Events

It would take acres of text to explain the background to today's adventure so let's skip all of that and start at 2:30pm with me sitting in an Inverness hotel sorting through photos of a small anti-war protest that had just finished.

With a 90-minute deadline imposed by the bus timetable, I picked out 10 photos, captioned them and sent them on their merry way to the BBC, only to find that the hotel's wireless connection was running slow. When the e-mail finally finished sending I got an error message from Gmail saying that it was too large. The sent messages list showed that it had gone but the final photo had been removed, so I sent that separately and legged it to catch the early bus home.

As I got on the bus I had a nagging feeling that the first e-mail wouldn't have actually gone, so I got off the bus and headed back to the hotel. Sure enough when I went back online there was a failure notice. I sent the photos again in two e-mails, five pics each. Back to the bus station and away home.

There was an e-mail waiting for me when I got home saying that the single image had got through okay but none of the others had. There was already a brief report up on the BBC Scotland site (here) with the one picture that had got through, and I think it's the best human-interest picture so it all worked out well in the end.

This is the picture that was used:

This is the one I had expected to be used but looking at it now the one with the kid was the clear choice. I was going for dramatic lighting with this one but it just looks like a bad flash snapshot…

Here's the rest of the set:

Here's a photo of the lunar eclipse taken on Saturday at 11:50pm.

For this shot I used a Canon 1D and 300mm lens with stacked 2x and 1.4x teleconverters to produce an effective focal length of 1092mm. It was a 1-second exposure, aperture f/8 at ISO 1600.

This next one was taken shortly after the eclipse began at 9:47pm.

It was also taken with the 300mm lens with the stacked teleconverters, but as the moon was very bright I was able to stop the lens down to f/22 (bringing back a lot of the quality that the TCs strip away) and use the 1Ds at ISO 100.

Back home! Okay so as I mentioned I just did my first photo story for BBC News Online, covering the Highland 2007 launch. I used to send in loads of pics for their weekly gallery but this was the first paying job. I've been wanting to do a proper photo story for ages, so this was a great opportunity.

The first part of the day went very well. I got loads of pictures showing everything being set-up, Transe Express rehearsing, and the re-opening of the museum and art gallery. That was 50% of the story covered.

Then it was showtime, and that's where it went downhill a bit. I'd pre-arranged several vantage points and confirmed that my media pass would allow me access to them, but a few security guys decided to "get on the radio" and discuss the matter at great length. I didn't have time to argue with them so I left it at that and headed for the viewing area on the bridge where all the other photographers were.

Immediately I could see where this was heading: Twenty photographers getting more or less the same shots of the choir, the band, the pipers, the fireworks and the monster march. So I hopped the barrier and made my way through the crowd, right around to the Palace Hotel where there was a viewing room set aside. That allowed me to get those oh-so-important original shots that nobody else was doing… trouble was they weren't very good. So no shots of the choir or the pipers.

Back round to the bridge, a few lousy shots of the band, a shot that I really like of Jack McConnell giving the opening speech, and then the fireworks started. Well for goodness sake, I've never shot fireworks before! I've read about how to do it but of course I didn't want just the fireworks, I also wanted the castle and the crowd in the foreground. That's a tricky exposure: The crowd was very dark, the castle was well lit, the fireworks were bright, but I needed to keep a longish shutter speed to allow the fireworks to 'streak'. Out of maybe a hundred shots, I had to go through them all three times before I found one that was even technically correct.

Not getting the choir/pipers shots was forgiveable as it happened in the name of creativity, it was just a gamble that didn't pay off. Not getting a good fireworks shot was sheer lack of ability!

The next part of the evening was the monster march and frankly I don't even know where it was happening. I saw precisely three monsters the whole time, two in a dark corner near the castle and one in the middle of a huge crowd of people on Church Street. I dashed around to get in front of that one but time was running short and I needed to get into position for Transe Express so I decided to skip the monster shot, not a great loss as there will be loads of people getting those shots on their camera phones. I'm more interested in getting the shots that other people won't get.

Round to the back of the Eastgate Centre then, where it had been arranged in advance that a security guard would let me in and escort me up to the roof. Two roofs and three security guards later, I eventually had a good vantage point over Falcon Square. Not the view I wanted but it was pretty good. Had a nice chat with Keith the security guard for half an hour then the show finally started, I grabbed the shots I needed, and headed back down to to see what I could find from ground level.

And that was that. Back to the hotel, processed and captioned 18 pics, sent them of at about 1am, and then listened to the barman explain why "served until 4am" on the bar meals menu actually meant midnight. Couldn't be bothered going to the take-away so went to bed.

Great fun. Did a good job for 75% of the day, failed the rest but with good intentions. Not good enough! Hopefully I'll get the chance to do more event coverage and I'm sure I'll do better next time, especially if the security arrangements are a little clearer. And it's in daylight. With no crowds.

Here's the gallery on the BBC Scotland web site. Note that only pictures 1-11 are mine, the others were added later.

Highland 2007 Launch

I was asked to look out for any Remembrance Day events in the area. The closest war memorial is in Fearn and the location lent itself well to a wide shot of the whole crowd. There were a couple of kids wearing their grandfather's medals so we did some posed shots of them at the end, as I liked the idea of connecting young people to an historical event. Thanks to William, Rory and Kyle (and Rory and Kyle's mother) for taking time out of their day to do the shot.

(click the wide view for a larger version)