Archive for August, 2008

I've mentioned before that there's a certain style of photo that I really like, the ones where you bring one or more people in to the foreground and have others in the background. That layering of people gives the photo some depth and makes it infinitely more interesting and eye-catching than having everyone bunched together in a group. It's a technique that Bobby Nelson uses to great effect, and it's one of the reasons why I consider him the best photographer in the region.

Obviously you can't use this technique with every photo. For example a picture of a prizegiving would look ridiculous if you had the winner in the foreground and the person giving the prize in the background. Similarly with group shots everyone is usually 'equal' in the picture so in most cases it doesn't make sense to have some of them separated at the front. And seeing as most of the photos I do for the local papers are either prizegivings or group shots of some sort, I don't get much opportunity to use this technique with the photos I do for them, whereas I've frequently used it for my Press & Journal photos.

Anyway the whole point of mentioning this is that that I've done a few pics in this style recently, all of which I really like. These are the sort of photos that I used to look at and think, I wish I could do pictures like that. So it's nice to know that I can! These are all in this week's Ross-shire Journal apart from the pic of the two guys with the strike sign as there were two photos done for the same story and it's the picture of the guys in the hi-vis vests that was used.

I've written before about my skycam technique, which I'm sure isn't original but I've never seen anyone else doing it so what the heck, I'll claim it as my own.

It came in useful again yesterday at the Tain Highland Gathering for the high jump and pole vault. Got quite a few okay-ish pics but this must rate as the best one, firstly because it's a decent composition and secondly because it captured the moment when Donald Bradley won the pole vault competition. Shame about the empty seats in the background, and that's why it won't be in the paper.

Here are a couple of good pics from the high jump. These were done in the boring old-fashioned way, ie: just holding the camera. But close enough that I got whacked a few times. All in a day's work!

Some other events, the long jump and the weight throw for distance. The final picture showing Jason Young in the caber toss event (very similar to one from the Strathpeffer games) is the one that will be in today's Press & Journal. 

I've mentioned before that I like to get close to the action, and I irresponsibly encourage everyone to do so. But yesterday I did something stupid and I should mention that too as a warning to others.

While sitting very close to the hammer throw area I had a technical problem with my camera and I briefly looked away from the competitor. Next thing I knew, a hammer went off course and landed about 10 yards from me. That might sound like a good distance away but it was close enough that I actually felt it land, as well as heard it. The competitor could have easily let go of it a split second later and that would have been me dead, end of story.

So if you share my enthusiasm for getting up close to whatever event you're photographing then please remember the golden rule: Watch the danger at all times. Then if it comes your way you've at least got a chance of legging it.

That's one of my nine lives gone.

I've not been posting many of my newspaper photos recently so I thought I'd do a quick round-up of some favourites from the last few weeks. These aren't necessarily my best work and in some cases it was even a different frame that ran in the paper, but these are the ones that I like for a variety of reasons.

These first four pictures all feature Alness rock band Catching Amy. These guys were a real pleasure to work with and I think we produced some pretty good, eye-catching images. These were done for the Ross-shire Journal to promote the band's upcoming gig at the Strathpeffer Pavilion supporting Led Zeppelin tribute band Whole Lotta Led on 16 August. All four photos (and several more) were done on stage at the Pavilion, using just a black background and two lights.

The photos below are, from top left: Patricia Jamieson who appeared on TV game show Countdown (North Star); outdoor theatre company Illyria (Ross-shire Journal); Amanda Hughes, a successful motorsports competitor who was allegedly suspended from her job at a car rental company because she was typing with one hand (Press & Journal); Ewen and Lorraine Mann with their 12-metre wind turbine (North Star); Ally and Josie, this year's Dingwall gala girls (North Star); rock band Goths in Denial (Ross-shire Journal); children taking part in a pottery painting event (North Star); councillor Alasdair Rhind with unsold copies of someone else's book that he controversially gave away to exhibitors at the Tain car rally (Press & Journal); Niall Harkiss of Tain Thistle football club with an accordion that was donated as a raffle prize (Ross-shire Journal); some of the Highland dancers and musicians who performed for passengers on the Eurodam cruise ship (Ross-shire Journal); Ross County vs Crawley Town (North Star); councillor Alan Torrance at a petrol station for an article about how a tank of petrol now costs more than his first car (Press & Journal); and the first good view for many years of the old street that runs under the modern Tain high street (Press & Journal).

There are some types of job that usually go well, and some that will predictably go badly. Today's jobs got mixed up.

The first one involved a big group of kids who had been cleaning up a housing estate, and we did the picture with them gathered around a skip, complete with the usual props like wheelbarrows and rubbish grabbers. These pictures can quickly go to hell but this time the whole thing went like clockwork. Got a nice picture, interesting composition, everyone looking at the camera, plenty of smiles, etc. Very happy with that.

Then I had a job that I'd suggested to the paper myself because I thought there would be a wealth of good photo opportunities. It was an Indiana Jones-themed archaeology event at a museum.

Before I arrived I had been warned that there was nothing even vaguely Indiana Jones about the event, it would just be kids digging in a sandpit. What I hadn't been told was that it was a very small sandpit and a lot of kids. Tricky.

It quickly became evident that I wouldn't be getting any decent candid shots. And with lots of people gathered around a small area at the back of a museum, it would be tricky to stunt any shots because of ugly backgrounds.

Well it's at times like this that you fall back on lighting and composition techniques. For example you can light the subject and leave the background dark. You can shoot from a low angle and use the sky as a background. You can use layering to guide the viewer's eye around the image, which lets you get away with using a plain, boring background. You can even use perspective tricks to make foreground objects appear larger than life, so they cover parts of the background.

It was thanks to these techniques, and the patience of the kids and parents who stayed behind after the event to let me do the photos, that I turned in a pretty decent set of imagee. Here's a selection:

Incidentally I was so low down in that last photo that I had to dig a hole in the sand to push the camera into. I came away with sand in my teeth!

This could become a big news story over the next couple of days but for some reason it didn't get much attention today. There were plenty of wildlife enthusiasts and other photographers there, but I think me and Gordon Lennox from the P&J were the only news guys who turned up.

Anyway the story is that a 45-foot sperm whale spent the day swimming in circles around Avoch Bay on the Black Isle, possibly disorientated and almost certainly ill.

The major challenge in photographing something like this is the tremendous distance you're dealing with. And even if you can somehow get a long-enough focal length then you're still left with the problem of reduced visibility simply because there's so much air between the subject and the camera.

This shot was taken with a 300mm lens with stacked 2x and 1.4x teleconverters, on a 1.3x crop body, producing an effective focal length of 1092mm. That's approximately 22 times the focal length of human vision which may sound like a lot but for a job like this it really isn't very powerful at all. For reference, the Kessock Bridge in the background is 7 miles away. Lousy quality picture, but probably the best that anyone could have got under the circumstances.