Samantha & Robert’s wedding
Sun May 27th - 8:00pm
Congratulations to Sam and Robert who were married on Saturday in Logie Easter Church in Kildary, after which they held their reception in the Seaboard Memorial Hall in Balintore. A very relaxed and informal day, with many of the guests having young children so there was a fun party atmosphere. How many wedding receptions have you been to where there was a bouncy castle?!
Barry Grove’s Auchinstarry canal basin project
Thu May 24th - 4:49pm
No pictures (yet!) but I wanted to post a link to a page about Barry Grove's new project, creating a sculpture for the Auchinstarry canal basin at Croy near Kilsyth.
If you've been following this site for a while then you'll be familiar with the reproduction of the Pictish Stone at Hilton, which Barry created.
For the canal project there are three designs to choose from and Barry will create the one with the most votes. You've got until next Thursday to cast your vote.
Football skycam
Tue May 22nd - 12:30am
Skycam? Polecam? Feeling like a wally holding a camera up in the air on a monopod? Call it whatever you want but Monday evening was my first attempt at using an elevated camera to shoot football.
The easy bit is that you can reliably shoot in AV mode so you don't need to worry about metering. The difficult bit is that you need to pre-focus the lens which will always be a best-guess because you don't know where the action will be.
I used a Canon 1D fired by Pocket Wizards with 17-40 lens at 17mm f/4.
What do you think? Worth pursuing the idea?
21 May 2007: After having his line of sight blocked by his own defenders, Ross-shire Club goalkeeper David Mitchell is unprepared for a strike by Balintore's Graeme Davis. Balintore won 5-1 in Monday night's welfare league game, which was brought forward due to the UEFA Champions League final on Wednesday.
Mermaid of the North (#2)
Mon May 21st - 3:55pm
Here's a more dramatic picture of the mermaid. There was better sunlight for this shot. I also used a wider aperture to throw the water out of focus, while using a faster shutter speed to capture the texture of the waves.
Mermaid of the North
Sun May 20th - 5:06am
Here's another picture of the Balintore mermaid, or the Mermaid of the North to use her correct title. I got some nice pictures today with the tide really high so she's sat out there on her rock, totally surrounded by water but with just the tip of her tail getting wet. The sun even came out for a few minutes at just the right time.
One of today's pictures was a tight vertical shot with the sea looking rough and dramatic, and I'll process that one to show you during the week when I get time. But the person I was doing the pictures for chose this one with the water blurred so this is the one I processed today.
Here's a link to a local newspaper article about the mermaid for anyone outside the area who wants to know the background info:
ps. If you've ever used a Canon 1Ds then you'll feel the pain when I tell you that this picture was shot at f/32 and the camera's sensor hadn't been cleaned in months. Dust?! It was like a snowstorm. Took an hour to clone it all out. If you haven't used a 1Ds then you won't know its dirty secret, which is that it's a dust magnet, extremely difficult to clean, and the sensor alone costs £2k to replace if you scratch it. Beautiful camera but a bitch to maintain.
Multi-layered group shot
Fri May 18th - 7:24pm
Group shots are group shots, there isn't a great deal you can do to make them more interesting. But there is one technique you can use and I tried it for the first time today, with some degree of success.
When you have lecturers, instructors, guest speakers, or anyone else who has been leading or addressing a group in some way, then you can put them in the foreground of the image. Keep them turned towards the group but facing the camera and hey presto, the picture tells the story.
Geniuses like Bobby can pull off shots like this in their sleep but I was scared to try it until now! As you can see, though, it's a useful technique: This picture is a catalogue of flaws, with the group not even being lined up straight, but still it grabs your attention and it doesn't 'feel' like a group shot. Well at least I hope it doesn't.
Notice also that everyone from foreground to background is side-lit. Now that portrait lighting has become something that I can do intuitively, even my group shots are benefiting from it! Practice, practice, practice.
Total time to organise the group, set-up the lighting and take the shot: A little less than 15 minutes. The most challenging aspect of the shoot was having to politely ignore the one mouth in the group who constantly complained about how long it was taking, but several people apologetically came up to me afterwards and made it clear that they didn't agree, which was nice of them.
Balintore sculpture trail launch night
Wed May 16th - 2:13pm
I've put a set of unprocessed pictures from the launch night of the Balintore sculpture trail over on my Flickr page. Click here to view the slideshow.
John Baikie wedding blog
Tue May 15th - 4:05pm
I've only just discovered that John Baikie has a blog. I've had a link to John's main site over on the sidebar for ages but his blog is new to me. Good to see another photographer from this part of the world running a blog! (John's based in Thurso, a fair bit north of me, but still somewhat "local" in Highland terms.) His blog is mostly about his wedding work, which in my opinion is quite stunning:
Balintore mermaid
Tue May 15th - 1:50am
Evidently I've still not quite got to grips with these reportage-style photos, but I'm certainly getting better. And about time! I just don't get many opportunities to try them so I haven't had a lot of practice.
The idea is that you have two distinct subjects in one frame: The person/people at the front, and whatever the story is about at the back. But both must dominate the frame without overpowering each other. I'd say that I accomplished all of that with this shot of Steve and Will with the mermaid.
What I don't like, and I know I'm being very fussy here, but rather than having the guys in the foreground and the mermaid in the middle-ground, I've got the guys in the middle-ground and the mermaid in the background. There isn't a strong foreground element. I knew this was happening while I set-up the shot but we were all standing on slippery rocks and we were running out of time so I had to settle for this. Not bad, but not perfect.
And consider this a work-in-progress photo of the mermaid herself…
(Click the picture to see it larger)
I've been down on that beach two nights in a row trying a new lighting technique, and it's working very well, but I still haven't quite produced the killer shot that I'm looking for. It's difficult because I'm having to do the photos in near-total darkness, which makes focussing almost impossible, even with shining a torch on the mermaid. In some of Sunday night's attempts I got the lighting perfect but the mermaid was out of focus. I'll keep on trying, the result will be worth the effort. The photo above is just a regular long-exposure shot without any additional lighting.
