Ross-shire Journal pics this week

Four pics of mine in the Ross-shire Journal this week, including this shot of the Portmahomack gala girls as the top pic on the front page. Very pleased that this got such a good show. I was totally upfront about trying to top the usual gala girls pic so the front page will do nicely, thank you!

Also inside the paper, this pic of the sandcastle competition from the gala:

Tucked out of the way in a corner of page 2 is the best newspaper photo I've ever done, showing the first Harry Potter customers at Tain Bookshop. Now I KNOW that most people won't think much of this pic, in fact I'm guessing that a lot of people will think it's rubbish. But I know what *I* like and this is the kind of photo that I've been aspiring to for the last four years. Lighting, set-up, composition and narrative, I just think it's all great! Should have had something more obviously Potterish in the frame so it's far from perfect, but it's certainly the newspaper photo I've been most satisfied with. Gotta top it now! (The composition was originally inspired by the first pic in this set by Michael Zamora, modified a bit to get the woman's face in view, then modified a lot to get the two kids into the frame.)

There's a theory that getting loads of kids into a photo sells more copies of the paper. But unfortunately it also guarantees a lousy photo. So respect to the editors of both the local papers (North Star and Ross-shire Journal) who over the last year have started to prioritise photo quality over quantity of kids. This was the big group photo I went to get at the launch of a play park in Invergordon:

But while I was hanging around I spotted a load of kids on a big swing so I went and took a few shots of them. Now one paranoia-induced rule I have on jobs like this is that I'll only do the pic I'm there to do, because the last thing you want is some over-protective parent getting upset about you taking a pic of their kid. But this shot was too good to miss and indeed it's the one that ran in the paper. Much better than the big group. The only thing that lets it down is that the weather was overcast and most of the kids were wearing pale clothes so even with flash I couldn't get the colours to pop at all. No worries though, it ran in black & white.

I did try a more interesting variation on the big group shot and the result was sort of okay-ish but it's obviously not everything it could have been so I didn't even put it into the paper, didn't want to risk it being used.

Neither of these Inver F.C. team pics made it in. No big surprise. After a great season they'd just won the Seaboard Cup but most of the players couldn't be bothered lining up for a team shot so these were the best we got.