Last August I mentioned (here) that Harry Potter author JK Rowling had lost a High Court case in which she tried to ban the publication of a paparazzo's photo of her son, taken covertly, without her permission, on an Edinburgh street.

Well good news! Rowling and her husband Dr Neil Murray took the case to the Court of Appeal and won. The BBC reports:

Judge Sir Anthony Clarke said: "If a child of parents who are not in the public eye could reasonably expect not to have photographs of him published in the media, so too should the child of a famous parent.

"In our opinion, it is at least arguable that a child of 'ordinary' parents could reasonably expect that the press would not target him and publish photographs of him."

Another nail in the coffin of the paparazzi parasites. Lovely!

I've been having a good run of front page photos recently. I know that we're meant to be all nonchalant and super-cool about getting the front page but I love it!

Maxine Smith is an Invergordon councillor who is outraged by the Cromarty Firth Port Authority refusing her a parking permit when she visits people at the port on council business. This isn't a flattering photo of Maxine but I needed to shoot from a low angle to get her yellow high-heeled shoes and yellow car prominent in the frame, as they were a key element of the story. This made the front page of the Press & Journal and another photo from the same shoot was used inside a couple of weeks later. The Sun also bought one of the photos because Maxine wasn't available to do another shoot with their own photographer.

Sergeant Dougie Bennyon of the Northern Safety Camera Partnership based in Tain holds beer mats that are intended to raise awareness of the speed limits for different vehicles on various classifications of road. Front of the P&J.

Tickets for the Kaiser Chiefs concerts on the 19th and 20th of May at the Strathpeffer Pavilion sold out at the venue within 10 minutes. Pictured are the three lucky ladies who were first in the queue: Sarah McLoughlin (front) from Warrington, who was first in line at 7am ready for the tickets to go on sale at 9am; Susan Campbell (left) from Dochcarty Farm in Dingwall, and Valerie Pearce from Scotsburn. Front page of today's P&J.

This photo of Edderton primary school kids was done for the North Star but the Edderton headmistress asked if it could go in the Northern Times as well. The NS were okay with that and it ran large on the front of the NT, which was better than the small show it got in the paper it was done for!

I'd gone to Dornoch Academy to do photos of some Ross-shire primary school kids learning about the sort of items that are confiscated by Customs. Unfortunately the booking was very last-minute and just as I got to the Academy, the bus full of Ross-shire kids was leaving. However there were some kids from Dornoch primary school on their way so I suggested the story to the Northern Times and this eye-catching shot landed on the front page.

I did this photo at the Junior Road Safety Officers conference in Inverness last Wednesday and sent it off to the Northern Times late that night. On Thursday morning I was over in Dingwall so I called in to see everyone at the Ross-shire Journal and North Star. As I walked past the printing presses I spotted the recently-printed Northern Times with this photo in pride of place at the top of the front page. There can't have been more than a couple of hours between the editor receiving the pic and it rolling off the presses!

These front pagers are only the tip of the iceberg of course. Recently I've been doing 15-20 newspaper pictures each week so after 5 years I'm finally starting to earn a decent living from photography. Hurrah! And with spring getting up to speed, and summer approaching, there will be lots more going on and more photos to do. I'd say that 6-8 pics each day is doable, so that's the sort of number I'm looking for. The goal is still a staff position, and I'd say I've reached that level of competence, but in the meantime I'm really enjoying the freelance life.

A few days ago Flickr added support for hosting video files. Great! Except I don't do video. So time to learn! I borrowed a video camera and spent a few hours yesterday making a test video to learn the basics of what works and what doesn't, transferring video to the computer, editing and production, etc.

Today I made my first serious attempt and produced this 90-second effort, showing the monuments and sculptures of the Seaboard Villages where I live.

(Please be patient if the video keeps pausing. Flickr seems to be having some teething troubles with video streaming.) 

What you're seeing in the video:

1. Hilton Stone
2. Mermaid of the North
3. The Salmon
4. Shandwick Stone

The music is My Irish Valentine by Brobdingnagian Bards, a Texas-based Celtic folk band. Listen to more of their music here. This track is licensed for use under the Creative Commons. (Hopefully using the music as a soundtrack doesn't violate the No Derivative Works condition?)

You may wonder why I used a song with "Irish" in the title for a video featuring Scottish villages. Well the answer is that I just like it. The Bards actually do a track called The Mermaid Song which would obviously have been fitting for this video, but that track can't be used under the Creative Commons license, and anyway I wanted an instrumental track and My Irish Valentine has exactly the sort of atmosphere that I was looking for.

Things to improve next time:

• Get better at zoom-with-pan shots, and only use them when there's something moving in the scene such as water or sky, otherwise it looks like zooming on a still photo.
• Use less fixed view scenes, but without just panning or zooming for the sake of it. Parts of this video look like a slideshow of stills.
• Learn how to process video files to improve exposure and colour.
• Combine original audio with the music. The part of this video with the mermaid had good audio so it would have been nice to still hear that.

Oh it's me. But ignore me and look at that beautiful spider!

I've been wanting to hold a tarantula for ages and today I finally got my chance, at the Highland Reptile Rescue Centre in Milton, near Invergordon.

At first I was scared of the hairy little critter but I decided to just get on with it and told the owner to put it on my arm. No problem…

Then I held it in my hands. No problem…

And within about 5 minutes, any sense of fear was gone and I would have been happy to let it crawl up my arm. But it didn't want to.

Another personal goal ticked off the list thanks to this wonderful job! And thanks to Maggie at the rescue centre for taking the photos for me.

Many thanks to Guy Montag for making this video that shows how to make a contact trigger for a flash, although I expect you could also use it to fire a camera if you wire it up to a Pocket Wizard or similar.

Here's the YouTube version of the video, or there's a better quality version. If you try this for a shot involving high-speed capture then remember to keep your flash power as low as possible. The lower the flash power is, the shorter the flash duration will be, so you can freeze the action better to get a sharper image.

ps. Just in case you don't know, the way to use a contact trigger is to work in the dark, leave the camera's shutter open, and then do whatever you're going to do to trip the trigger. For instance if you were going to shoot an air pistol through a balloon then this is how you'd go about it:

1. Set-up the balloon and pre-aim the air pistol with it mounted on something so it won't move.
2. Position the contact trigger to the side of the balloon opposite the air pistol, so the pellet will pierce the balloon and then pierce the trigger.
3. Put a thick block of wood behind the contact trigger to catch the pellet. Make sure animals and kids are locked out of the room.
4. Turn off the lights.
5. Open the camera's shutter.
6. Fire the pistol. While the shutter is still open the pellet will burst the balloon and then pierece the contact trigger, which will fire the flash.
7. Close the camera's shutter.

And that's pretty much all there is to it. But exploding balloons have been done a million times so try to think of something new.

One subject that regularly comes up on photography forums is, what do you do if you want to use a light stand outside in windy conditions? Even with just a flash on top — no umbrella — those things will get blown over in no time. And usually the less-than-helpful answer is either that you need to use a tripod (not tall enough) or have an assistant to hold the light stand (not practical for most of us).

Surprisingly I've never seen this idea suggested: Tent pegs. Nearly every outside shot I do is on grass, or could be done on grass if I wanted, so why not fasten the legs of the light stand to the ground using tent pegs?

Now we all know that buying made-for-purpose products can prove expensive so rather than go shopping for tent pegs I went to the local hardware store and bought some large screw-in hooks. They cost 88p each. I chose the ones with the biggest hook ends to make it easier to yank them back out of the ground when I'm done.

Here are a few pictures, done with my mum's point-and-shoot because I didn't have my own camera with me at the time…

Update: Ha! Just been checking the price of tent pegs online and you can buy packs of 10 for about £2. So on this occasion the made-for-purpose product is in fact cheaper than the cheapskate hardware store alternative.

After telling you about The Job From Hell the other day I thought I should balance that out by telling you about one that went really well.

Today I had the pleasure of photographing Maureen Mackay and Iain Nesbitt, a couple who will be going to Everest base camp in November to raise money for a children's charity. I called Maureen yesterday to confirm a time for the photo and it was obvious from the start that this was going to be a good shoot: I was going to ask if the two of them would be willing to put their climbing gear on for the photo, but Maureen suggested it first. I was going to ask if there were any steep hills or mountains nearby, but Maureen already had somewhere in mind. And would we be pushed for time? No, no rush at all. I do love going in to a shoot knowing that the people I'm photographing are enthusiastic to get the job done right.

So this afternoon we met at the arranged time, had a coffee and a chat, then drove three miles to the Cat's Back and spent about 10 freezing cold minutes on two different set-ups. Back to Maureen's place for another coffee and the end result of the perfect shoot was a pretty nice photo…

Nice is a new online photography magazine (a "glorified blog" according to its creator) launching today. It promises to approach its topics from a "mostly positive" point of view. From the site's intro:

At Nice our focus falls on the motivation, the idea, the process that leads up to making a photograph rather than taking it. It’s a place to find stories related to photography from a different point of view. Photo tech tips, how-to’s, photography videos, interviews, behind the scenes, advice, opinions, and photography equipment, books, and video reviews - it’s all right here. We’ll try and keep the complaining to a minimum.

I'm not sure what the thinking is behind the positive / no-complaining angle, as photography sites aren't generally seen as being negative, are they? In fact the blog you're reading right now is probably about as negative as it gets, seeing as I often write about the 'down' side of the profession, but I'd like to think I do it in a positive way. (I hope it comes across like that?) But anyway, head over to Nice (lovely presentation by the way) for some feel-good advice and tutorials, but don't forget to come back here for the usual whingeing and negativity. Apparently.

The other day I mentioned Ferrell McCollough's idea of combining single-flash exposures into one HDR image. His sample image was encouraging as a proof of concept, but have a look at the new example he has created, which is one of the most painting-like photos I've ever seen. I do hope Ferrell runs with this concept and gets it established as his own idea, before someone else does.

When readers of tomorrow's Press & Journal see this photo, or one of the others from the piping and drumming course at Carbisdale Castle, they'll have no idea how much effort went in to making it…

If you do photos for newspapers then you'll meet lots of random people at random locations doing random things. And you'll encounter lots of random attitudes. Most people are polite, co-operative and enthusiastic; some are embarrassed, nervous or shy; and occasionally there are the ones that are downright rude and discourteous.

But today was unique. Today presented a challenge that I never saw coming: Someone who requested publicity and then tried to sabotage it. How on earth do you handle that? How do you work with that person?

The day got off to a bad start as soon as I arrived at Carbisdale Castle to do photos on the first day of a week-long piping and drumming course. The press release had stated that the course started today but it actually starts tomorrow, so I was told immediately that there wouldn't be anything to take photos of. Now that leaves me with a big problem: The paper is running the feature tomorrow, and they've booked me for today, so by 6pm I need to send them some photos.

I quickly arranged to do a set-up photo with the organiser's son and his friend, in full Highland dress with bagpipes, and we went and did some okay-ish photos at the back of the castle.

That was when the day took a nosedive…

As soon as we'd finished doing the photos, the organiser asked if he could get some for the piping school's web site. Of course he can, I tell him, we'll work something out later. "I'll even put your name under the photos," he says. Uh-oh. I think I'd better make one thing clear, so I explain that there would be a charge for the use of the photos. He comes back with all the usual nonsense about other photographers giving him photos for free, so I explain that those guys must not be as serious as I am about doing this for a living, and if I give him free photos then I'm taking paid work away from someone else. Eventually he backs down, saying that he totally understands my point. But I didn't realise what I'd just let myself in for!

So we go and put the first photos on my laptop and they're a bit disappointing, too ordinary for my liking. There isn't one stand-out picture. One of the lads says something that gives me a great idea for something else to try, and we're just about to do it when in steps the event organiser, huffing and puffing about how the lads don't have time to do any more photos. He reels off a list of jobs for them to do and they disappear. I disappear too, off to formulate a cunning plan…

It was obvious that the event organiser was now going to make life difficult for me, so I needed to find a location where he wouldn't see me. Well hey, I'm in a castle! Hmm, lemme think. It was surprisingly easy to get the key for the tower, and I went up to see what it was like, all the way up through half a dozen flights of steps, two trap doors (really) and out on to the turret. Awesome location, awesome view, so back down the stairs to find a willing volunteer.

There was a young lad in the reception area so I asked if he was a piper, which he was. We checked with his mum if it was okay for him to put his Highland dress on for a photo, and she was nodding in agreement when our friend the event organiser butted in, talking down to me and angrily lecturing that they're all very busy preparing for registration. He starts berating me for taking up so much of his time (even though I haven't said another word to him) but fortunately the young lad's mother interrupts to say that it's fine to do the photo. The lad starts getting changed but because we're being pressurised by the event organiser I decide to do the photo from the waist up so he doesn't need to change in to his kilt.

Back up the tower! We spent about 10 minutes trying a few ideas, found one that worked well and blasted away at it. The lad did great, his mum was a huge help in making sure that his shirt and jacket were immaculate, and we went back downstairs to look at the photos on my laptop.

That, I will concede, was foolish. Because as soon as I've got the photos on the laptop screen, the event organiser appears behind me. "That doesn't look very good," he says. There's a standard response to that comment, so I ask: "Is there anything in particular that you think should have been done differently?" He points to the lad's tie, or rather his lack of tie. "That will reflect badly on the school. You can't put that in the paper. I'm telling you right now that you don't have my permission to put that in the paper."

Now I'll be the total professional right to the end, but part of that is not being a pushover so I ask the guy if we can have a chat away from everyone else. Off we go, and I tell him that I think he has become obstructive since I said he couldn't have the photos for free. Now he gets angry and starts telling me that I've been taking too long, causing him too much inconvenience, and he will complain to the paper about me. Then, his exact words: "Pack up your photo things and get out."

I left my "photo things" right where they were and went to call the picture desk again. I'll admit that by this time I was getting a bit upset, as in boo-hoo, not angry. I'd done absolutely nothing to antagonise this guy and he was doing everything he could to make sure I'd be leaving without any useable pictures. I informed the photo editor of the situation, advised her of the threatened complaint, and told her I was heading home to send the few photos that I'd been able to get.

Well as I walked back to get my "photo things" I was starting to feel a whole lot like a quitter, and by the time I got back inside I'd already made my mind up that I wasn't leaving without the photo I wanted. I found the piper lad's mother again and asked her, warily, if she would be willing to have her son put on the full Highland dress so we could re-do the photo. No problem! She was quite enthusiastic about the idea. We checked with the lad himself and he was a bit bored of it all by now, but he was willing to do it, so I went to get the go-ahead from the event organiser.

NO! He point blankly refused, saying that both the boy and his mother were too busy. I knew that I was dealing with a loose canon here so I very, very delicately told him that I'd already checked with both of them and they were fine with it, but he wasn't interested in that and he refused to allow any more photos to be done.

The next angle of attack… well, let's say that by now I didn't particularly care about this guy's opinion, so I went to check with the piper lad's mother if she'd be happy for us to do the photo without the organiser's permission. And unfortunately she wasn't, as the event organiser also teaches her son and understandably she was concerned of possible repercussions.

I still wasn't willing to drop it so I thought I'd go for the sympathy vote. I went and told the organiser (truthfully) that I've only been working for the P&J for a short time and I'm worried about the career damage if I leave without any good photos.

NO! Not his problem. "You had your chance."

Packed up, loaded the car, got in, started the engine. Uh, I'm quitting again. Turned the engine off, back inside for another go…

Now I try to appeal to his better judgement. I tell him that the photo of the lad without the tie is the best photo of the day, so I expect the paper will use that one. If it's as bad as he says it is then why don't we re-do it and finish the job? Get it done right? That's best for publicity, isn't it? Uh, hello?!?

NO! "I don't need publicity, I've got a full castle!" And then with dozens of people around he raises his voice and starts repeating, "no, no, no", even spelling it out and, I kid you not, writing it in the air with his finger. Several times. I left.  I was starting to get the impression that he didn't want me there…

The only other good photo idea that I could think of was to find a member of the Hong Kong police pipe band that I knew had travelled to the event. Ethically I knew that I was obliged to tell whoever I asked that they would be going against the event organiser's wishes, and for some reason I thought a policeman from Hong Kong was the most likely person to agree. And I found two of them! But they didn't have their piping uniforms with them, only casual clothes. So that was that.

And at that point I did quit. I was already an hour behind schedule and if I didn't leave then I'd miss deadline, so off I went. Defeated.

The haul from the day turned out to be not as bad as I feared. A couple of the first photos with the two pipers were acceptable…

And there was the photo I showed you earlier, an alternative frame from the one that the organiser complained about, in which you can't see that the boy isn't wearing his tie. So, job done.

But this blog is about advice. Every story should have a moral. I should be telling you that with hindsight I've realised how I could have handled the situation differently and made it work. But the best I can come up with is this: If someone asks you for free photos, just say something like "we can sort that out later". Unless you absolutely have no choice, don't mention that they'll have to pay for them!

Yes, it's a damn cheek for people to expect photographers to give free photos, and yes, it's a damn cheek for them to then sabotage your job when you say no. But I've learned the hard way today that for some people, a damn cheek is a way of life.

The whole time I was at this event today, I was either working around the organiser's mistakes, working around his interference, or trying desperately to work around his spite. And for all but the first few minutes he was treating me like a nuisance who was inconveniencing him.

How can you work alongside that attitude? The answer: You can't.