Archive for April, 2007
Scissor kick shot in RSJ
Fri Apr 13th - 5:37pm
Very pleased to see that the pic of the Inverness scissor kick goal made it into this week's Ross-shire Journal, quite large and in colour on the back page. And the Northern Times used the first of these pics with some of the Golspie lads after their first goal. The second pic was after the second goal.
Illustrating Springtime
Fri Apr 13th - 7:57am
I've not been doing enough editorial work recently so I asked for something creative to do. I was hoping for a job along the lines of a feature portrait, but instead I was told to get a picture to illustrate Springtime.
For about one second I was disappointed that it wasn't a more interesting job, but then I realised that it was exactly what I had asked for. I suppose the reason I wanted to do a portrait was because I've got a lot of ideas for portraits so I could simply pull the most appropriate one out of the bag, but that isn't very creative. I didn't have any preconceptions about how to illustrate Springtime, so it was in fact the creative job I had asked for.
I decided to keep it simple. I do have a tendency to try 'arty' things but the reality is that the general public doesn't like arty photos. The editor had mentioned kids, daffodils, blue skies and lambs so I made a few calls and soon found a local farm that had newborn lambs. Everything else fell nicely into place: The owners of the farm had young children and a big patch of daffodils at their home, so we scheduled the photo for the next morning.
The shoot itself went quite smoothly. One of the kids had decided that she wasn't going to smile but I did get a few shots when she was laughing. The other kid was totally into it and didn't stop smiling the whole time. We did some shots with the kids and the lambs, then some with just the lambs, all the time using the daffodils as a backdrop. (I did try positioning the kids and lambs within the patch of daffodils but the picture was starting to look too crowded so I scrapped that idea.)
Being a lighting junkie you might be surprised to know that I didn't even use on-camera flash for these photos, just ambient light. With a touch of over-exposure and the white balance set for overcast conditions, the pictures took on a warm, glowing quality that I thought worked well.
Out of 191 photos, this was my personal favourite:
Not surprisingly the paper used a picture with both kids. Can't say I like it much. There's nothing really wrong with it, it just looks a bit 'ordinary' to me, and I don't like all the empty space. It looks better in the paper (this week's North Star) and it certainly screams "Spring!" which was after all what we were trying to achieve.
Here are a few others that I liked, especially the middle one because it looks so natural whereas the others have obviously been staged.
There you go, a fun project completed reasonably well, and I even got to hold one of the lambs. Messy little thing it was but cute all the same. You might like to know that both of the lambs have been granted 'pet' status so you aren't likely to find them on your dinner plate any time soon.
Football Times Cup final
Tue Apr 10th - 12:48am
I'm not even going to bother going into the details but thanks to another miscommunication / cock-up it turns out that my pics from the Football Times Cup final won't be going in this week's North Star. Basically I'd talked to the Dingwall office, another photographer had talked to the Inverness office, and Inverness has the final say. Oh what fun.
I've asked the Ross-shire Journal if they can try to squeeze the scissor kick shot in somewhere but I probably won't know if it's going in until I see the paper on Friday.
Meanwhile here are the rest of the pics from the match. I've given bigger versions of these to the Inverness City web site so head over there if you want to see them, they'll probably be posted some time on Tuesday.
Scissor kick goal shot
Sun Apr 8th - 12:59am
There are three football shots that I've always wanted to get. One is a netcam shot of a goal and I've now had a few of those. Another is a netcam shot from inside the goal with the keeper diving towards the remote-controlled camera but I haven't figured out how to do that safely yet. And the third is a shot of a goal being scored from a scissor kick, which I finally got today.
Covering a lot of Balintore matches, I've had plenty of opportunity to catch one of Euan Dance's scissor kicks as he does them quite often, but I usually shoot from the goal line to catch the midfield action so I'm at the wrong angle for the goal mouth.
The shot I got today shows Gavin Nicolson of Inverness scoring the first goal in his team's victory over Golspie in the Football Times Cup final.
In theory that's close to being the "decisive moment" because it was taken just after he'd kicked the ball, but I actually prefer this shot taken just before, mainly because Gavin's eyes are open and he's still on his way up.
I'll just send both to the paper and leave it up to them to choose. Should be in next week's North Star if you want to look out for it.
Mike & Ali Vass portrait
Sat Apr 7th - 12:13am
Brother and sister duo Mike & Ali Vass performed at the Memorial Hall yesterday evening. While planning these portraits I had intended for them to be converted to dramatic black & white, but when I saw how great Ali's hair looked it was an easy decision to leave them in colour.
I'm posting them here in a wide ratio. I know the paper will crop all the black off the sides but this is how I like them. Here's the safe shot…
And here's a silly one that I like a lot. I think both Mike and Ali's personalities come across really well but I'm not sure what they'll think of it so I'm going to check with them before sending it to the paper.
Shot specs:
Canon 1D • 24-70 f/2.8L • 70mm • 1/500s • f/5.6 • ISO 200 • 5600K
Lighting specs:
This was the first time I used a proper hair light. I've used lights behind people before but with this shot the plan all along was to have a black background so I wanted to use a hair light to put a subtle accent around the subjects. The hair light was a Vivitar 285HV on a light stand to right of frame, about eight feet high and eight feet from the subjects, snooted to avoid flaring the lens. The key light was a Canon 550EX into a silver brolly to left of frame, about eight feet high and four feet from the subjects. Both strobes fired by Pocket Wizards. I didn't use a black background. The 1/500s shutter speed and f/5.6 aperture at ISO 200 in a dimly lit village hall was enough to overpower the ambient light, although if you crank the brightness on these shots you can still make out a few background details.
