Portraits

This is an ultra-quick portrait I did of Billy, who you could describe as our local colourful character. After I'd done the football club's player-of-the-year photos on Saturday night, Billy and I were chatting and he leaned forward and put his hand up to his mouth. I asked him if he'd mind staying exactly how he was while I took a photo of him, and this is what I came up with.

Considering that I usually take upwards of half an hour to light a portrait and I did this in 10 seconds with one hand-held flash, I think it's pretty good. I don't expect Billy will have a computer so I'll give him a print.

I can't tell you how much of an honour it was that Mark Austin's father Alasdair chose a photo that I took of Mark to give to the newspapers.

The photo was taken in December 2005 at the Tain Royal Academy end-of-year seniors dance. I thought Mark's many friends may want a digital copy of the photo so here it is. Click this little version to view/save the larger version. Sorry it isn't the hi-res file but it's a decent size for doing little prints, posting on Bebo etc.

Taking another step forward here, I think. I already had a plan for how to do this shot of Stephen and the Berserker, and even though it didn't work at first I stuck with it and I think we got a good, strong, memorable image.

When the first few attempts didn't look good, my instinctive cowardice and fear of failure kicked in and told me to abandon the idea and go for a safe shot. But I was convinced that this shot would work and after a lot of trial and error we got it eventually. I did a few safety shots too of course but this is the one I'll be sending to the paper. Thanks to Stephen for sticking with it!

1 February 2007: Stephen Hayward of Hilton near Tain confronts his latest creation, an 8-foot reconstruction of the Berserker from the Lewis chess set. The character famously bites on his shield to represent the crazed fighting style of Norse warriors. The Berserker will soon join Stephen's wood carving of the King from the Lewis chess set on the isle of Uig off the west coast of Scotland.

I've spent most of the last two days trying to set-up my next little photo story for BBC Online, heading down to Glasgow to photograph a performance by various youth orchestras from around Scotland.

But in a classic example of "policy over common sense" it turns out that the Royal Concert Hall has a policy of only allowing photography for the first half hour of any performance. This is normal for single-act shows, and it makes sense, but how are you supposed to cover performances by five separate orchestras when you're only allowed to take pictures of the first one?!

I've asked them twice to make an exception but they just keep throwing "policy" at me, so it looks like I won't be doing it at all. And personally I think that's a huge shame as this would have been great national exposure for what these young musicians are doing, and for Celtic Connections in general. Aren't we always hearing that there isn't enough coverage of the arts in Scotland?

So anyway by mid-afternoon today I needed to get away from the computer/phone for a little while so I went round to a neighbour's house to do a picture of her with her new rescue cat for the village newsletter.

They say you should never work with children or animals. Well children are fine but even with this very co-operative cat it was a major challenge to get the sort of photo I wanted, which was something with a connection between Dolly and the cat. It took about half an hour before we finally got this shot which is something close to what I had in mind:

Here are a few other shots we did along the way. I used a hair light for all the shots of Dolly, positioned behind her to right of frame, but it doesn't appear to have made much of a difference.

In the week before Christmas I did three portrait sessions with full backdrop and studio lighting: One day it was an over-60s party, the next day it was a toddlers party, and then it was the most exhausting but also the most fun job I do all year, the Tain Academy end-of-year formals at the seniors dance.

I've learned so much since I did last year's formals, so of course this year's photos are that much better. The biggest technical difference is that I backed off from last year's novice "light everything" approach and used a single softbox, positioned about 30 degrees off camera axis to the left and about 10 feet high to produce the butterfly lighting used in fashion photography.

I've also learned how to pose people in more relaxed and flattering ways, including the major improvement of getting girls to pose with their hands on their hips. It's a matter of personal taste and I'm sure some people will think it's more feminine for girls to have their hands overlayed in front of them, but as always my priority is to get the most natural and genuine pictures, and consistently the hands on hips pose produces the best results. (Wouldn't work for older people but for teenagers it's fine. I've never tried it with kids but I suspect it would look too fake.)
Something I've learned from weddings is that when girls have put a lot of effort into their hair and outfits, they like to have pictures taken that show the back of them, so for this year's formals I did 3/4 side views of each girl. I wasn't expecting great results because it's a tough pose to teach someone quickly, but most of them nailed it first time, so that was a bonus.
Among the more unusual things we tried this year were having one of the lads cheering victoriously as he knelt on top of a heap of his friends who were playing dead, two girls pretending to attack each other with various tools, and another two girls who suffered the embarrassment of one being asked to kiss the other on the cheek. (Sorry girls, the shot I was really trying to get was one of you both laughing, the kiss was just to make it happen!)

Something I do need to improve next time isn't really anything to do with photography, but I'll have to request that the girls wear shoes and choose bras that are appropriate for their dresses. There were many girls this year who had the wrong posture because they had taken their shoes off, and there were a lot of potential shots that I couldn't take because girls had worn the wrong kind/colour of bra under strappy or backless dresses.
Anyway, here's a selection of shots. I did all the 'safe' shots of everyone so I haven't included many of those here, going instead for the more dramatic, interesting, or just plain bizarre shots that we came up with…

Shot specs:
Canon 1Ds  •  70-200 f/2.8L IS  •  1/125s  •  ISO 100

Focal range was around 85mm for full height shots, 135mm for 3/4 shots and 70mm for larger group shots. Aperture was f/8 for individuals and couples, down to f/16 for groups.

Lighting was a Bowens 1000DX with square softbox.