Archive for June, 2007
Low angle football action
Fri Jun 22nd - 10:28pm
I haven't been covering many football matches lately. I've been doing team shots for the North Star but this picture for the Ross-shire Journal was the first action shot in several weeks. I'd been trying another new idea using remote flashes but as the match drew to a close it was obvious that the idea wasn't working so I turned off the remotes and grabbed a few action shots.
If I'd been using my 300mm lens, which I usually use for football, then I would have been standing up and I probably wouldn't have got this shot at all. But I was using a 70-200mm lens so I took the shot from a low angle, and that's why it works. Would have been better if I'd taken it a split second earlier when the goalie's foot was touching the ball but it's not bad as it is.
18 June 2007: A late attack by Balintore's Lewis Ross is shut down by Tain Thistle goalkeeper Steven Martin.
Large family portrait in country house
Fri Jun 22nd - 10:20pm
About a year ago, shortly before I started doing photography full-time, I applied for a job as a waiter at Glenmorangie House. I didn't get that job, but last week I was up at the house in a different role, doing a portrait of a family who were there to celebrate their mother's 80th birthday.
From the moment I was booked I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve with this photograph. It couldn't be just a picture of the family, it had to be a picture of them with some part of the house or gardens as a background. The location had to be subtle, but it had to be there. I arrived two hours early with nearly every piece of camera and lighting equipment I own, and after scouting every conceivable location I decided to do the picture on the patio. The background would be the gardens and the sky which, I hoped, would be a nice warm colour at sunset when we would be doing the photograph.
As a back-up, in case it rained, I had also decided that we could do a nice set-up in the morning room of the house. And that's where we ended up doing it. By the time we were going to do the photo outside it was too cold, too windy and too grey, so I quickly set-up in the morning room and then the family came through. Two minutes later we were done and the picture is much better than it would have been if we'd done it outside.
Highland Caravan Hire
Fri Jun 22nd - 10:01pm
A couple of months ago I was asked to look at a web site to work out why it wasn't getting any hits. There were quite a few problems with the site, and to cut a long story short I ended up re-designing it myself and doing some photography for it.
The site is for a local business, Highland Caravan Hire, and the new design is now online and is already doing well in the search engines, whereas the original site wasn't listed at all.
At first I had planned to use a couple of photographs on the site, showing the 2-berth and 4-berth caravans that are available for hire. But I then decided to use one photo as a masthead so that people arriving at the site would immediately see a picture of a modern, well-maintained caravan in an attractive country setting. Extra pages will be added later with interior and experior photos of each caravan. Here are some of the pictures I considered for the masthead:
The vertical one was a strong contender and I even considered re-thinking the layout of the site to accommodate those acres of sky, but in the end I decided on this less dramatic view:
The experience of doing estate agent interiors stood me in good stead for photographing the insides of the caravans. Of course it's even more difficult to find a good angle in a caravan, but I knew from the outset to keep the exposures nice and bright and to use remote flashes to open up any dark areas. Here are the interiors of the 4-berth caravan:
I'm not sure when I'll be able to complete the site as the caravans aren't always available to be photographed and even when they are we're at the mercy of the weather. But in the meantime the main page of the site is up and running, people can actually find it, and I was able to undertake the whole project for less than the cost of the original single-page design that didn't get one single hit.
