Archive for April, 2008
Good run of front pagers
Sat Apr 19th - 4:13pm
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!
(Update: Two photographs, one of a councollor and one of a police sergeant, have been removed by request. Both had been used on the 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.
Monuments and Sculptures of the Seaboard Villages
Sun Apr 13th - 11:59pm
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.)
[HTML1]
What you're seeing in the video:
- Hilton Stone
- Mermaid of the North
- The Salmon
- 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.
What’s that ugly creature?
Mon Apr 7th - 10:43pm
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.
DIY contact trigger
Sun Apr 6th - 3:43pm
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.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVUxKnNMW44[/youtube]
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:
- Set-up the balloon and pre-aim the air pistol with it mounted on something so it won't move.
- 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.
- 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.
- Turn off the lights.
- Open the camera's shutter.
- 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.
- 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.
