The bad job gone good

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!