincoln College at Oxford University (England).
From exploring his website, www.nealslavin.com, I discovered many more photographs of his which interested me.  I will include some here.

They all have a very strong sense of colour and he clearly sets up his models in relation to the camera to get the best framing, perspectives and composition possible!

What I like so much about his photographs are that they are all group portraits.  I have recently tried this but they didn't turn out as successfully.
But through the way Slavin has arranged and framed his shots he manages to depict the subjects perfectly.
His images also have a very quirky element to them, showing classes and particular groups of people which you wouldn't normally expect to see in photographs like this.  They are a bit out of the ordinary and I think this is what attracts me so much.