tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40298193925492364712024-03-14T17:49:38.164+00:00Real Life AssignmentsReal Life Assignments takes you behind the scenes with professional outdoor photographer Dave Willis on assignment. Learn new photography hints, tips and tricks and see what really goes into photo-shoots.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-83169979445291045472018-01-31T20:39:00.001+00:002018-01-31T20:39:51.283+00:00Horses for Courses<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ro6qH3PTK29BeDgNFdfCM6AvZd7W1DjaU4PHvBVEI0CTppSaNy4Ctk7lRoujveP2Ern9lovTyvyE5ettxdkZ4M4ihKaMVzrc4mQuT6RdUviO3rpbBKU_ds8RBGjv5XMDGZTozUTAarc/s1600/IMG_0937.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ro6qH3PTK29BeDgNFdfCM6AvZd7W1DjaU4PHvBVEI0CTppSaNy4Ctk7lRoujveP2Ern9lovTyvyE5ettxdkZ4M4ihKaMVzrc4mQuT6RdUviO3rpbBKU_ds8RBGjv5XMDGZTozUTAarc/s320/IMG_0937.JPG" width="320" /></a>This month's edition of BBC CountryFile Magazine carries a story I worked on last summer, with local Kendal based journalist Karen Lloyd, looking at a dying breed. Lakeland fell ponies are a rare breed of fell pony that are only kept by a handful of enthusiastic breeders, quite distinct from other similar looking breeds and said to be one of the toughest animals in the British Isles.<br />
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The assignment had it's moments; tracking down the ponies in the first place wasn't easy; these are wild fell ponies after all. "They could be anywhere" I was told, before mounting the back of the quad bike with an over-packed rucksack of camera kit and hanging on for dear life as we shot up the side of the fell in search of the elusive beasts. Not too elusive as it turned out. And really quite approachable, for a wild animal. Fortunately I've done a lot of horse riding in my time and I'm not really worried about them, but you never know - wild is wild.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcb8YDjXI9va_UH9AnCPfjREavl3ro1Sz36wW76yTKTLq-pqjsHWQkjPbOgrrCRVLpK0A2_a7A0_WQXXnEqQTG3wBK9WooRL1USVriSmqH6q3Y0GSW6AmXE14CdYh7QmE0jPdHcrAxSAw/s1600/d1123-2292.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcb8YDjXI9va_UH9AnCPfjREavl3ro1Sz36wW76yTKTLq-pqjsHWQkjPbOgrrCRVLpK0A2_a7A0_WQXXnEqQTG3wBK9WooRL1USVriSmqH6q3Y0GSW6AmXE14CdYh7QmE0jPdHcrAxSAw/s320/d1123-2292.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg9Xc6jGCzBDewARu6s0aDpzo18ZagM02WnlcsJ6YRSQXhjQIE3q7vWXjxI6UN_3YfGfaYlQJNGFJVXRGLruBwG-cThyi91pJYIyq84mVtmRSzHqdlBed_j3ycZykp0GVg20gjpF-SH-k/s1600/d1123-2045.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg9Xc6jGCzBDewARu6s0aDpzo18ZagM02WnlcsJ6YRSQXhjQIE3q7vWXjxI6UN_3YfGfaYlQJNGFJVXRGLruBwG-cThyi91pJYIyq84mVtmRSzHqdlBed_j3ycZykp0GVg20gjpF-SH-k/s320/d1123-2045.jpg" width="320" /></a>On the second visit, to a different location and a different breeder, I found myself greeting a real character who I last photographed 25 years ago on a story about charcoal burning in the Lake District. Walter Lloyd was a proper old school back-to-nature craftsman/woodsman/gypsy, call him what you like - he was an encyclopaedia of forgotten old-ways knowledge. Scraping a living but living a full life, Walter made traditional hooped gypsy caravans by hand, taught woodland crafts and charcoal burning in workshops and lived a life on the road full of adventure and surprise. And here he was again, with his son Tom, breeding rare fell ponies - of course he was. he loved horses and the horse drawn life of the gypsy traveller so what could be more natural. He looked strong and full of vigour despite a heavy bout of flu recently but sadly he was not as strong as he looked, at aged 90 something, he passed away recently. He will be missed by everyone who came into contact with him and especially by his family and friends; a true original and a proper character.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhgSjHel7evfUrGL2t3BfUUR08GGGX2k0ldWkIQh26bBkWsg_oiYYcM6C8_DdSCalPBy57QHyoHGbhu2R5dxeJ_Sg8VN_ZG6R2FlP5kzpQEVqMC1AUulUaCU2vuQQdIcEG7r5ZYVjXsg/s1600/d1123-2206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhgSjHel7evfUrGL2t3BfUUR08GGGX2k0ldWkIQh26bBkWsg_oiYYcM6C8_DdSCalPBy57QHyoHGbhu2R5dxeJ_Sg8VN_ZG6R2FlP5kzpQEVqMC1AUulUaCU2vuQQdIcEG7r5ZYVjXsg/s320/d1123-2206.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
His son Tom, equally passionate about the things that were important to Walter will doubtless continue the family tradition and hopefully keep the Lakeland fell pony tradition alive. That's what all those pack horse bridges all over the fells were built for after all.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-58029972358388232552018-01-24T21:01:00.000+00:002018-01-24T21:01:04.330+00:00I do love a cover...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkT0DObuocjxpGOUPSYUhafzjTIEpsBHLfNtZtkqnlpGSYx8eN7xf_MfnDEMPECvtNq3UQ_ggsy6zbtZyq1FXh9PHZ-VLEJwoS7Fo6ZQkScA5cYPVT8f_iCvaKLTpYltcIHedPLJXHkfE/s1600/LW123+COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1141" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkT0DObuocjxpGOUPSYUhafzjTIEpsBHLfNtZtkqnlpGSYx8eN7xf_MfnDEMPECvtNq3UQ_ggsy6zbtZyq1FXh9PHZ-VLEJwoS7Fo6ZQkScA5cYPVT8f_iCvaKLTpYltcIHedPLJXHkfE/s320/LW123+COVER.jpg" width="228" /></a>This month I get the cover on Lakeland Walker magazine with another winter shot of my trusty model/mountain guide Paddy Cave (<a href="http://www.mountaincircles.com/">http://www.mountaincircles.com</a>) We did this shoot some time ago when the Lakes still got winter snow - oh, hang on, I'm looking out the window and would you believe it, 2018 actually has some snow again!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQ8qXXkyU3Oue1bcI0FY_TTZ2MkONBlJK42tcEpIOdnc15kl6YSwnvpKYpSZIpwvYs_VoPNzMEzOO6KB8FfLaWb5OFCS1hb9ZJHXaR2pWttFLYONZLwkDCqi1eRmv-nRitjJGGPS5cwU/s1600/LW123+p43.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1141" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQ8qXXkyU3Oue1bcI0FY_TTZ2MkONBlJK42tcEpIOdnc15kl6YSwnvpKYpSZIpwvYs_VoPNzMEzOO6KB8FfLaWb5OFCS1hb9ZJHXaR2pWttFLYONZLwkDCqi1eRmv-nRitjJGGPS5cwU/s320/LW123+p43.jpg" width="228" /></a>It's time to get back out on the hill and shoot winter covers for next year. Helvellyn and the Red Tarn bowel are pretty reliable for holding the snow and giving you great backgrounds but the real trick to a successful cover shot is a red jacket - never go out without one.<br />
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Actually I did a bit better than just the cover - the full pager on the gear section is also Paddy - different location, different jacket, but the principle's the same - make the figure stand out from the background.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-46361561111981673672017-10-14T21:02:00.001+01:002017-10-14T21:02:29.140+01:00Lakes International Comic Arts Festival<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvMA1hCzb-zzD-A1aS9dBjSxd941D6K9FJoqkk80VwAvU9neaLsQq47bvinHDIVR5Y9qcM77YksZhbEDS-UTcbAP47bRK4a5YYxMLEzdedyaIP6t-3TsIkjpAnXtitpON8dsjlxHkRHzU/s1600/d4164_CPR5918.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvMA1hCzb-zzD-A1aS9dBjSxd941D6K9FJoqkk80VwAvU9neaLsQq47bvinHDIVR5Y9qcM77YksZhbEDS-UTcbAP47bRK4a5YYxMLEzdedyaIP6t-3TsIkjpAnXtitpON8dsjlxHkRHzU/s320/d4164_CPR5918.jpg" width="320" /></a>It's that time of year again - LICAF!<br />
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Remarkably, a small and grey market town on the edge of the Lake District (yes, Kendal) has become home to not only the internationally famous Mountain Film Festival but now the worlds biggest comic arts festival. Weird eh?<br />
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I grew up on 2000AD comic so I'm all over Judge Dread and Nemisis the Warlock, or at least I was when I was appropriately young.<br />
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So I was a wee bit intrigued when I was asked to photograph the artist responsible, Bryan Talbot at Kendal College's Box theatre.<br />
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It's always interesting meeting the actual face behind the name, if you know what I mean. Bryan is not quite what I expected - quietly spoken, slightly intense, a professional artist with wide ranging interests that have taken him a long way from predictable story lines and imagery of DC comics. Not your average geeky comic guy!<br />
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I shot these images with a Fuji X-T10, aperture priority mode, f4.5 hand held at 1/30th second iso 1250, which would be boring geeky info normally but I've just acquired this camera so I'm interested in how it performed under duress...looks pretty good to me. Love this little camera - I think I'll be using this a lot in the future.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggmWU_obpQo1bh0-R6UedJSiBl-yZwzaztKX3wFBUxWaXe3mif8foBb0E9ZKV83BjfNjq27lavuP1G7v_Q6im8fzoLo98D-rBjHuj1kyg4UFdTFXvqoi5AcWc8VOQAobgLm0htjb-OeeQ/s1600/d4164_CPR5964.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggmWU_obpQo1bh0-R6UedJSiBl-yZwzaztKX3wFBUxWaXe3mif8foBb0E9ZKV83BjfNjq27lavuP1G7v_Q6im8fzoLo98D-rBjHuj1kyg4UFdTFXvqoi5AcWc8VOQAobgLm0htjb-OeeQ/s640/d4164_CPR5964.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-79767821979715658722017-09-18T19:04:00.000+01:002017-11-10T16:56:43.123+00:00Back to School...It's September, so of course school's back and for those of us who work in education it's a whole new sea of fresh faces eager to learn. I always look forward to welcoming my new group of part-time evening class enthusiasts on the Level 2 and Level 3 photography course, which I've been running now for 14 years.<br />
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Now that we are under the UAL (University of the Arts, London) umbrella, the course has so much more scope for students to develop their own personal photography projects and get their teeth into more creative projects. But what should a personal photography look like?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qb-DEhHUTLuKrcC28Cw9aDlz5nZrVvnzRCQIlSUU4NIehqpkbSpYtmmj28T08PHWyN6Ukh0iKU-hJpIJpfMpD53MNeacEUu1C9lWNHXTkjvvbCtZ3H3M_AKZXo81N2xvaQq4lL8XIqo/s1600/Nancy4520.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qb-DEhHUTLuKrcC28Cw9aDlz5nZrVvnzRCQIlSUU4NIehqpkbSpYtmmj28T08PHWyN6Ukh0iKU-hJpIJpfMpD53MNeacEUu1C9lWNHXTkjvvbCtZ3H3M_AKZXo81N2xvaQq4lL8XIqo/s320/Nancy4520.jpg" width="320" /></a>Let's take travel photography for example. Most of us love to travel with our camera and try and shoot something better than a holiday snapshot. We'd like to think we can communicate a sense of place, create some atmosphere or capture a more realistic sense of real life and community on our travels. That can be hard when you're competing with the demands of family and friends and the next round of ice creams on the beach. Everyone will find their own solution; for me it's taking an hour out to roam free and explore the back alleys and quieter places, away from the crowds.<br />
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My aim is to do "Street" photography, just as I would at home, to try and avoid the cliche postcard views. By setting myself a genre and a theme, I hope to stay focused and produce a set of images that say something a little different about where I've been and what I've seen. Essentially, that's what I'm going to teach my students. Set yourself a project theme, in a genre of photography that you enjoy or want to be challenged by, and stay focused on the subject, don't get too sidetracked by "pretty" pictures. Photography should be be about communicating<br />
something real, not just for decoration.<br />
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If you live in the South Lakes area of Cumbria and you fancy coming along to one of our photography courses at Kendal College, check out the college website part time courses at <a href="http://www.kendal.ac.uk/">http://www.kendal.ac.uk</a><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-61905358810925755442017-02-03T20:07:00.000+00:002017-02-03T20:07:28.046+00:00I've been working with the world's leading specialist Mercedes-Benz Unimog refurbishers, Atkinson Vos, who recently launched their new website at <a href="http://www.unimogs.co.uk/">http://www.unimogs.co.uk</a><br />
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The company have undergone a complete re-branding with Lancaster based design agency, Hotfoot Design at https://www.hotfootdesign.co.uk<br />
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(<a href="https://www.hotfootdesign.co.uk/white-space/atkinson-vos-rebrand-responsive-website/" target="_blank">https://www.hotfootdesign.co.uk/white-space/atkinson-vos-rebrand-responsive-website/</a>)<br />
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So finally, the website is up and running with the images that we produced over a 6 month period of carefully managed photo-shoots on location.<br />
These amazing vehicles will go anywhere/do anything so we needed to create a portfolio of images to visualise this message to customers and reinforce the idea that a Unimog vehicle is the right solution for extreme purposes.<br />
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The key to creating these images has been the use of off-camera lighting and out-of-the-box thinking to find ways to make the Unimogs stand out in their environment. </div>
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Speed lights where used with remote triggers to light under, around and inside the 'Mogs to highlight detail and create contrast. </div>
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We didn't let the famously inclement northern weather get in the way either - stormy skies played right into our hands, with drama and mood. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPM0H_LbWsdsfvhCwNJZK8OLi9Rs4DQyrWWC9Ak5gwqhK_zp_1NVS2Nr4c_rZwkoMsPZKz7_-zNzlWL3jF0YEa3FwrRN18vTn_-085QTkWAQDm_40yssHkntQ2xHGHTosuJ857eb_rhPI/s1600/Screenshot+2017-02-03+19.23.06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPM0H_LbWsdsfvhCwNJZK8OLi9Rs4DQyrWWC9Ak5gwqhK_zp_1NVS2Nr4c_rZwkoMsPZKz7_-zNzlWL3jF0YEa3FwrRN18vTn_-085QTkWAQDm_40yssHkntQ2xHGHTosuJ857eb_rhPI/s320/Screenshot+2017-02-03+19.23.06.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Charlie and Guy at Hotfoot have done a great job turning my images into a complete re-brand for web, print and mobile and I'm looking forward to working with them again on future projects.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-28592935288199387462015-03-20T10:46:00.000+00:002015-03-20T10:46:07.679+00:00Stardate: 9.30am, 20th March 2015 Solar Eclipse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7bayfO-6Eji9374zO37WkVdkIivX9q9EFnI7KXr__4uzmIOP4mpiBulfNhxAdJ9DwWu41Bf_ctXtmrPSNngX7745iPfnis0MYc1k8290XLLMX8w98hzKoKpG3a-yfOo38pdEa9jAQjL8/s1600/untitled-1636.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7bayfO-6Eji9374zO37WkVdkIivX9q9EFnI7KXr__4uzmIOP4mpiBulfNhxAdJ9DwWu41Bf_ctXtmrPSNngX7745iPfnis0MYc1k8290XLLMX8w98hzKoKpG3a-yfOo38pdEa9jAQjL8/s1600/untitled-1636.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
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Well, here's my effort. Shot with a Sony NEX 3 and the kit 18-55 Sony lens without filters etc, and pushed through Lightroom. Not too bad really. What was your's like? Did you even get to see it!!??Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-31607548104617498862015-03-05T21:23:00.000+00:002015-03-05T21:23:44.916+00:00We Are The Chiltern Conser-vation So-ci-ety (apologies to the Italian Job!)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2UXWd1S2zeewGiAFC5nmKokN1xGagFbwtl42LtKJjeg7NgDqbGpqHOp4QijMvok_8rVr4hcA71g-LDbtaaxF32CNNujfCTr39Mtn4aKk63VVHIXP3te-GdqOUBxO2pdbJBd5YnOm3FI/s1600/_DSC9769.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2UXWd1S2zeewGiAFC5nmKokN1xGagFbwtl42LtKJjeg7NgDqbGpqHOp4QijMvok_8rVr4hcA71g-LDbtaaxF32CNNujfCTr39Mtn4aKk63VVHIXP3te-GdqOUBxO2pdbJBd5YnOm3FI/s1600/_DSC9769.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
The Self Preservation Society might not have been a bad title actually, with this lot of die-hard (ooh, another film link!) photographers. A bitterly cold, windy and sometimes rainy weekend in the Chilterns is not normally the recipe for a successful photo-workshop weekend but what we lacked in weather we made up for with enthusiasm I guess.<br />
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It's been quite a while since my last post here on the RLA page, because, well, sometimes life is like that, but I will take the time to mention the Chiltern Conservation Society, based in Chesham, Bucks, which if you are unfamiliar with the home counties is just north west of London (about 2 days drive if you are on the M25!) I was invited to run a weekend photography workshop for members of the CCS and took the opportunity to visit a part of the UK I have never spent time in before.<br />
I'm not sure quite what I was expecting - some upland chalk downs and some quaint villages I suppose, lots of woodland maybe? Actually that turned out to be fairly accurate, together with some really surprising, expansive views over the surrounding flat countryside from the few high points that are available. Good dog walking territory. And a very well "heeled" locality to boot - this view above is overlooking Chequers, the prime ministers country residence. He wasn't in when we called.<br />
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Anyway, enough of that; What's the point of this post then? What I wanted to say was that it was an interesting and challenging experience as a professional photographer and teacher, arriving in an unknown area, to teach complete strangers, in really difficult weather and lighting conditions, at totally unfamiliar locations...really gets you thinking on your feet!<br />
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One of the most useful/encouraging comments from the weekend came from a student who said it was really interesting watching a professional photographer arrive at a location for the first time, size it up and shoot a landscape image within 15 minutes, making all the critical assessments and decisions instinctively! That makes me sound like a genius, which of course I am (!) but actually the truth is that like most pros, I can do this because I've had to do it hundreds, probably thousands of times before.<br />
And that's the point really. There is no substitute for getting out there and shooting images, in all conditions, all weathers, all types of locations, as often as possible, to build experience and knowledge of what to look for and how to cope with whatever the situation throws at you.<br />
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Not only that, but then you have to sit down afterwards and analyse your results. What worked- and why? What didn't work and why not?<br />
Do you want to know the real secret of how professional photographers work quickly and efficiently and get great, reliable results every time? We learn what works and keep doing it, tweaking and improving all the time. And we learn what doesn't work and STOP doing it!<br />
You want to be a better photographer? Learn what works for you, keep doing it, better and better but even more importantly, learn what doesn't work and don't do it again. There you go, now you know. I shall running more workshops in Chilterns in the spring and autumn months so next time I'll know where to go as well!!!<br />
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Here's some more images from the weekend:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjK1PcDokkS74_OtWBs0L1DBJsJNtgU68lXzSVb_T9hZcoQy3ZC_hqYcWWqox6ECqXcplNibcVO_5BIIyZA6iJMFUQ8r9TqSmSGPH1TH_vDPAyJkXxOpEn36b1JEhuENwION4XH-EvmwM/s1600/_DSC9762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjK1PcDokkS74_OtWBs0L1DBJsJNtgU68lXzSVb_T9hZcoQy3ZC_hqYcWWqox6ECqXcplNibcVO_5BIIyZA6iJMFUQ8r9TqSmSGPH1TH_vDPAyJkXxOpEn36b1JEhuENwION4XH-EvmwM/s1600/_DSC9762.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-6881617425301651752014-06-07T21:16:00.000+01:002014-06-07T21:17:52.168+01:00Krazy, Krazy, Krazy, Krazy life...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhnw1CqnqCXPTmauB2qf6_dHjfIem-X02NTtZW5GCd3RhUNbOzNIiN1GqTAhkH6Hn3TcfHU1ZSOxvGiOL-nQbhrPVJg92xo2RTbNTgRLU-0klAe_5QM6JxVO_Ce54hFcngc9ZJDX1AfCs/s1600/d198-1729.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhnw1CqnqCXPTmauB2qf6_dHjfIem-X02NTtZW5GCd3RhUNbOzNIiN1GqTAhkH6Hn3TcfHU1ZSOxvGiOL-nQbhrPVJg92xo2RTbNTgRLU-0klAe_5QM6JxVO_Ce54hFcngc9ZJDX1AfCs/s1600/d198-1729.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
This particular flavour of Krazy comes courtesy of the Lakeland Climbing Centre in Kendal, one of the UK's biggest and best indoor climbing walls, which just happens to be local to me. <br />
<a name='more'></a>They recently approached me about some photography of their new Krazy Climb facility for kids and me, being related to the man from Del Monte, say yes. However there's a catch - no budget, having emptied the piggy bank actually installing this great new climbing wall. Now let me be clear here. LCC asked me because they are friends of mine and know me well enough to beg a favour, however...There are two schools of thought when it comes to dealing with this kind of situation. In school 1, photographers take a knee jerk position and say "Bugger off, I'm a professional, that means I make my living doing this, that means I get paid!" Whilst school 2 says "well, OK, let me think about this for a minute, what opportunities might this open up for the both of us?"<br />
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I'm school 2. I look at this and think, well maybe we can barter a bit, do a bit of horse trading, make some friends and store up some browny points. What's this actually going to cost me to do? What do I stand to gain if I say yes, what additional openings might this lead to? Do I have the spare time and energy (creative and physical) to fit this in without making problems for myself? If the answer to all or most of those questions is a positive one, then fine, I'll do my best to help out.<br />
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When I added up the pros here, it came out like this; I got a free entry pass for a year for myself and my 10 year old son, so every time its a rainy, dull weekend we go meet some friends at the wall instead of slumping in front of the X-box. I can use the shoot as practice to try out some creative lighting and to that end I invited along a young aspiring photographer I've been mentoring, to act as a lighting assistant - Damian Kane; check his website at www.damiankane.com - and while I'm at the shoot, I just happen to bump into the wall-builder from King Kong Walls, also an old acquaintance, who expresses an interest in hiring me to shoot some of his other installations. Now, can you spot any really negative stuff in there? Nope, me neither. Actually we had a lot of fun, shared the love and made some new friends. OK, we didn't get paid on this one but I had some free time and I suspect this one will pay us back in the long run. I think I prefer school 2 to school 1.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8YzQowLzEcX79mdxcF0bprls2Ok3CALawEp4iehXvNEivpRoom7LZLAu9xwbH9NMFUMRJr67KgtV1dQOK9E4h7SNhahKnpvh7qm1TwGR6OBNyJFdeMurZ_j4kTsoL7zxhsTGRW6KRDUg/s1600/d198-1825.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8YzQowLzEcX79mdxcF0bprls2Ok3CALawEp4iehXvNEivpRoom7LZLAu9xwbH9NMFUMRJr67KgtV1dQOK9E4h7SNhahKnpvh7qm1TwGR6OBNyJFdeMurZ_j4kTsoL7zxhsTGRW6KRDUg/s1600/d198-1825.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
On this shot; I shot from an abseil rope to one side, Damian had a Nikon SB800 through a Lastolite SoftBox and 1/4 cut CTO to camera right, held up an a long boom arm for height.<br />
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This shot; Nikon D700 with 28-300mm ED VR lens, SB800 and Lastolite soft box on a boom arm held high overhead. A special mention for that background in pink and red. One of my golden rules is "Backgrounds ruin pictures - so pick them carefully, pay full attention", all I needed was a kid in a pink fleece; do we have one of those? Crikey, yes we do!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcTDtUQh-W9wuHiAC7ZMw9PDOt1cPRWYmAtaSVl1C_cwgK-5bqoY8nObRbm8UYP4UIkUbtFFyWq8BKOA30C6SSPo24EmoLVJIHUXImC-6HlV24movgCFbPoAUIwfN6S0bimTRKO4qy8s/s1600/d198-1589.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcTDtUQh-W9wuHiAC7ZMw9PDOt1cPRWYmAtaSVl1C_cwgK-5bqoY8nObRbm8UYP4UIkUbtFFyWq8BKOA30C6SSPo24EmoLVJIHUXImC-6HlV24movgCFbPoAUIwfN6S0bimTRKO4qy8s/s1600/d198-1589.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
See that lighting? Nice mix of shadows and highlights, makes it look more interesting. Nikon SB800 through the Lastolite Softbox on a pole, plus some ambient daylight.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-12527030284982369262014-04-27T17:13:00.002+01:002014-04-27T17:23:34.704+01:00A wild life at the BBC...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieDo7j2xF4QvTuIxWY_4VfLmN4hnqd9Phv9P_YDMWRruMY8yUbJ6LmekZ6ozJKl085bRsXhaTibIrLbY2JSjSKk7ek-fMHN7h3l5rYpSyYks7MKIVM4j4CeLHbQAzeDb_sBx_LuXFjBCY/s1600/d194-0127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieDo7j2xF4QvTuIxWY_4VfLmN4hnqd9Phv9P_YDMWRruMY8yUbJ6LmekZ6ozJKl085bRsXhaTibIrLbY2JSjSKk7ek-fMHN7h3l5rYpSyYks7MKIVM4j4CeLHbQAzeDb_sBx_LuXFjBCY/s1600/d194-0127.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
Over the last 12 months I've done a few commissioned shoots for the BBC; BBC Wildlife and BBC CountryFile. I've worked off and on with CountryFile for a number of years but usually with stock images or writing short walking routes for the out and about section. But it's the proper commissioned photo-shoots that you really want and it took a while to earn that trust. <br />
<a name='more'></a>I finally got the go-ahead, first for BBC Wildlife magazine and then CountryFile. I've shot several stories now. I really couldn't afford to screw up so each one was carefully planned and executed. You know that old saying; if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!<br />
With that in mind, I looked at the first shoot brief with a mounting sense of...errr, well, nervousness to say the least. I would be spending the day with Amy Jane Beer, a conservationist with a love of the great outdoors, who stops at nothing to explore the wildlife on her doorstep. We would be (I was assured) hiking, riding, canoeing and swimming our way around her neighbourhood, so I had better go prepared! Amy proved to be super-enthusiastic, funny and quite unstoppable.<br />
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With all the ingredients in place; interesting, photogenic person to work with, excellent weather (honestly), stunning, Yorkshire scenery and selection of energetic activities, what was I going to bring to the party? Answer: creative lighting. My USP in all of my editorial work these days is to make my pictures stand out through creative lighting techniques and try to go the extra mile. First up was a bit of bird watching.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-s2HRktRVmvAqO01epGpwsgCAPsF5O8t8_pEK-3UfI0lWNCofvysHNI2mMUeSFXSxwF1QlkNSqkUpbtETt8t3j8JdzMZIpUFnk3nIFxPaA-p4IPVSZrbMMiGB11UYrO3n6IFL5tu6l1U/s1600/d194-9936.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-s2HRktRVmvAqO01epGpwsgCAPsF5O8t8_pEK-3UfI0lWNCofvysHNI2mMUeSFXSxwF1QlkNSqkUpbtETt8t3j8JdzMZIpUFnk3nIFxPaA-p4IPVSZrbMMiGB11UYrO3n6IFL5tu6l1U/s1600/d194-9936.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
A short walk to a nearby viewpoint, teetering on the edge of a slippery, grassy hillside would be our first location. SB800 on a stand with a shoot-thru brolly, bungied to a fence post to stop the wind blowing it away, provided key lighting. Ambient light provides the fill, and you'll notice a separation light giving highlights down the Amy's face and hands (camera right), that's a bare SB600 on a super-clamp, clamped to the fence too. Background ambient is dialled down with 1/250 @ 5.6 at 200 iso. A slower shutter speed would have brightened up the ambient without affecting flash exposure but I like to keep a separation going on between the two, so I generally shoot the shutter speed as fast as I can to get the background about a stop less than the flash.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvAjylfva_aff_0dL6V6-ooUytutc_l3apSCn7sWIRYcW1q1Xs3ThQYwH1-ecWf9AABS9KoMTg-J4VOtlMW_qVkNufJwhIFvIn58I72AuhxkMAWsM1Q5KJFBTh0CWP-3pTzMXpPtG7Us/s1600/d194-0103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvAjylfva_aff_0dL6V6-ooUytutc_l3apSCn7sWIRYcW1q1Xs3ThQYwH1-ecWf9AABS9KoMTg-J4VOtlMW_qVkNufJwhIFvIn58I72AuhxkMAWsM1Q5KJFBTh0CWP-3pTzMXpPtG7Us/s1600/d194-0103.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
A couple of hours later, the sun was out and we'd been road and mountain biking and wound up looking at a very ancient oak in the woods - a favourite wildlife haunt. I found the ambient exposure (1/160th at 5.6 - 800 iso) and put up my shoot-thru, SB800 combo to camera right, selected an 18mm focal length and a low angle. I also threw some light at the tree with the SB600 spread with a wide-angle diffuser dome. See how the top branches and surrounding trees are dark? That would be the oak, too, without the extra illumination. The SB600 is camera left and low down, on the floor, pointing up at the tree.<br />
Next up was a badger set near-by. The photo at the top of the page shows the location. With afternoon sun streaming through the back of the trees, all I needed was some equally soft light on Amy and the sandy foreground and I was done. That one came out at 1/60th @ 5.6 at 400 iso. SB800 brolly combo again. I used the backlighting as a hair light, didn't have to do anything, it was just there. Finally it was time to head for the river.<br />
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Water can be a risky environment for camera kit of course, so it pays to be prepared. I use clip-top food containers to water proof my flash guns. Using Pocket Wizards means that I don't need any physical connection to the flash guns, so they can go right into a waterproof box, along with their PW triggers and be placed anywhere I like. PW's have a massive range too, so I could light this from anywhere as long as the flash had enough power to reach. As it was, I actually had the SB800 with diffuser cone on a Manfrotto super-clamp and extension arm clamped to the canoe gunwale at camera left. The sun is camera right (see the sun flare bottom corner) and is providing most of the lighting but we just paddled into the shade, which is good because now the flash will stand out a bit and provide some interesting light. This one came out at 1/160 @ f7.1 at 200 iso on an 18mm focal length. Now I needed a head shot and the late, low afternoon sun looked perfect for a backlit portrait...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNdm8fhGEhAKmwuhP4tKG61Eym84baWnvjSzYnn8szkN-tAyQ21ifPikdCF6y6Nctq6guwUGp-PxZ_UFy20bvboHR3_M2y5UnlhGFnZ6YHfWhQbmKVURs49BkP-UZ0qRW1Ad0NYXZCZcc/s1600/d194-0141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNdm8fhGEhAKmwuhP4tKG61Eym84baWnvjSzYnn8szkN-tAyQ21ifPikdCF6y6Nctq6guwUGp-PxZ_UFy20bvboHR3_M2y5UnlhGFnZ6YHfWhQbmKVURs49BkP-UZ0qRW1Ad0NYXZCZcc/s1600/d194-0141.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
This is 1/250 @ 5.6, 200 iso, shot with a 120mm focal length to soften that background. Simple portrait technique here, put your subject against the sun, throw up a shoot-thru brolly, nice and close to your subject for maximum diffused light (here at camera right) and at about the subject's eye level, to generate a nice catch light in their eyes. Test your ambient without flash, looking to get a silhouette with well exposed background - adjust shutter speed down to get a more washed out background if you want. Now test your flash at f5.6 or thereabouts to keep a short DOF. Adjust your flash power until it looks great. Job done.<br />
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The last location shot was to be wild swimming and I had actually brought along my dry suit and a water housing so I could get in the water but it turned out to unnecessary...Amy could swim just off the river bank and I could shoot at ground/water level from the beach without any fuss. Simple is always better. You'll notice that Amy is swimming in the shade, with a sunlit background? I just skimmed some flash (SB800 in the food box/waterproofer) from water level to bring her exposure up a bit. 1/250th @ f5.6 @ 200 iso. 100 mm lens.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcE4N_KpwzaqwoljE5NSN3uJN-AMyAELjDgvqeeOiQT860aJtWG8gLLuzryFHHw-76do0Vojk8ZhOAfWUZaSF4P6m5lTOMbyqEpQNCG8648cfuAPVUbHl3OrBuQpuC12wGBbgHJ1o0zo/s1600/d194-0309.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcE4N_KpwzaqwoljE5NSN3uJN-AMyAELjDgvqeeOiQT860aJtWG8gLLuzryFHHw-76do0Vojk8ZhOAfWUZaSF4P6m5lTOMbyqEpQNCG8648cfuAPVUbHl3OrBuQpuC12wGBbgHJ1o0zo/s1600/d194-0309.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
That was that, back to the house and welcome cup of tea at the end of a long but fun day. I was pretty confident I had nailed it and was happy with my take. It was while I was chatting with Amy, in the last of the afternoon sunshine, enjoying tea and flapjack on the patio, that it hit me. I had completely forgotten a key image. The whole point of this story was that Amy does all this active, adventurous wildlife watching in a radius of only 5 miles from her house and what she was saying is that brat opportunities exist for all of us to explore out local flora and fauna right on our doorsteps. And I should have shot a photo of her actually planning her route or locations on a local map, to emphasise that point. Dohhh!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDWe-sQmOFRJMiasz3PhshfijQ-7bbFi33IOwbVtekdt5_jcnTV7s43EI-kgvP482yYeXC5TfLyUE0odf9GAdMPs-rjSDZCwljoDyFqwBt7GIvU8FHFCl3JohuLGpWdFyIZxSg1zNFXcc/s1600/d194-0323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDWe-sQmOFRJMiasz3PhshfijQ-7bbFi33IOwbVtekdt5_jcnTV7s43EI-kgvP482yYeXC5TfLyUE0odf9GAdMPs-rjSDZCwljoDyFqwBt7GIvU8FHFCl3JohuLGpWdFyIZxSg1zNFXcc/s1600/d194-0323.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
Luckily, my 6th sense of having missed something kicked in and literally as the sun faded, here are the last and perhaps most important shots!<br />
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And you guessed it...no flash at all. Just ambient light with a telephoto lens, handheld, no tricks, gimmicks, bells or whistles. Simples, squeak!<br />
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Thanks to Amy for tea and flapjack. This feature appeared in the January edition of BBC Wildlife magazine and this shot (left) was a lead image. Until next time...<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-21940708640518765822014-01-14T00:24:00.000+00:002014-01-24T10:58:33.894+00:00It's Leica Ferrari...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHyIhjmW2TkjO4EjVZxwKO2XcizDdeWSZ5HX3Sj6anxFADCCmRbDrWvjbC4fl9xUNGn3ZfNrPvDXrPwzVYUzgPvuE8NJ2HHIBccmZNJ0aVhHOeSInUgaD1WpJPNhCuwNHYsbsgDRdHqy4/s1600/L1009546.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHyIhjmW2TkjO4EjVZxwKO2XcizDdeWSZ5HX3Sj6anxFADCCmRbDrWvjbC4fl9xUNGn3ZfNrPvDXrPwzVYUzgPvuE8NJ2HHIBccmZNJ0aVhHOeSInUgaD1WpJPNhCuwNHYsbsgDRdHqy4/s400/L1009546.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
Time, like Ferrari's, flies.<br />
Hard to believe that I haven't posted a blog since July 2013. I guess that means either I've had nothing interesting to say/do or been too busy/lazy to post. I leave that one to your imagination.<br />
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The motley crew, pictured left are gathered around the aforementioned sports car for a good reason;<br />
Tip: always make sure you have £100K prop and a designer building close at hand whenever you are forced to do a group shot!<br />
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They are the excellent bunch of photographers and Leica enthusiasts that I've just had the pleasure of working with this last weekend at the inaugural Stephens Premier Leica workshop weekend at Kendal, up here in the Lakes. We got to play with the new Leica S system and I tried to teach these guys some new tricks with Lightroom 5.<br />
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Let me just repeat that, "play with the new Leica S system".<br />
Have you seen one of these babies?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3zMUdU8Kx3dWtfb4u3PwoGJp9C1pxQpk5VMmr5prrD40SCI3K0IVMvs1bVvfCghqY-mkaJifkV4exOdwEeKCTJlyxCLrFV2Vymk3TpGuMbLM1xm3nwYGP4EYio05ogy5NIrUC0W6VqE/s1600/leica+s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3zMUdU8Kx3dWtfb4u3PwoGJp9C1pxQpk5VMmr5prrD40SCI3K0IVMvs1bVvfCghqY-mkaJifkV4exOdwEeKCTJlyxCLrFV2Vymk3TpGuMbLM1xm3nwYGP4EYio05ogy5NIrUC0W6VqE/s1600/leica+s.jpg" /></a></div>
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Here it is - all 7000 x 5000 odd pixels of 37MP medium format quality! Wow. But don't drop it. £16,000'ish for the body, £5,000 odd for a lens. Yup, it's not cheap. </div>
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I got to play with it for a week, which coincided nicely with hurricane winds, torrential rain and zero light. Luckily the actual workshop weekend brightened up considerably and we were able to shoot some nice images around Windermere but I did try it out in anger shooting some landscapes as part of a shoot I did for BBC magazines. </div>
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As it turned out I was glad to have it along because the light was uniformly grey and miserable so I needed all of that file depth and quality to drag a decent landscape image out of the murk, in Lightroom! Here it is:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5L0OyiyUwP1W4Vfr2zxDEHzJMX7mqc44XZou_dVXKO65WoVfs7tNYrfdGC09fyl5alt_JLAn3opu5loQW5fAcLhTFdfXGk7JSGG8iqtK15WpdxGgaW0Si4iwioShzPIuqA7oSsuPBsRQ/s1600/L1000074.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5L0OyiyUwP1W4Vfr2zxDEHzJMX7mqc44XZou_dVXKO65WoVfs7tNYrfdGC09fyl5alt_JLAn3opu5loQW5fAcLhTFdfXGk7JSGG8iqtK15WpdxGgaW0Si4iwioShzPIuqA7oSsuPBsRQ/s320/L1000074.jpg" height="210" width="320" /></a></div>
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Would you like to see the file that actually came out of the camera?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm4t7TB84mmMmVDxTUaTqL1YbFaAQTPiAbKGezByqoRldor4fqxF0WfJWvE9q_zSNV11rVG6W19fLpEZXqOPsv22vCFWkcuMv-kScAsD0owQ5LoEyQEhXPUutVWI5UbtfFkAIVUdKGESQ/s1600/L1000074-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm4t7TB84mmMmVDxTUaTqL1YbFaAQTPiAbKGezByqoRldor4fqxF0WfJWvE9q_zSNV11rVG6W19fLpEZXqOPsv22vCFWkcuMv-kScAsD0owQ5LoEyQEhXPUutVWI5UbtfFkAIVUdKGESQ/s320/L1000074-2.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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Nice eh? How about that for crappy light?</div>
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Yes, it's been thoroughly cooked in Lightroom and to be honest I'm not sure that I would have been able to rescue such a sows ear with many other camera's…the Leica S files are so rich and detailed and have such latitude you can do anything with them. Amazing.</div>
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Anyway, back to the workshop, it was a great treat to work with the guys from Stephens Premier Leica (check out their blog at <a href="http://www.stephenspremier.com/latest-news/">http://www.stephenspremier.com/latest-news/</a></div>
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) and to be able to contribute to the weekend. I love exchanging ideas and notes with other photographers in what can sometimes feel like quite an isolated profession.</div>
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Will I be investing in a Leica S system? In my dreams. £20K buys a lot of Nikon kit! Would I rent one for the right job? In a heartbeat. And if landscape was my living I'd think very seriously about this camera - those files will print seriously big.</div>
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Meanwhile, here's a couple more images…</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvbeCMZnhgFOpjFOxnxUe3R2USWB7QgBUXP6utxl0u0ODKLeSmmxqG2rdi2uOo6Ve-EPiz8NT_o9wxdcbwrfumFvWLDNxn1srqkqFPbJ1RQNjeYHQeXCJ48TE6ZON_pj6zLhmhx1RhjI/s1600/untitled-1009527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvbeCMZnhgFOpjFOxnxUe3R2USWB7QgBUXP6utxl0u0ODKLeSmmxqG2rdi2uOo6Ve-EPiz8NT_o9wxdcbwrfumFvWLDNxn1srqkqFPbJ1RQNjeYHQeXCJ48TE6ZON_pj6zLhmhx1RhjI/s320/untitled-1009527.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-4336531855994460682013-07-30T11:40:00.000+01:002013-07-30T11:40:31.469+01:00The Framework<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ1dTVMr_ipifsdXFI_M5aL4QMw_kWq-k-20oNMO5XbGLyMwgLfCJXXIu0PBFD3YgUyyKxeqFvo9pDNnb4WVkx8rmiYN4OYr94BYckl0Eno4amOMix3nT06Wo7vCXdHi_kNCRztuJpy24/s1600/Screen+shot+2013-07-30+at+11.25.49.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ1dTVMr_ipifsdXFI_M5aL4QMw_kWq-k-20oNMO5XbGLyMwgLfCJXXIu0PBFD3YgUyyKxeqFvo9pDNnb4WVkx8rmiYN4OYr94BYckl0Eno4amOMix3nT06Wo7vCXdHi_kNCRztuJpy24/s320/Screen+shot+2013-07-30+at+11.25.49.png" width="320" /></a></div>
asportinglife.com is a sports media/photography website that hosts contributed articles from professional sports photographers and industry insiders. I was recently asked to contribute and after looking through some of the really excellent posts on the site I was happy to do so. You can read my modest contribution at<br />
<a href="http://www.asportinglife.com/the-framework-dave-willis/">http://www.asportinglife.com/the-framework-dave-willis/</a><br />
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Whilst you're there, have a browse through the other sports photographers articles too, because there's some real gold dust in there.<br />
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One of the most common themes to emerge, in my opinion is how often pro photographers take on their own personal projects or do self-initiated work in order to challenge themselves,. Doing their own thing is a great way to learn new ways of working and techniques and to showcase what they can really do when there's no commercial imperatives holding them back. I believe in this wholeheartedly.<br />
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Actually, I was amused to see that, after the previous RLA post on shooting contemporary dance, something that I'd not done before, the very next contributor on "asportinglife" talks about taking on a personal photo project on a subject he'd never photographed before - you guessed it - contemporary dance. Must be a sports photographer thing!<br />
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<a href="http://www.asportinglife.com/">http://www.asportinglife.com/</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-32260644939663985072013-07-24T00:10:00.000+01:002013-07-24T00:24:10.245+01:00Let's dance!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Finally, I get round to posting something after two months. Anyone would think I've been busy. In the last eight weeks I've photographed kayaking, car mechanics, engineers, nursery kids, chefs, a theatre, a CEO, food and the Queen!<br />
So I thought it was about time I shot some action again, but in this case it would not be sports action. No, in this case it would be something completely new to me; contemporary dance.<br />
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This photo shoot came about through one of my colleagues at Kendal college creative arts centre where I lecture photography to foundation students. My colleague's daughter was studying contemporary dance at a leading London college and needed some portfolio images from some of her routines. Some of the dance moves would be choreographed and some would be improvised, using music and narrative sound tracks. This would be new territory for me but I jumped at the chance because...Well, because I thought it could teach me something useful about movement, about lighting and about timing. All things that are vital for sports photography. And let's face it, dancers are great to watch.<br />
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My lighting would consist of three Nikon speedlights, SB800, SB600 and SB28. The SB800 would act as key light, on a stand, shooting through a white umbrella with a 1/2 cut of CTO for warm light, at camera right at about head height. The SB600 would be fill light at camera left, also through a white shoot-thru brolly. This would be gelled with a warm-up CTO too. The back-light for separation and rim light would be the SB28 on a justin clamp, this time with a 1/2 CTB (blue) gel, placed at around waist height or lower. The real key to this set was the dance studio we used, at Kendal college. We had access to proper blackout curtains for background and orange theatre spotlights overhead for some additional ambient light which makes a difference to the overall lighting. Best of all, being a dance studio, the floor was a proper sprung rubber affair which allowed Emmie, my dancer, to really perform.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYuhExMh4xrCNiH5gb7g3poOlHKnxWNwtJBSPWu7cjhiY_znkYsKFWx8VI4kzU99tHtE93157YzLxfuT4fxXbBmcjEJs4oCe6oUH6UJ73Y9LQJh0FQKA4CHm8b4z6Bl2waYPIYM8s5_Q/s1600/d409-8132.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYuhExMh4xrCNiH5gb7g3poOlHKnxWNwtJBSPWu7cjhiY_znkYsKFWx8VI4kzU99tHtE93157YzLxfuT4fxXbBmcjEJs4oCe6oUH6UJ73Y9LQJh0FQKA4CHm8b4z6Bl2waYPIYM8s5_Q/s320/d409-8132.jpg" width="212" /></a>I had no real plan for this shoot, and little pre-conception of what would happen. We started with some improvised movement, using some of Emmie's preferred music, which gave me an opportunity to start figuring out camera and lighting angles, lighting ratios and exposure and most important, dance shapes that I thought worked.<br />
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Exposure was fairly easy. Shutter speed started at sync speed 1/250th, but I dropped that to around 1/80th to bring in some ambient light from the overhead theatre lights and to introduce some motion blur, which I felt was important with this subject. Getting the shutter speed just right, to convey motion and movement seems an important part of the creative process to me and worth experimenting with.<br />
The f-stop was set at 5.6 to keep the balance between flash recycle time and depth of field for sharpness. A wider aperture would allow for faster, more efficient flash but at the short distances I was shooting at (wide angle 18-35mm Nikkor) DOF was going to be pretty short. Emmie moves pretty quickly and covers a lot of floor-space so I was going to have to stay sharp to follow the action. I was going to need that extra DOF.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNVvWvx4j7rNr5s7ySTQKYe0ZvItTJ3o6h9hDnQlToQu4cBTF37kRJR_RahvnGnWftbWaERfoc5-tg3ec6A330TLyYhdnQWgmja0lML_aQlAS6hDwIfkgKffOamy8I4LNEinL9juKLhw/s1600/d409-8240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNVvWvx4j7rNr5s7ySTQKYe0ZvItTJ3o6h9hDnQlToQu4cBTF37kRJR_RahvnGnWftbWaERfoc5-tg3ec6A330TLyYhdnQWgmja0lML_aQlAS6hDwIfkgKffOamy8I4LNEinL9juKLhw/s320/d409-8240.jpg" width="320" /></a>Lighting ratio was more difficult. I started with everything set to low power. I use the Pocket Wizard mini/flex system so everything is controlled from the AC zone controller on the camera hotshoe. I start with the AC set to manual rather than auto mode (if you have one of these things you'll know what I'm talking about), and dial everything down to minimum power because I'm shooting in a black dance studio here and I won't need much power from the speedlights. Then I start dialing each one up and test it individually to get the light looking OK. It took a while to get the balance right because Emmie was moving around a lot and I'd get it looking just right on the left but too dark on the right, or vice versa which was frustrating until I realised I couldn't hope to cover the whole the floor. Pretty soon I figured that I should just light a sweet spot on the floor and let the action come to me. Then it just became a matter of timing and moving the camera position around to take advantage of whatever was happening in that lit spot. Then by accident I noticed that I really liked the look of the rim light appearing in the background, looking a little bit like a theatre spot picking out the dancer, so I used that in the background in quite a few frames.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlt5Qu5m855IVdfPHrcNNcLPgXF90sjmOqx_Kh4Asn4-hnrsK5rQtT0RgTlWKO_MCNMvih2pPFuArPaJB7s-wLuu2f4u-5BZwLFqQhXP6j5J9ikKl7l0RHHY9l9770y-7sT_y_HFGUNlE/s1600/d409-8242.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlt5Qu5m855IVdfPHrcNNcLPgXF90sjmOqx_Kh4Asn4-hnrsK5rQtT0RgTlWKO_MCNMvih2pPFuArPaJB7s-wLuu2f4u-5BZwLFqQhXP6j5J9ikKl7l0RHHY9l9770y-7sT_y_HFGUNlE/s320/d409-8242.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufI-AVpsFHeSUoGxqF7L_eG97bK0SNpCszvKYpR_BhSxlH0F4RgcBw5kzLhToxmND_1nAmXoz2TnKvp71VD7ndXfcozOHbzDAkUG2QKij28Wqz_4zq3SERUF6lPLUU3RoPgYTKtfhD0w/s1600/d409-8332.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufI-AVpsFHeSUoGxqF7L_eG97bK0SNpCszvKYpR_BhSxlH0F4RgcBw5kzLhToxmND_1nAmXoz2TnKvp71VD7ndXfcozOHbzDAkUG2QKij28Wqz_4zq3SERUF6lPLUU3RoPgYTKtfhD0w/s320/d409-8332.jpg" width="212" /></a>So there we were, shooting frames of improvised dance moves and I kept tweaking the lights a little bit and trying different shutter speeds to see what would happen (most of the pictures turned out too blurred when I dropped the shutter speed below 1/80th). Then Emmie stopped and told me she had this piece that she wanted to do which was sort of experimental, and was more of a performance piece. She was keen to have it photographed. I was surprised to find that the soundtrack was not music - it was a narrative - a taped interview actually, and she didn't dance it exactly, she sort of acted it out and interpreted it in motion and gesture. This was a revelation to me. I had not seen anyone do this before - or not in quite this way. It was quite brilliant. But the real "lightbulb" moment for me was the realisation that I was making really interesting, expressive portraits here.<br />
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We finished off with a series of moves and jumps that would really show off Emmies physical control with dance. I changed the lighting a little bit too, as I learned to be a bit more subtle and refined - just backing everything off and taking the edge of the rim and the key. I only really appreciated what a difference this made when I viewed the edits after, on the Mac screen, when I could see how well they were working. It can be really difficult to notice these things in the heat of battle, so I have to try and take note of what works and when the lighting is too heavy handed and remember to apply that lesson next time...<br />
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This was a great photo-shoot for me. I learned stuff. I was really impressed with Emmies dance and control of movement. It reminds me of the physical control of rock climbing except it's actually exciting to watch! </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-1788629886474304132013-05-16T22:53:00.001+01:002013-05-16T22:59:29.722+01:00Food for thought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNv4-vcs6fR6y0Od_q7D2vOoYsxB7cEg-TH6aCgQghDL2xFBQkVsbLZ3bY0TBQLVSsrmNwYVOC1Z66o-iXAox-cCNtZC95nTAIWUlacjsWJKlLRwdt8BViomp0K1iRa2ZU4J39AwQx_6M/s1600/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2124.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNv4-vcs6fR6y0Od_q7D2vOoYsxB7cEg-TH6aCgQghDL2xFBQkVsbLZ3bY0TBQLVSsrmNwYVOC1Z66o-iXAox-cCNtZC95nTAIWUlacjsWJKlLRwdt8BViomp0K1iRa2ZU4J39AwQx_6M/s400/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2124.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
Mmmmm...This looks a bit different! I mean different from my usual fare of outdoor sports subjects. I accept that it's pretty normal fare for food photography.<br />
Anyway, this month's post is about tackling a subject that is a bit outside of your comfort zone and the main theme here is that photographers are generally well served by having a broad range of skills and experience even (especially?) when they are pretty niche like me.<br />
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I trained as a high street studio tea boy/assistant in a general practice, which meant pack-shots, passports and portraits in the week and weddings at the weekend. Not a particularly exciting start to my career and yet, at the time, I counted myself very lucky just to be using a camera each day to pay the rent and learn new skills. On the other hand I also got a chance to do aerial photography surveys and shoot the Isle of Man TT races each year - so not all bad.<br />
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And in fact, as it turns out, all of this was good training. Because although I knew from my very first wedding photography experience that I was not going to be making a glittering career in the wedding game, I did realise that I was learning useful skills. Like how to manage a large group of reluctant, mostly drunk wedding guests in group photo; how to balance flash and unsuitably bright daylight on wedding dress/black suit combo and stay calm and carry on when I discovered I'd miss-loaded the film in the back of Hasselblad. Ah, happy days. Another skill I learned back in the day was how to light a studio still life and that has stood me in good stead ever since.<br />
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As a jobbing freelance photographer who happens to specialise in outdoor stuff, I take what comes, which in this case turned out to be 14 plates of hotel food. Without that early training in the studio I might well have been out of my depth on something like this but happily I'm OK with stuff like this. Makes a nice little challenge actually - I get to stay warm and dry.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVPcFvMvdKGbofxOoyALrvkamTXAS_N7pQF8-p_e0PGrS54U8AO3VoBNx3gg8Ojq9weDaeEXXWpaHSP6fVvXdQsvTj8aLpRNs8fV54Y4p-LXYxBATL6HZuFKNIU6UdKEBGg4-UvDKzzjY/s1600/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2143.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVPcFvMvdKGbofxOoyALrvkamTXAS_N7pQF8-p_e0PGrS54U8AO3VoBNx3gg8Ojq9weDaeEXXWpaHSP6fVvXdQsvTj8aLpRNs8fV54Y4p-LXYxBATL6HZuFKNIU6UdKEBGg4-UvDKzzjY/s320/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2143.jpg" width="213" /></a>Normally, food photography (done professionally) involves a chef and food stylist, in a studio kitchen, along with a host of props, lighting aids and background accessories (and a photographer of course!). Food is photographed the moment it emerges from the oven; Chemicals and gases are employed to emphasize texture, colour, steam or frost. On this shoot, this would not be happening. I was introduced to the chef who explained in a friendly and helpful way that he'd been in earlier and that all the food was ready and waiting (?) and I could get on in my own time when I was ready. It sounded like the food would be cold...and so it turned out to be.<br />
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Photographers are by necessity problem solvers. The problem here would be to produce appetizing, contemporary, eye-catching images of cold plates of food. My solution was to construct a setting using white table cloths and linen, next to a large window for ambient light and use some simple off-camera flash from speed-lights, and crucially, a wide aperture/small depth-of-field approach to highlight only the most visually interesting or colourful bits of the plate. If you look at a lot of modern, contemporary food photography, you can't help noticing the vogue for short DOF images, sometimes shot so close they're practically macro!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Bt30f5GbI9MF_MsciTjCb8NShQYsACsDxZB9eczevhb1927a08Nn6REC286ot0PENfYakvSEs00toXydchLMS38QbHThWzPaGGMghiyjfc9qAWBLfJ-5J4ZmmH2Eidm7YI_NLXETuTw/s1600/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2179.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Bt30f5GbI9MF_MsciTjCb8NShQYsACsDxZB9eczevhb1927a08Nn6REC286ot0PENfYakvSEs00toXydchLMS38QbHThWzPaGGMghiyjfc9qAWBLfJ-5J4ZmmH2Eidm7YI_NLXETuTw/s320/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2179.jpg" width="213" /></a>My set-up was pretty simple. I measured the ambient light level from the window light and set my flash power to an appropriately low level so as not to over-power it; somewhere around 1/8th power mostly. I wanted to compliment the ambient light not exclude it. I used an SB800 through an umbrella on a stand at about two meters away to fill in the shadow side and an SB600 with a grid, on a stand in the background to add a bit of directional sparkle or highlight, depending on the type of dish. It's hard to be too specific because I moved things around quite a bit and experimented with each dish but essentially that was the plan. I shot everything at f5.6 on a Nikkor 28-300 VRll/Nikon D700 combo. This seemed to do the trick although I did consider pulling out the 50mm f1.4 and just shooting the whole thing with ambient only.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL_K4bsWcAw-Da0d0Yz3qdp2Ak6HPF0G9LAsnZjjoW2BZnmZDbPhoLQIRfFuTK9PUD9xLzRzlEXRKj_15qDsKU8rnWilE7iySla0JuUJAIXyuhyphenhyphenU-12NC34MaVdPU40TOGFlusvR9acHw/s1600/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2180.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL_K4bsWcAw-Da0d0Yz3qdp2Ak6HPF0G9LAsnZjjoW2BZnmZDbPhoLQIRfFuTK9PUD9xLzRzlEXRKj_15qDsKU8rnWilE7iySla0JuUJAIXyuhyphenhyphenU-12NC34MaVdPU40TOGFlusvR9acHw/s320/d1_87_Roundthorne_April_13-2180.jpg" width="213" /></a>With the cold "hot" food out of the way, the dessert menu provided a bit more colour and it's here that the little SB600 gridded flash really worked out. See that bit sparkle on the wine glass stem? That's the SB600, that is.<br />
I think the whole 'white' theme works pretty well with this lot although I've seen some really nice food photography done with deep, rich colours too. There's quite a nice blog on contemporary food photography with hints and tips at <a href="http://jrphoto.wordpress.com/spotlight-interview-food-photographer-theodosis-georgiadis/">http://jrphoto.wordpress.com/spotlight-interview-food-photographer-theodosis-georgiadis/</a> which I enjoyed reading.<br />
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Overall, I enjoyed my adventure with food and for a photographer like me (in other words - well out of normal operating territory) I'm pretty happy with my results - the client certainly was, which helps. The secret weapon for me, when ever I get thrown one of these left-field jobs, is having the tools in the bag to tackle whatever comes up and by "tools' I don't mean camera, lens and flash; I mean time-served experience and the ability to handle it because you've tried it before. I tell all my students in workshops and at college that all photography is good for you; doesn't matter what kind it is, give it a go, it'll teach you something new. Oh, and I also remind them that experience is the thing you get just after you really needed it!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-5676353457369083702013-04-11T23:19:00.000+01:002013-04-12T12:58:39.740+01:00Don't push me, 'cos I'm close to the edge...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMkq9p7PmoZd89QfTPgJTtqm5j7NRVYB-jEGilcXobH8WMgWij592GaIl4hsNZcQ2I6lGS0T6-jtWxF_vFfFLypZQOCBz8io2ezL29nTjF9f-lxBFfcXUY1aJwYzi7nfagdu_wN6KCzd0/s1600/d1127-1909.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMkq9p7PmoZd89QfTPgJTtqm5j7NRVYB-jEGilcXobH8WMgWij592GaIl4hsNZcQ2I6lGS0T6-jtWxF_vFfFLypZQOCBz8io2ezL29nTjF9f-lxBFfcXUY1aJwYzi7nfagdu_wN6KCzd0/s400/d1127-1909.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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...Striding Edge to be exact. You maybe spotted that already.<br />
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Yesterday I took fate by the short and curlies and headed up Helvellyn with my good pal and long-suffering, yet curiously ever-willing "model" <a href="http://www.mountaincircles.com/" target="_blank">Paddy Cave</a>, in spite of an iffy forecast that could go either way.<br />
<a name='more'></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%28http://www.mountaincircles.com/%29">(http://www.mountaincircles.com/)</a>,<br />
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The intention was for a mixed bag of winter walking and "summer" style cover shots, if the sun came out. I supposed that I would get some snow on the northerly aspects, which might make for decent winter shots, but then I would get a summer look on the south slopes.<br />
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Frankly, even I didn't really believe we would be that lucky but hey, ho, nothing ventured, and my experience is that if you make the effort you always come back with something worthwhile - often something unexpected. And so it would turn out.<br />
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I packed specificaly for photography rather than winter walking. The D700 was stripped down to body only, no battery grip; I opted for the 18-35 AFS and the 50mm f1.4 AFD as a back-up portrait lens. Light and small. Striding Edge needs a wide lens so I took the chance, decided I wouldn't use a telephoto and left the 28-300mm in the Peli box at home. Lighting would be two flash guns - the SB800 and the trusty SB28, triggered with PW Flex's. I threw in a shoot-thru umbrella, a Lastolite tri-head umbrella swivel, a Justin clamp and 5-way reflector with some mini studio clamps.<br />
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Now the hard choice - what to take, in terms of a lightstand. I've got a couple of nano stands which are lightweight and compact and if this was an urben shoot they would have been my choice. But on the mountain they just don't work on sloping ground. I've come to rely instead on my old Manfrotto 190 series tripod legs (small, light, compact and very tough) coupled with a boom arm. So that's what I threw in the bag.<br />
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The flash gun/PW combos go into some clip-top food containers which make ready-made waterproof, mud proof protectors that can be put on the ground or strapped to whatever even in the worst conditions. OK - that's about it for photo gear (spare batteries, obviously), now for walking gear for a day out on one of Britains highest and most exposed ridge traverses in winter. Hmmm. Flask of coffee of course. Sandwich. Paddy will have essentials like nav and 1st aid, so I won't bother. An old RAB down pullover for warmth, pair of gloves. Axe and crampons of course. That should do it. My pack weighed 174 tons.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuYxuDPRAWp9vKe_bO97g29pvv2Q4RcsqvNWWW7LtHRaikpdL9bbD_Xz6BKPrILO5rVxxqntPB0VpTKYl1mkpl8iusgs4LhR7UapHXhMO91Va379JXVWpgRHQcQD2IecIqLOQwBBjpzc/s1600/d1127-1761.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuYxuDPRAWp9vKe_bO97g29pvv2Q4RcsqvNWWW7LtHRaikpdL9bbD_Xz6BKPrILO5rVxxqntPB0VpTKYl1mkpl8iusgs4LhR7UapHXhMO91Va379JXVWpgRHQcQD2IecIqLOQwBBjpzc/s320/d1127-1761.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Walking into Red Tarn it very soon became aparent that there was more snow up here than I had anticipated. It's very hard to know from the valley just what has survived from the recent snow falls but it seems that the extremely cold nights have solidified all the drifts and the high fells are plastered. I wasn't expecting this. Any thoughts of summer covers are quickly abandoned as I start planning a range of shots that I hope will translate into stock sales for next year. You have to remember that magazines work 2 to 3 months ahead so whilst it might still be April and early spring here in the real world, in editorial-land they're planning the June/July edition right now and by the time November comes around again I'm going to get asked for January/Feb cover shots with lots of snow. So gotta shoot them a year ahead.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwu4lvkHpPiNO4z20KyyeO5RHHdHOtU242a9D1Y9gstSE9h7JFFjif8VxOTUMvvBzIpwlVobCyAVYH8VbhMq0aahyphenhyphenJn282MrKQRa1Z_YV3iSVOWVUPHytNRNsGKC7thGHE-rcpBT5Clg/s1600/d1127-1826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwu4lvkHpPiNO4z20KyyeO5RHHdHOtU242a9D1Y9gstSE9h7JFFjif8VxOTUMvvBzIpwlVobCyAVYH8VbhMq0aahyphenhyphenJn282MrKQRa1Z_YV3iSVOWVUPHytNRNsGKC7thGHE-rcpBT5Clg/s320/d1127-1826.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
Our iffy day was rapidly turning into one of the most incredible, alpine-like, snow-plastered winter fests I've ever seen in the Lakes! Blue sky, sunshine, dazzling white drifts of wind-blon ridges and sastrugi! Amazing. And luckily we had done a bit of planning. Paddy was packing at least three jackets for clothing changes to make the most of conditions and get a good variety of shots from the day. We put a lot of effort into this - lugging a lot of camera gear and clothing and getting ourselves up the hill. This wasn't a quick photo-shoot 10 minutes from the car. So we intended to come back with a decent haul.<br />
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There's a lot of photos get published from walkers and climbers who take a camera out on their play-day and look for opportunities and sometimes they get lucky and grab a great shot. Good luck to them. A lot of these images find their way into print or on-line. But professional's don't work like that. We don't leave stuff to chance. We plan, organise, arrange and then put a lot of hard effort into getting shots that we know will work. They better had work because we've invested a lot into them. When we go on the hill to do this, it's not a nice day out walking - well it might be, but it's also a well orchestrated, rehearsed range of set pieces that are repeated and repeated until they are done to the photographers satisfaction. They are carefully thought out, properly lit and creatively composed with a lot of attention to detail. Just so you know.<br />
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Each and every one of these images shown here was set up with a full lighting rig. The backgrounds were carefully chosen as was the camera position and angle. The flash rig was set up and tested for good exposure and creative look. Paddy was dressed (sort of) and we did about 10 to 15 "takes" of each shot - to the bemusement of passing walkers!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiegEmKHhZ85ObbDbe0SWnp38L-kCX50jwynMdmNE84MzwdsS88Nq0RSZcjkHvfjSyaPPvb3hPg94a2gRb2PiaKHdEvpJoaLII5rGxpzmGXVzz0kM9tMfPaox0-H2Pr929nXXzjNpceHZY/s1600/d1127-1858.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiegEmKHhZ85ObbDbe0SWnp38L-kCX50jwynMdmNE84MzwdsS88Nq0RSZcjkHvfjSyaPPvb3hPg94a2gRb2PiaKHdEvpJoaLII5rGxpzmGXVzz0kM9tMfPaox0-H2Pr929nXXzjNpceHZY/s320/d1127-1858.jpg" width="320" /></a>Despite all this "setting up", I still don't use professional models. I use outdoor professionals. People like Paddy, who make their living as guides and instructors, and who know exactly how to handle themselves in any outdoor situation. They are super-confident, super-fit individuals with incredible, technical outdoor skills. Many of them are top performing athletes in their own right. Which means that I can just let them get on with being themselves, doing what they do best in the environment. I don't direct much. I tend to just give vague instructions; "go over there and walk over that boulder..." that kind of thing. I hope my pictures look natural and spontaneous because of that. I try not to get them looking too "forced" or too perfect. That's just me.<br />
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So - finally we arrived on Striding Edge itself. This was the main event of the day and we got down to work, finding some good scrambly bits and looking for the background that would really set the scene. And this is where you find out if your model is any good. There's nothing quite so frustrating to an outdoor photographer (like me) than spending this much time and effort only to find that your model is nervous of steep drops and can't run around doing the stuff you want them to. It's happened to me before. No problems today - Paddy doesn't understand the meaning of the word "fear". Actually he frightens me with his nonchalance around steep, slippery, sheer drops!<br />
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However, everything does not go entirely to plan. You might remember that I mentioned the shoot-thru umbrella I packed. Every photographer knows that there's nothing quite like umbrella-light at 10 feet. Works every time. It's the go-to lighting solution of choice 9 times out of 10. Except when you're on a narrow ridge in a gusting wind in the snow! Umbrella's unfortunately have very similar charactoristics to sails. Things can get pretty unruly when you're flying a 42" umbrella on a stand in a 35mph breeze. It didn't actually take off. I'm way too careful to let that happen - I had an ice axe pounded into the turf as an anchor for one thing. But even though the manfrotto/boom combo keeps things reasonably steady, the rig still blew over.<br />
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The SB28 flash (out of it's food container protector box) with attached PW flex hit the rocks and my heart stopped. "Damage control, report, over...." "Looks stuffed, c'apn..."<br />
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Fortunately not totally stuffed. The plastic hot shoes on both flash and PW had a piece broken off. Looks repairable with care and the right glue. Damn. But that, folks, is why Nikon now do all metal hot shoe brackets on their modern guns - thank you Nikon. It was my own stupid fault really - should have taken down that umbrella as soon as the breeze got up. Notch another one up to experience. Can't complain anyway - came away with a great haul of winter covers and stock and had a a properly good day out in the snow. Just need some spring weather now for those summer cover shots...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-81237432566602250322013-03-10T22:33:00.000+00:002013-03-18T12:12:38.769+00:00Work in progress<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In this months post, I'm going to talk about a personal project I just finished. Alongside my professional photography work, I also lecturer in photography at Kendal College, here in the Lake District. Recently my colleagues in art and design staged an exhibition to highlight the professional art work they do outside of teaching, which inspired me to get involved and shoot some artist portraits.<br />
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It's not the sort of thing I normally get a chance to do, which was of course why I did it. My idea was to shoot portrait's and some behind-the-scenes stuff with each artist to hang alongside their exhibited work; give visitors a little insight into who the artists are and what goes into these artworks.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSfY2AjBSmG6FqSMOxUeqPhXCoiWzfeVztxi13RWb5JtQctOm1yyA_qIvWWqMmcU5CLVCI_8o2PgrBVPt_9pJR9iooc3SfFExhaQ0pZFhJpk9cdujy0g5u__gYHMZ_uNjJaUKKS1pyKM/s1600/d401-0257.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSfY2AjBSmG6FqSMOxUeqPhXCoiWzfeVztxi13RWb5JtQctOm1yyA_qIvWWqMmcU5CLVCI_8o2PgrBVPt_9pJR9iooc3SfFExhaQ0pZFhJpk9cdujy0g5u__gYHMZ_uNjJaUKKS1pyKM/s320/d401-0257.jpg" width="213" /></a>It's odd how the dynamics of photography change when you're shooting for yourself rather than a client. No-one's paying you to be there and although the artist's are likely to be just as critical of the results, they can't complain - they're not commissioning me either - so I can do pretty much what I want. It's a risk-free opportunity to experiment and try new ideas with lighting, locations and compositions and no-one's going to shout if doesn't work out. So from that perspective, personal projects like this are a real chance to learn something new.<br />
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My first sitter; Thea Rogers - ceramics artist. I visited Thea at her home studio in an ivy-covered stone cottage. The studio was pretty small and functional but I already had ideas of using the exterior walls for a location portrait. We found a dilapidated, half rotted garden chair on the compost heap and pulled that out, (rather more visual than plastic garden furniture) and selected a recent ceramic bowel. Thea never mentioned changing out of her studio clothes and actually I wouldn't have changed them anyway, so all I needed was 10 minutes to think about lighting set-up and re-position the chair to hide a white window behind Thea's shoulder.<br />
I used a large silver brolly, overhead on a boom; a snooted speedlight to camera right to pick out the bowl and another snooted speedlight pointed at the rear wall to create some seperation between model and background. This has become pretty much a standard lighting set-up for me recently, except that I'm thinking of changing out the silver reflecting brolly for a new large white shoot-thru I've acquired - I'm going off the slightly hard shadows the silver seems to produce.<br />
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Next up, Annie Coxey - a fine artist who works with mixed media. Her studio was on a small rural industrial estate - an unpromising start until I learned more about the themes in Annie's work which include ideas of loss and departure. The rather unkempt exterior started to look like a promising location after all! I shot the portrait at the top of this post with a very similar set-up; Over-head brolly for the portrait, snooted "special" for the painting and a back light for seperation. Only, with this one I switched the silver reflecting brolly for the new white shoot-thru and definately prefer the light quality. It's more open, softer and has much better transitions through the diffused highlight to shadows. I also put a blue CTB gel on the backlight and a 1/2 CTO on the overhead key to add some colour to the grey light of day.<br />
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My next appointment would be in the photo-studio at college, to shoot sculpter and 3D artist Barry Willis (no relation!) with a resin moulded piece he was working on.<br />
I don't shoot portraits in the studio very often and I had very definite ideas about this one. Black and white, very low key, bit moody and mysterious. It's lit with a single soft box at camera left and in fact was the very first frame of the session! I tried other looks and other lighting but when I came to edit, this first shot stood right out. Simple, uncomplicated, very basic. Works just fine. Doesn't look that great in colour though, the skin tones are too warm and it looses impact.<br />
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I also shot a lot of production shots of these guys at work, producing their pieces, like this one and I might talk about them on another occasion. The main point I wanted to put across was the value of taking on personal projects where there is no client, no expected commercial outcome and no pressure other than that which we put on ourselves; to learn, and develop as creatives and try new stuff lest we get into a rut. As it turned out, all my images are now part of an exhibition called CASE (Creative Art Staff Exhibition) on show at the historic Castle Dairy in Kendal until April 15th (if you happen to be in the area!). I'm already thinking about my next personal project - the main aim will be to do something different and do some learning.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-15344055546767428322013-01-28T00:07:00.000+00:002013-01-30T20:15:27.443+00:00Run out of time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This weekend, the weekend of January 26th/27th 2013, has been remarkable for weather. On Friday evening it started snowing, so much so that people were stranded in their cars, unable to get home, with roads closed and all the rest of it. This should be a great opportunity to grab some winter sports images but there's a problem.<br />
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The weather report for the weekend was quite clear. On Saturday we would have a period of bright sun deteriorating through the afternoon as a rapid thaw and deep atlantic low moved in from the west to bring very wet and very windy weather overnight. By Sunday all this snow would be gone. Now, like most of us, I have a life; a life outside of being a photographer, a life that involves family, domestic responsibilities and fixing the plumbing. So I have to structure my time to take account of all the other stuff going on and try to juggle a work/life balance that still results in creative output, which I have to slot into the gaps that I have.<br />
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When I staggered out of bed on Saturday morning to behold a world transformed by sunshine, blue sky and snow, my first thoughts might well have been of hillwalking, winter landscapes, ice climbing or ski-mountaineering, but my 9 year old son wanted to go skiing in the park - what are you going to do? We went to the park of course.<br />
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I hadn't completely given up on the idea of a winter image however. I sent a text to my pal Steve Crook, a talented photographer in his own right, but more importantly for me, a willing volunteer for some of my schemes. I planned for a winter running shot in the late afternoon gloom before the rain came. I picked Steve up from his place at 3pm and headed for a local venue and already the weather was turning.<br />
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Part of the mission here was to fine tune some of my outdoor flash gear because I'm trying to sort out a system that is lightweight and compact enough to take on the mountain. It's difficult to know what to take when your aims are to produce the most creative images you can - you don't want to leave anything behind in case it proves vital - but you just can't carry that much weight on the hill. But more than that, I was looking for a better quality of light. I'm aware that often the flash we use on mountain shoots suffer from lack of decent light modifiers - umbrella, softbox or panel or whatever - because we don't take enough gear with us and the result is often hard, straight flash, with hard-edged shadows, hotspots, abrupt highlight/shadow transitions and harsh-white light colour.<br />
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I've learned to address some of these issues; I always take a shoot-thru brolly with me even though sometimes it's too windy to use it, all my flash guns have 1/4 grade CTO gels permantly fixed on board, along with diffuser domes. And I've been using lightweight nano stands to keep the weight down. But I've discovered a big problem - traditional lightstand designs just don't work on steep mountainsides! They are designed to sit on flat surfaces, not rocky slopes. So I'm out to see if I can adapt a tripod to do the job of a lightstand. Tripods are much more flexible and can deal with mountainsides.<br />
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The problem with tripods is they don't normally go high enough to put a light overhead. I wanted to try and solve that problem by adapting a boom-arm from an old lightstand and putting that on the tripod, which was a Manfrotto 190 model. The next issue was the umbrella-in-the-wind drama and I was hoping to solve that one by swapping a brolly for a diffuser panel, which I hoped would be more flexible, less prone to wind and maybe also give a more natural, graduated light on the subjects. I didn't really know if this would work but I needed to try it and find out. So off we went.<br />
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Any thoughts I might have had about a nice sunset quality of light were hopelessly over optimistic. It was universally grey. The normal response to this is to dial in that tungsten balance thing and add CTO to the flash - the blue/orange look we've all become used to seeing. So that was my starting point for this picture. I quickly spotted the tree as an anchor for the shot and it had a little rocky ridge running down to it along which Steve could jog.<br />
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I started out putting up the tripod, extending the boom arm and hanging a diffuser panel on the end of it using one of those Justin clamps. Then I put an SB800 on a Pocket Wizard, added CTO's and zoomed the head a bit (maybe to 50 - 70mm). Tested it. Disaster! I got no discernable flash on Steve even though I had the flash power turned up to full and the f stop was open to 5.6. I couldn't figure it out, except maybe that diffuser panel was eating up more light than I had expected. So I moved the flash closer to the panel, removed the diffuser dome and tried again. It was better now. But I had lots of light spilling onto the ground which I didn't like at all - it looked like a car headlight was on. I tried to kill that by taking the black cover of the panel and clipping it to the lower half of the panel. It definately helped but wasn't a total cure. And then it started raining. And it was getting dark.<br />
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By this time I was getting a bit frustrated. My light wasn't working well, I was trying to shoot a decent running shot and keep the by-now persistant rain off the camera and then the PW's battery failed in the cold so I had to switch out the PW's and go to Nikon CLS instead (which worked). I think Steve had pretty cold feet by now and I'd sort of lost my motivation. Time to retreat and lick wounds I think.<br />
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Back in the office when I finally downloaded the shots into Lightroom and had a good look at the mess I'd created. I was unsurprised to find that mostly I had failed badly. The shot at the head of this post is the best that I could salvage and actually has some things I like. I think the tree works well and I like the lighting hitting the branches as they do. In fact I think I'll revisit this location and try the shot again but meantime, what did I learn? Well, the tripod/boom is definately the way to go for me. It works really well on rough ground and is really stable - but it's a commitment to carry it on the hill and I'll have to see how that goes. The diffuser panel idea didn't work for me here, I think I'll stick with a shoot-thru and hope the wind doesn't shred it. But I'm sure that getting the light up on a boom is the way to go and I'm going to keep going with that. And just in case you're thinking the shot doesn't look too bad, above is the file right out of the camera, before I dragged it through Lightroom!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-383076942979455712013-01-12T12:24:00.000+00:002013-01-14T10:18:31.478+00:00Bothered at the bothy.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's another TGO assignment this week and the question is, can I be bothered to haul all my flash kit up the side of a mountain, in the snow, at this time of the morning? Of course I can.<br />
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The assignment would be a day-walk around the stunning panorama of the Buttermere horseshoe, for a winter walking feature.<br />
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As usual, no one remembered to book some decent weather with the mountain gods so the day dawned stormy, miserable, cold, damp and windy. Perfect.<br />
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Setting off from my home in Shap, on the edge of the Lake District National Park, I knew I was in for a tricky day because the previous one had been a full on storm with gale force winds and driving rain. Overnight, the temperature had fallen and snow had peppered the higher fells. I'll leave at 6.30, I thought, plenty of time to hit our rendezvous at the Warnscale Bothy. Oh, how wrong can you be!<br />
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Normally, driving to Buttermere from the east would take you down the Borrowdale valley and up over the steep and high Honister Pass fell road. So that's what I did. Bad idea. Black ice covered the road as soon as I got over 1200ft - which is a big problem on a really steep fell road with barely enough room for two vehicles to pass and a major drop off into a narrow gorge right next to the unfenced tarmac. Uh-oh! No chance of going up, with all four Freelander wheels spinning uselessly, no chance of making an easy u-turn without sliding off down into the gorge, and no way off safely reversing back down on ice! S**t, this was getting out of control. OK, put the front wheels in the ditch and slide this baby round on the brakes, slowly, slowly and now hit the HDC (yay, hill descent control on Land Rovers!) - now it's feet off the pedals and pray. I survived the descent but now I was nearly an hour behind schedule and I'd have the go the long way round over Whinlatter.<br />
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Long story short; by the time I panted into sight at Warnscale, my long-suffereing writer (Carey Davies) had been pacing about in the cold for quite a while. At least he had a cosy bothy to shelter in - but it turned out he'd not the best of luck either, having got completely soaked tramping up the hut the previous day in the storm. We compared notes over a brew and then it was time to work.<br />
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For the bothy photo, I wanted what's sometimes called an "environmental portrait" - that is a portrait that shows the environment and context. This is what it looked like:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2NUsXOAH27SFN-0xfZavFaW-yLmiikqSmIJO_Q1gJ0YRkWM6dCNEe-t7dl7Q9MbQLlu4Qt51oHmE_mwToxKVZAXmEZHqMp2QFnP4daNlloccjE9l9Cg9zKMgNgRaSBcjlC9RT6N74YA/s1600/d184-9128.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2NUsXOAH27SFN-0xfZavFaW-yLmiikqSmIJO_Q1gJ0YRkWM6dCNEe-t7dl7Q9MbQLlu4Qt51oHmE_mwToxKVZAXmEZHqMp2QFnP4daNlloccjE9l9Cg9zKMgNgRaSBcjlC9RT6N74YA/s320/d184-9128.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Hmmm. Not terribly inspiring really. Flat, grey light, rather a "soot and whitewash" landscape, all a bit monotone I thought. I called Carey out from the relative comfort of the bothy (not actually comfortable at all - slate benches, drafty, cold and damp but OK when you get the fire stoked). Naturally I had hauled my standard hill location flash kit with me; a Nano stand, white shoot-thru brolly, SB600/SB 800 combo and pocket wizard flex/mini system. I threw up the stand and weighed it down with handy slates as the wind started to get up a bit. It may not be the smartest thing to do - use a brolly in strengthening winds - but I'm prepared to give it a go if it gives me decent light.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr36ef4nY-JLENxUIrKfKo9emoyAUGTejPb2YyWmwK1O1wxWPH0OMVNLXYg-9ZYxtZHJPqaOa523irpnyosQzujcP5_5QH5ph5_0ub_38WAIigAGTBpt_aqSVV1r341mBy_0H96LSGQbw/s1600/untitled-9130.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr36ef4nY-JLENxUIrKfKo9emoyAUGTejPb2YyWmwK1O1wxWPH0OMVNLXYg-9ZYxtZHJPqaOa523irpnyosQzujcP5_5QH5ph5_0ub_38WAIigAGTBpt_aqSVV1r341mBy_0H96LSGQbw/s320/untitled-9130.jpg" width="320" /></a>The SB800 went on with the brolly and a half strength CTO gel (colour temp orange - tungsten conversion filter) to add warmth. Why? Because I was going to try that blue ambient/warm portrait thing by setting the camera white balance somewhere down at 3500k or so and add some rich warm light from the flash - which would be toned down by the blue white balance and converted back to something like daylight.<br />
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Have you tried this? If you haven't, here's the basic idea; You set the camera's white balance to Tungsten, or if you have a K point dial in your white balance menu, you can play around and set it to get just the look you want. I ended up setting mine at 4000k in-camera and tweaking it to 4041k in Lightroom.<br />
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The white balance control just adds colours - it adds blue for when you're shooting under tungsten light ( which is orange light). The blue counters the orange light, ('cos blue is the opposite of orange) and neutralises it, making your photo look like it was taken under natural, daylight conditions. But if you deliberately set tungston (add blue) under daylight conditions, the whole picture turns blue. We are going to light up the portrait with flash, which is the same colour as daylight, so the camera's white balance will make that look blue as well. However, by adding a strong CTO gel, we make the flash orange - just like tungsten light - and the tungsten (blue) white balance neutralises it back to white light. If we want the flash to look warmer, we just add even more CTO gels to get the light colour past white and more towards orange.<br />
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There's one more thing to note; If you're shooting RAW - which you ought to be - the only reason for setting the white balance in the camera is to judge the effect in the LCD. RAW files don't have any WB applied to them. That's done in the RAW converter, which in my case is Lightroom. But you still have to gel your flashes, because the WB you set in RAW development is global - it affects the whole image, not just the ambient. If there's a difference between the colour temperatures of the flash and the ambient daylight, there's no way you can get the effect that we are looking at here.<br />
But first I tested the flash with normal daylight WB. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgDIUzPo5FalBqnZxMk1OsM2Stso_rwG2CQ43iaCMxe3iVRqDZ1aXjzzHwHWosgYD24nI9m1neJdFb4duHJWGv31O2hTyfLXs_YPvTgSqe3ptAxNfN4gB6-szvPSu4KLulxvYzbur9Zw/s1600/untitled-9131.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgDIUzPo5FalBqnZxMk1OsM2Stso_rwG2CQ43iaCMxe3iVRqDZ1aXjzzHwHWosgYD24nI9m1neJdFb4duHJWGv31O2hTyfLXs_YPvTgSqe3ptAxNfN4gB6-szvPSu4KLulxvYzbur9Zw/s320/untitled-9131.jpg" width="320" /></a>My next issue is that the bothy is looking a bit glum in the background. How about some light over there, using my other speedlight? With these Pocket Wizard Flex's I can put a light pretty much anywhere I want. There you go - that splash of light ion the doorway should work out fine. Now to put it all together. Dial in some tungsten white balance, gel the portrait light and see what we've got...Unfortunately I failed to spot that I'd "nuked" the doorway light (maybe a rogue signal from the PW's or more likely I just cocked it up in my hurry), but no big drama, I can easily crop in a bit or clone it out because it's a small defined dot in the background. Should have seen it in the LCD though!<br />
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So - that works OK. Now the whole thing looks cool and it kind of looks like we just arrived at night! A whole lot better than the actual ambient light as it is. It's not perfect but in my defense I'll point out that I had just power-walked up a mountain in freezing, windy conditions after arriving an hour late, having just survived a near-death experience on black-ice! This shot took less than 10 minutes to set up and complete and we had a whole day of walking still to do. Needless to say, TGO magazine never used this shot. Sigh...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHX0f2RRhtyUwC9XUW2Kyd556jRvD06PagCpGN-4a6DRigfRefNPl1ZPJtg2MvCSYZnzAe6vJ_z3BiKlYzgQ4oXl5GCS-3iiEIS9iUyPwcePPv9A2ZokoRTwtqEwMeXcK955s9XE3LKnU/s1600/d184-9132.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHX0f2RRhtyUwC9XUW2Kyd556jRvD06PagCpGN-4a6DRigfRefNPl1ZPJtg2MvCSYZnzAe6vJ_z3BiKlYzgQ4oXl5GCS-3iiEIS9iUyPwcePPv9A2ZokoRTwtqEwMeXcK955s9XE3LKnU/s320/d184-9132.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
For information the EXIF on this is:<br />
Nikon D700<br />
Nikon 28-300 VRll lens at 28mm<br />
1/200th - f5.6 iso640<br />
SB600/SB800 PX Flex/Mini/AC3<br />
Nano stand, white shoot-thru brolly, Lastolite triflash swivelhead, plastic clip-top food containers for waterproofing the flashes.<br />
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I really must try to remember to do BTS pix of this stuff to show the set-up - will try harder in future!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-62277933419761068402012-12-17T01:17:00.000+00:002012-12-17T15:04:24.038+00:00Back against the wall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOk6qNuszqft-lXv6WIsO4A_8qm5X9q6wKFVMjm2ZM4AVXzxUNeD2eiCR-FqlSrmW58cFQzdCvsEf-gVuxgJJ8-R84Z8Yb76fRWYTX3j64aHKt4GdsRdrxltTYpGcZfX88gY1YQPLtkPM/s1600/d181-9036.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOk6qNuszqft-lXv6WIsO4A_8qm5X9q6wKFVMjm2ZM4AVXzxUNeD2eiCR-FqlSrmW58cFQzdCvsEf-gVuxgJJ8-R84Z8Yb76fRWYTX3j64aHKt4GdsRdrxltTYpGcZfX88gY1YQPLtkPM/s400/d181-9036.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Friend of mine is writing a book. I've turned out a couple of my own - nothing very impressive, just a couple of picture books - but I know what's it like. It's always a stressful process, what with deadlines looming and work avoidance tactics kicking in to try and distract away from the reality of actually having to produce the thing - just before Christmas too!<br />
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This book - it's not a novel or anything like that. It's about climbing walls. So naturally I volunteered to help out a little bit with some shots. I thought of it as a challenge, a chance to try out some ideas and see what could be done. It would definately involve off-camera flash, that was a given.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhBVXz125WfABn2KBSsSLJQo3ZG_VVLjjMFmIO4lyHspwRuEGAV7a2HMy6qTstODhCu3PADBhZcK0GmkQpnKQqKHPEh34w60zv5N9_34CY7npr1lDHrdb1L2arvucT6UgcANJ6-MUf0P4/s1600/Lighting+set-up+for+LCC+d181-8667.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhBVXz125WfABn2KBSsSLJQo3ZG_VVLjjMFmIO4lyHspwRuEGAV7a2HMy6qTstODhCu3PADBhZcK0GmkQpnKQqKHPEh34w60zv5N9_34CY7npr1lDHrdb1L2arvucT6UgcANJ6-MUf0P4/s400/Lighting+set-up+for+LCC+d181-8667.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
So I rounded up some camera-friendly contacts and headed down to the wall on a Saturday morning. <br />
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Here's an overview of what we are up against. This is the <a href="http://www.kendalwall.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lakeland Climbing Centre in Kendal</a>, the UK's tallest wall ( I think). This place used to be the cooling tower of a creamery and is very high. Lots of natural ambient sunlight coming through those big windows.<br />
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My first thought was to use that big overhang with the window behind to create a silhouette and put an SB800 with a snoot on the top balcony to make some rim light behind the climber (my good friend Nick Wharton - a name British climbers of my generation might recognise from the 80's and 90's). As it turned out, that flash made a pretty convincing "sun' flaring from behind Nick's head. I threw up a couple of other speedlights on stands to fill in the walls as per the photo illustration above. Worked OK.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijR9cFvBGZv_ijH1kmCiWyd4F35tjdBi_U-P8m0Yo7_Rxq1WU4P0wnpdhtZh3w39_kA0nCDiRqZZ1zCSVLe4FBlWlqO_vgCb6KhueUl2h6ONizmzBASd63sR5k1DNJkpHEZQ204ifr9sw/s1600/d181-8769.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijR9cFvBGZv_ijH1kmCiWyd4F35tjdBi_U-P8m0Yo7_Rxq1WU4P0wnpdhtZh3w39_kA0nCDiRqZZ1zCSVLe4FBlWlqO_vgCb6KhueUl2h6ONizmzBASd63sR5k1DNJkpHEZQ204ifr9sw/s400/d181-8769.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
Next we went up on the top balcony and used some natural light to shoot Neil Cooper cruising the top moves from shadow into the light...Popped a fill flash (SB600 on a Justin clamp) to the camera right of the photo to add some light to the shadowed face. I liked the strong shadow/sun contrast which works well with the wacky colours you get on these indoor walls. That red T-shirt works well with the colour scheme too, don't you think? So many climbers wear black and grey these days - bring back the 1980's lycra I say - add a bit of colour to the photos.<br />
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We were pretty keen to get a fall shot. Neil was told he would be doing it. I don't think he was given any say in the matter. Apparently he's not too keen on falling off so this was supposed to be good for him! As it turned out he was almost too good at it - launching off into a mighty swing that came pretty close to hitting the opposite wall - but un-phazed he re-climbed for three massive lobs for the camera. Neil, we salute you!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fWRHQK5bfjCUZsjMPoVNdDBNmpDWqkPcqkFeBnjyun2qI1VPfIC8T_Gr25M6s1I_e2Z-cQEyCbhCRVucYIdWGlb5xKEXUjIw9u5xgN_p2GXWQWWUULzD5h4ucUsxnBVeFR9soiCZ0i0/s1600/d181-8742.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fWRHQK5bfjCUZsjMPoVNdDBNmpDWqkPcqkFeBnjyun2qI1VPfIC8T_Gr25M6s1I_e2Z-cQEyCbhCRVucYIdWGlb5xKEXUjIw9u5xgN_p2GXWQWWUULzD5h4ucUsxnBVeFR9soiCZ0i0/s400/d181-8742.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I find "falling" shots particularly difficult. Somehow they rarely convey the right feeling or have much impact and I'm not really convinced about this one. Trouble is, the climber drops away from you so suddenly that you have to guess the pre-focus point and usually get only 1 or 2 useble shots from the drop. The climbers body and face expression is unpredictable and freeze frames don't generally convey anything in the way of motion, height exposure or speed. Maybe it needs some motion blur instead, or more of a side angle...anyone out there done this successfully? I'd love to see the result.<br />
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Anyway, back to the wall, we moved on to the bouldering rooms. Now these are the most fun for me. I get easy access, I can move around easily, put lights anywhere I damn well please and get climbers to do stupid moves they'd never do 20 meters off the deck. The colours look great and I can play around with the flash/ambient white balance and exposure balance to my little hearts content. Excellent. Honestly, I could have spent all day doing this - just playing with lighting and exposure, while these guys bouldered around and did their thing, falling off and getting back on.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtGzAfBGLEOHjeNBaIItD1dMsr1eVN7qPsVrBTfeIRUt5ZNzQqdrZC6FsrcjKVQZW8CUveGuY7PVdeocmbRwv3IP2STTwRxBeCdmn7hRMUciGH2NjEFEts3Q1Uf5J8RkhGnqZWVpksSR0/s1600/d181-8875.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtGzAfBGLEOHjeNBaIItD1dMsr1eVN7qPsVrBTfeIRUt5ZNzQqdrZC6FsrcjKVQZW8CUveGuY7PVdeocmbRwv3IP2STTwRxBeCdmn7hRMUciGH2NjEFEts3Q1Uf5J8RkhGnqZWVpksSR0/s400/d181-8875.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In this shot, I used three speedlights. Number 1 was an old Nikon SB28 film flashgun, on a short stand shoved into a corner right at the back of the room. It's a bit "hot" actually with some over-exposed reflection on the back wall but hey, I was playing. Flash number 2 (Nikon SB600) is Justin-clamped to the floor mats below and behind the climber (Nick) and flash number 3, the SB800, is mounted ona stand and shot through a brolly to camera right. You may notice the slick use of colour-matched shorts and T-shirt to go with the wall decor! I'd like to boast that I think of everything but sadly not - it was pure coincidence. Good though.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0t1DtBxgXcN-YotJNJKy0kdezJz8JhHeUhIfqJ2na012hfABqScxk1qfUqDxqYtFY8Byz2tO1gcZVw-lh3NSsT6PcSwiSfnf0d2tGYF5Q5yXqWVkOxdw5tNsfMPATLnG2hcUcdydWv0/s1600/d181-8957.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0t1DtBxgXcN-YotJNJKy0kdezJz8JhHeUhIfqJ2na012hfABqScxk1qfUqDxqYtFY8Byz2tO1gcZVw-lh3NSsT6PcSwiSfnf0d2tGYF5Q5yXqWVkOxdw5tNsfMPATLnG2hcUcdydWv0/s400/d181-8957.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The second bouldering room was tastefully turned out in green and yellow. Neil still had his red T so that would work great with green, but you see what I mean about the grey/black thing with Tim Whitely, my second victim? Anyway, I had some fun with the flash placements. Shall I give you a minute to de-construct the lighting - remember, the shadows will fall away from the flash - OK, times up.<br />
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For this one, I put the SB800 on a stand at camera left, the SB600 clamped to a hold just behind Neil's (red T) right foot, pointing up and the SB28, on half power with a portable softbox, front diffuser panel removed, on a stand, shooting through the doorway towards Neil - causing the big climber shadow. I really liked the big shaft of light/shadow look of this light being thrown through the open doorway and I'm going to use this again in future.<br />
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Finaly, I wanted to get some shots of the Lakeland Climbing Centres' training room, which is more like some sort of torture chamber with soft mats! "Take Neil" they all shouted, "and make sure he takes his shirt off!" Err, right.<br />
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Turns out that Neil is something of a training fanatic on the finger boards and whatnot. This definately called for some lighting.<br />
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Immediately, I knew I was going to work with a rim light effect. I went with a speedlight on a short stand in the far left corner to accent the back wall because I wouldn't achieve a black background in here and an unlit "brown" background would look crap. Then I set up the SB800 on a stand directly into Neils chest. The last flash, the SB28 manual job, went on a stand with a shoot-thru brolly, just to camera left, low down to throw some "halloween" light up across Neils back and accent his considerable physique! I like the leg shadow on the right wall that this throws up.<br />
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Well, that's it. A pretty useful day out for me, learning a few things about lighting climbing walls and falling bodies! I guess a few of these shots will appear in the book when it sees the light of day and I hope they'll provide some creative inspiration for other climbing wall photographers. Many thanks to all the staff at the <a href="http://www.kendalwall.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lakeland Climbing Centre</a>, particularly Kate Philips, without whom there would be no LCC and to Mark for his help on the day - and of course to the climbers, Nick, Tim and Neil who selflessly desported themselves to the amusement of onlookers...good day out.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-52360414239240485962012-11-26T12:02:00.002+00:002012-11-26T12:02:43.444+00:00London calling....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFXh9BPhGebEGGYWWY4B5M197HVsvHNoQbm6M96B5BGV7PWDLWYVjXKg6GsAtu9bgIcMvMKLh1eQY3HyfJFX5FzzNhnweK7iF20b2tmK6zm3a3VXU6K2LydUIFjwfP8fj64Y77p2Y1k0/s1600/d9003-4402.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFXh9BPhGebEGGYWWY4B5M197HVsvHNoQbm6M96B5BGV7PWDLWYVjXKg6GsAtu9bgIcMvMKLh1eQY3HyfJFX5FzzNhnweK7iF20b2tmK6zm3a3VXU6K2LydUIFjwfP8fj64Y77p2Y1k0/s320/d9003-4402.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
It's not every day that I get into "town", as they say but you know, every now and again it's good to get a dose of city lights, just to get a different perspective on life. I found myself in London for a couple of days earlier this month, visiting art and photography galleries; a work related visit, I might add.<br />
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I generally avoid cities. They don't suit me. I grew up in a busy town - Brighton - only, what, 30 minutes from the city by train? I miss-spent plenty of my teenage days and nights at gigs and stuff like that, so I know the score. And I don't like it. After a long day on the streets I have an over-whelming need to find green spaces and some quiet. I could never live in a city again.<br />
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But I do recognise the vibrancy and energy that a city like London has. Wandering the streets, galleries and museums with my camera in hand, I found pictures jumping out at me at every turn and round every corner. Because everything is new and different and therefore exciting and stimulating, I found my creative batteries fast-charging and I started getting excited about shooting pictures - any pictures - just because this was different from my every-day experience of living in a rural community on the edge of a National Park.<br />
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I walked along the South Bank, along the embankment towards Tate Modern from the Millennium Bridge. I guess this is bit like Paris' Right Bank, the home of the art's community in the city. Everything here is worth shooting. I'm no Bresson' street shooter, believe me but even I couldn't miss, along here. The point of all this of course, is "change". Going somewhere totally out of your normal, everyday experience sounds like it's got to be a healthy, invigorating exercise and sure enough, there I was, the world's most anti-city photographer, just lapping up all this stuff. I don't know if my pictures are any good but I definitely returned more energised to go out and shoot with a new eye. Try it for yourself -it might help.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpGIf4GBJ0kxL3YGKd3tjjBoRSf-uQYuoxoEBwqiMQG6T-NMwZD3i1UbgwwXc1o_OvbDJWGmVXlnb1k2sSGUnEcZqsD1u9ntxfk8S-GQEI_4x45qomqN-VjiVK0AOVGAOV3ZUb1Px0M/s1600/d9003-4350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpGIf4GBJ0kxL3YGKd3tjjBoRSf-uQYuoxoEBwqiMQG6T-NMwZD3i1UbgwwXc1o_OvbDJWGmVXlnb1k2sSGUnEcZqsD1u9ntxfk8S-GQEI_4x45qomqN-VjiVK0AOVGAOV3ZUb1Px0M/s320/d9003-4350.jpg" width="320" /></a>Footnote: After battling around Tate Modern (interesting in places, dull in others), The Barbican Centre (inspiring and surprising), the V&A (whooaa - need at least a week!), the Photographers Gallery (disappointingly small) and the National Portrait Gallery (spent too long in the bar and only saw one room!) - I needed some green space and little bit of quiet, so I headed for Hyde Park. Eventually found myself standing outside the Royal Geographic Society's grand edifice. I saw the the best photography exhibition of the trip in their little walk-in gallery. Just goes to show you - it's the little, surprising discoveries but you have to go out and stumble upon them.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-59590378058692673722012-11-24T18:53:00.000+00:002012-11-24T22:31:37.441+00:00It never rains....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been waiting to post something on this shoot for a couple of months (never scoop your own client!). Now that the weather's crapped out it seems like a good time...<br />
<a name='more'></a>So here's the back story. My client has a new product that can be used in cave and crag rescue applications and want's an authentic photo-shoot with a rescue team to demo the kit in use for real.<br />
The team (Penrith MRT - top guys, lots of thanks are due) are going to rig a stretcher evac' from a local crag location and one of them will volunteer to go in the stretcher. These guys are all volunteers, they don't get paid to do this for real, let alone for a photo-shoot and frankly I would not like to be the "casualty" on any day of the week and particularly not on the rainiest day we've had in the lakes for 10 years!<br />
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I had looked at the weather forecast for the weekend and was certainly expecting it to rain. I even phoned my client in France and queried if they wanted to go ahead with the shoot. "Fantastique" - they said - "it will be for real, non?". Yes, it certainly would.<br />
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OK, so we know it's going to be wet. That means the light will be crappy and dark and all my kit will be soaked. There's a lot riding on this shoot and it's got to look good. I'm going to have think creatively to bring home some images that stand out. It's going to need lighting and it's got to look real. Here's my thinking...<br />
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I'm going to employ a lighting assistant, someone who's comfortable hanging off an abseil rope. I'm going to give him a pole with a remote flash attached in a waterproof housing. Triggering will be via Pocket Wizard TT5 Flex. I'm going to rig an ab' line next to the casualty and shoot wide angle, in close to get a dynamic "in your face" point of view (I hope). I can maybe add some more off-camera fill-in flash from another waterproof speed-light either on-camera or strapped to my leg or something. Maybe we can get some other flash units placed around the crag with some other team members. Yeah, that should work.<br />
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We all meet up in the car park on Saturday morning and a ton of rescue kit is dished out among 8 or 10 MRT members in rain so hard it's bouncing of the ground.<br />
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I already have my d700 in a waterproof rain cover and I'm praying that Nikon's famed weatherproofing is going to be up to the job.<br />
We have a good 45 minute tramp through driving rain, up to the crag and just to keep our spirits up it's getting windy too. Perfect.<br />
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I do a team "walk-in" shot half way up, but the rain is driving right into the lens so I break out my secret weapon - my group bivvy shelter - so I can climb into it and shoot from within to keep my lens dry. I'm even thinking of getting one of those mini pop-up tents you see everywhere, just for situations like this. I think they'll be great for event-shoots where I'm sat in the same spot for an hour, in the rain. The team think I'm a woose but I don't care! I"m here to get the job done. We even light it nicely with my tupperware waterproof-housed, PW'ed flash system. I send my willing volunteer lighting assistant out into the lashing rain and howling gail to point the light at the team. Hey, you know, we might actually get away with this!<br />
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After the photo-stop it's back to trudging through the storm, splashing up the watercourses that used to be footpaths, fording the raging torrents that used to be mountain streams and crawling up slimy scree slopes that used to be...slimy scree slopes.<br />
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At the crag location, in the teeth of the weather, the team start rigging for the stretcher eveacuation and I can only sit back (in the relative comfort of my bivvy shelter) and admire the professional determination with which they go about this miserable, thankless task. Bottom line though, is that if anyone gets this wrong, the potential for a life threatening accident is very real. Needless to say, everything is done right and everything is backed up, checked and double -checked. Then it's time for the "casualty" to go over the edge and for my lighting assistant and I to clip in and abseil into position.<br />
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So now it's time for me to earn my fee. A lot of time, effort, discomfort, sweat and effort has gone into getting all of this stuff into place. It might be lashing rain, dark and windy; I might be dangling from a wet rope balancing on slimy rocks and fighting to keep rain off the lens - but my client doesn't care. They are trusting me to do this and do it well. I'm expected to bring home a creative, eyecatching image that shows off their rescue products in a real-world situation. So that's what I'm goin' do.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUr5b9XIQXmZaaZwW4kCPrccNvI6Kn32QKQhOcv8QA9GNB8F9XGltMGwzQzjPLI9t_uIqJIrB_eIleTf2VyXFWVir1I-kJWOZK_cyQ_EJLOG5E1GZc1wivuqzRNWo3F7CyWAXPt7WJihY/s1600/d180-3119.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUr5b9XIQXmZaaZwW4kCPrccNvI6Kn32QKQhOcv8QA9GNB8F9XGltMGwzQzjPLI9t_uIqJIrB_eIleTf2VyXFWVir1I-kJWOZK_cyQ_EJLOG5E1GZc1wivuqzRNWo3F7CyWAXPt7WJihY/s320/d180-3119.jpg" width="320" /></a>Everything that I've planned up to this point has been about creating something great out of just this exact situation. I've hauled up flash lighting gear, I've invested in off-camera flash triggering with the latest Pocket Wizard Flex system, I've experimented and perfected a waterproofing solution for both flash guns and camera and I've spent years working in outdoor pursuits just so that I'm in my element here, not floundering and scared. Now it all has to come together.<br />
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Judge for yourself. The end result is at the top of the page. My client liked it. Job done.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-91349066996522438302012-10-31T00:16:00.001+00:002012-10-31T00:24:20.877+00:00Industrial action<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As an outdoor photographer I have some skills that allow me to work in adventure sports and outdoor activities with a degree of comfort. One of the skillsets that I worked to aquire is my "Working at height, rigging and rescue' ticket. The experience enables me to undertake work on industrial sites which is a very different theatre of operation to the crag, believe me!<br />
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So this weeks' Real Life Assignment involves a trip to the Exxon Mobile oil refinery at Fawley, Southampton to shoot a new safety lanyard used by the scaffolders on site. Sounds dull? We'll see.<br />
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First of all, my industry expert pal and myself needed to get on site - a task that took 4 months of badgering, emails and phone calls, before Exxon agreed to let us in. It would have been way easier to set this thing up on a building site someplace but my client (Spanset) like things to be authentic and this particular piece of kit was specifically designed for the refinery and was not in use anywhere else - so the photos had to be at Fawley.<br />
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A 6 hour drive overnight from Yorkshire put us in a Holiday Inn, 10 minutes drive from the gate, at midnight on Sunday. Monday morning we presented ourselves at the security gate. Step one - go watch the basic site safety health and safety induction video in the portacabin. Step two - fill out these forms. Do you have cameras? Well you're going to need a pass for them. Now fill out some more forms and sit over there until one of the security guys comes and gets you. OK, he's here, so put all your kit into his van and go for more satefy briefings. Are you getting the picture here? Basically, an oil refinery is just one big terrorist target waiting to get hit and just about everything in here can hurt, maim or kill you. There's hot steam, and poisonous gas and stuff that can fall on your head from 200 feet up and so on.<br />
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Anyway - turns out we are not allowed to go anywhere on site without a minder and we definately, definately can't go over there, or in there and certainly not over there. Now it's time for another safety video and a check list. And it's a big site too. 5 square miles. Let me just repeat that. The Exxon Mobile Fawley oil refinery is 5 square miles of pipes, tunnels, towers, ladders and machinery. It's actually the biggest refinery in Europe and it produces - well everything in your life that is made from oil-derived products. Everything here is a massive scale. And I've just come to photograph a little bit of safety kit.<br />
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Next stop - get changed. You'll need these industry approved steel toecapped boots, then this CE marked flameproof boiler suit (there's a lot of flammable hazards in an oil refinery). Next, you'll want to strap on this emergancy respirator and nose clip and clip on this CO2 detector. Now for your industry standard crash hat and ear defenders, your safety glasses (get caught on site without these and you're history - shown the gate - do not return). You will also need to stuff these over-glasses into your pocket just in case there's some sort of gas leak and in your other pocket stuff these big goggles - you know, just in case. Oh, nearly forgot - you must wear these rubber gloves at all times! Bloody hell - I'm a photographer, how am I supposed to use a camera with goggles and gloves? That's your problem mate.<br />
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Ok, I'm suited and booted. I'm gloved and goggled. I'm sweating like a pig in my over-sized boiler suit and I can't hear a thing with my ear defenders on. Ready to do your best creative work then?<br />
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We are led into the grid. The noise is horrendous. The hiss of steam, clanking and banging of construction crews doing whatever - I realise why everyone has to wear ear defenders. We weave through muddy corridors of pipework and towers and steel stuff whilst gangs of workers do whatever they are doing all around. This looks like hell to me. I can't imagine calling this my office! But these guys do, 24/7.<br />
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Actually shooting the scaffolders at work is no easier. I'm allowed to use flash (thank God) because this unit is shut down for maintenance, but I'm not allowed to go on the structure to place it. Luckily I thought of that. I have sealed food containers with flash guns and Pocket Wizards inside and a big roll of gaffer tape. I tell the scaff guys to tape the flashes to the bars - well I say "tell' - actually I yelled and hoped they heard me. Apparently they did.<br />
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And so we went to work - an hour of shooting whatever angles I could get, trying to think creatively and find ways of illustrating a small safety lanyard being used in the correct way. When it was over, we trooped back out to the van, back to the office and slumped onto plastic chairs utterly exhausted by the whole thing. Then drove 6 hours back up the motorway. So this is industrial photography eh? Cool!<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-90677800090306991272012-09-30T12:18:00.000+01:002012-10-01T09:44:07.989+01:00Accidental heroes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This weeks' post has a serious tone because it deals with a climbling accident - with all the "what if's," "could have's" and "should have's" that are an inevitable consequence of such a thing.<br />
But I'm not dwelling on those. Instead, my thoughts are about the humanity, compassion, shared responsibility and comradeship shown between climbers (and other outdoor users) when the shit hits the fan.<br />
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The scenario went something like this; A client of mine, someone with a lot of climbing experience and a growing ability with a camera, wanted to learn more about shooting his sport, which he is very passionate about.<br />
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After I had posted about the new big thing in climbing, "dry tooling", (you can read about it at "<a href="http://reallifeassignments.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/a-new-hang-out.html" target="_blank">A New Hang Out"</a>), he was super-keen to get some photo-action of this. More so because he was actively involved in developing this new area at Hodge Close quarry, now know as "The Works'.<br />
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We met up with a team of climbers who were developing a new route here, with a plan to do an off-camera flash workshop on lighting theory and then get on the ropes to put this into practice. The theory workshop went well. We were ready to do the practical. We descended into the quarry cave and passed another group of climbers, also exploring this new dry-tooling venue and getting to grips with this new, upside-down version of ice-climbing-without-ice.<br />
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An abseil rope was already fixed in place. My client (who I shall now call <i>Dave</i>, because that's <i>my </i>name and frankly what follows could so easily have been me, or any other climber) went onto the rope, fixed his position with extra slings for safety and stability (ropes tend to rotate when you're hanging on them - making you spin) and started shooting the climber leading out on a super-hard new line.<br />
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I directed and pointed flash guns in, what I hoped would be the right direction. I also shot some images from my ground position. So far so good.<br />
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Are you still with me? I understand that this doesn't make for fascinating reading. Ideally, things would have continued in much the same vein. We would have created some nice climbing shots, with decent, well planned lighting, packed our gear amid the usual post-shoot/climb banter and scrambled out to our parked vehicles and the pub.<br />
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That didn't happen. What did happen was <i>Dave's</i> abseil rope broke.<br />
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He fell maybe 40 feet and bounced to a halt on unstable slate scree and blocks.<br />
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Even as he shuddered to a halt in an awkward-angled foetal position I found myself shouting for someone to call the rescue team..."go, go, get the rescue team..." and along with one of the other climbers started making my way to <i>Dave</i>, "he'll be alright, he'll be alright" I told myself. There was no way he was he going to be all right.<br />
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I've had some experience in this department before. I've been in a rescue team. I've been on call-outs. I have some basic training. <i>Dave</i> was making some noise. That was good. He was alive.<br />
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What followed the accident is really what this post is all about. The more experienced climbers took control, others waited to be directed and to contribute what they could. Everyone did their level best to help. They were shocked of course. But they pushed their fears and anxieties to one side and pitched in.<br />
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Everyone present helped to support the casualty, offer comfort, practical help and render assistance. We were all in this together and only one thing was important, only one thing mattered - the casualty - <i>Dave's</i> well being. No matter what happened, we would not let him down.<br />
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Even when the helicopter (Great North Air Ambulance) and Coniston Mountain Rescue Team arrived on the scene, the climbers continued to assist - man-handling the heavy, awkward stretcher up the scree slope and out of the quarry with the team members; gathering <i>Dave's</i> belongings, keeping his stuff secure. He was our guy - our responsibility - our friend. Despite the fact that most of those present, including myself, had only met him today.<br />
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Dave is recovering at home with a busted leg. He's very relieved about that and so are we! I mean a busted leg! Christ, he could have...well, we all know what might have been.<br />
There are some questions to be asked, some lessons to be learned of course. But overwhelmingly, my greatest impression of the accident is the response of my fellow climbers. They reacted as all climbers would in such a situation. They were magnificent and they remind me that we share a common bond that always rises to the occasion when it most needs to. Despite what I read in the papers on a daily basis. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-54817534795879406642012-09-21T14:01:00.003+01:002012-09-21T14:03:58.980+01:00Tough at the TOB<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Tour of Britain came through my local town of Kendal, up here on the edge of the Lake District, just a few weeks ago. I knew it was coming of course. Cycling has been "flavour of the month" in the wake of the Olympics.<br />
I don't get much opportunity to shoot road racing, which is a pity because I love watching it on telly. Shooting it live is challenging and quite a buzz. These guys don't hang about and you have to be right on your game to catch the moments and create something worthwhile.<br />
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Unfortunately, the peloton would be whizzing past on a day that I was really busy, even though I would be in Kendal and I was desperately juggling stuff to try and grab some free time. As luck would have it the timings had a bunch sprint through Kendal at 12.40pm - lunch time! I had a slim window of opportunity.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirkqDZ0ziq3nchN0lu33gPcGa1dPxkSHBMGLEwCwhH5PSK85POCBLk6AfPAAxO_lQX9D4aa8tktw5mamLopavto_TN20NsXDJ093JDG8Xz_zuUl3HxdXZt6zyRdh2aOSAss6wgJGdPhDw/s1600/Mark_Cavendish,_Tour_of_Britain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirkqDZ0ziq3nchN0lu33gPcGa1dPxkSHBMGLEwCwhH5PSK85POCBLk6AfPAAxO_lQX9D4aa8tktw5mamLopavto_TN20NsXDJ093JDG8Xz_zuUl3HxdXZt6zyRdh2aOSAss6wgJGdPhDw/s400/Mark_Cavendish,_Tour_of_Britain.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
Naturally the weather was rubbish! Last year, I actually had a press pass for the Kendal-to-Blackpool stage and you know what happened? A hurricane happened, that's what! Stage called off, too windy, parade lap around Kendal and that was that. I managed a reasonable portrait of Cav but nothing much else - I could have spat!...<br />
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So this year, we got c**p weather but at least they were riding. I legged it out the meeting I was in, jogged up to the sprint finish line (along with everyone else) and huddled against the rain. With no chance to plan much and no second bite at this I knew I would have to decide on the shot I was going to do and stick with it. The whole peloton is past you in about 3 minutes flat so you don't get much chance to shoot angles and no chance to change location.<br />
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I couldn't decide what lens to shoot with. Do I go with a wide angle and try and get close or stick with the telephoto and isolate a front rider? I don't know - what would you do? I went with telephoto in the end and chose to concentrate on the front rider because it was I standing at one of the many sprint lines on the tour. Maybe there would be a scrap for the line and the points. So maybe I'd get some action rather than just a bunch of riders huddled together against the rain in their jackets. Naturally I bolted on a flash.<br />
So, there I was, with a D700, a 28-300VRll and an SB800 hoping the sprint would happen on my side of the road. I dialled in 1/500th at f5.6, high speed sync, flash at -2/3rds fec, low speed continuous shooting (no point in high speed - the flash won't keep up), and matrix metering - and here they come round the corner.<br />
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S**t - they're not on my side!<br />
There's a couple of riders clear but they're not really sprinting.<br />
And now there's loads of marshals on the other side all wearing reflective jackets with day-glo stripes that will flare in the flash - great - it's all going wrong! The lens is struggling to keep up with focus - too slow - I get one shot and it's all over the place.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianrkDLVV3dlAXOWIsK1nXhEUeNTJBKfa7CKNs4nzRw5-2_fRcqRDTincuSmsc51sYvJDc_Y_Oz7hURgXkhFTSsC5v4qyLXjy5wckl2t4srxj_wfWinZ7PHJcAN6GvGh-HFeydV7huzYE/s1600/_DSC6835-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianrkDLVV3dlAXOWIsK1nXhEUeNTJBKfa7CKNs4nzRw5-2_fRcqRDTincuSmsc51sYvJDc_Y_Oz7hURgXkhFTSsC5v4qyLXjy5wckl2t4srxj_wfWinZ7PHJcAN6GvGh-HFeydV7huzYE/s400/_DSC6835-1.jpg" width="265" /></a>You want to see what I got? Here it is...<br />
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I mean look at that background! What was I thinking. The only way to rescue this is to go arty monotone. And that was that.<br />
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What have I learned?<br />
I'm still thinking about that - I'll let you know when I've calmed down and had time to err...<i>reflect!</i><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-9010451353656467702012-09-11T22:44:00.002+01:002012-09-11T22:51:23.417+01:00Light the bike<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzIo0RnqTcPtqrj49zmvey1KMsRo1wSiMb1DLIIoAUNpeHKUHk_BJY36W3A_XH58CtVuzeI8RAFBbOF8KMgiAFsgpA81I60rKN4_714V6tmmPIOIhDKW-U7SIsiHvdUNR9_WRLSpQJpGw/s1600/d4014-4653.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzIo0RnqTcPtqrj49zmvey1KMsRo1wSiMb1DLIIoAUNpeHKUHk_BJY36W3A_XH58CtVuzeI8RAFBbOF8KMgiAFsgpA81I60rKN4_714V6tmmPIOIhDKW-U7SIsiHvdUNR9_WRLSpQJpGw/s400/d4014-4653.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In this months post I'm going to look at a shot I created as part of a workshop day on mountain bike photography.<br />
What I tried to do here was build a lighting set-up that would be easy to re-create in any forest/woodland situation.<br />
By testing out a basic set-up and taking note of the settings I hoped to give my students a reasonable starting point to work with.<br />
Ok, so let's deconstruct it.<br />
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We started with an idea of where we wanted the lights to go. A fill light would be on a lightstand, with a reflecting umbrella, behind at camera right. I was taking a chance with the umbrella on location. Often it's too windy to use. But here in the woods, all was still and quiet.<br />
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Next, I put a key light on the ground almost directly in front of the rider, to camera left. The flash was protected inside a waterproof, clip-lid food container, zoomed too 80mm and pushed through a silver-lined snoot to create an intense beam of light.<br />
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Finally I put another flash in another clip-lid food container on the ground, just behind the log over which my rider would be jumping. This would push a bit of back-lighting up into the rider as he flew past.<br />
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I'll explain the settings and the lighting modifiers I used and my thinking behind them. But first, let's look at the scene before we lit it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKONrD4B03eAkHGHouN3u4ujJQMrNEJHiZ4hyphenhyphenUZdS7lZdSk4B31pSvJ9k9yWNeZxsH8C7pqIcthL1fWpvBm99Bths0tsjqymsV3RjHPFzsKBSOPrAWv4HYsv9a1E_Ult8stjBuGAwb1y8/s1600/d4014-4630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKONrD4B03eAkHGHouN3u4ujJQMrNEJHiZ4hyphenhyphenUZdS7lZdSk4B31pSvJ9k9yWNeZxsH8C7pqIcthL1fWpvBm99Bths0tsjqymsV3RjHPFzsKBSOPrAWv4HYsv9a1E_Ult8stjBuGAwb1y8/s400/d4014-4630.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Here's the ambient light without flash. To get a decent ambient exposure, tucked under these dark trees, I would need something like 1/15th sec.<br />
Shooting at f8 for decent depth of field, the foreground ambient is killed off pretty effectively with a shutter speed of 1/250th at 100 ISO.<br />
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You might notice that the ambient in the far background looks OK. The sun is shining back there and f8 at 1/250th is pretty standard exposure for a bright sunny scene. I want to kill that foreground ambient because I want the flash to be the only light source on the subject. But I'm happy for tha sunny background light to remain - adds a nice extra layer of light. I may not have noticed this if I hadn't done this simple ambient light check photo so get into the habit of doing this first.<br />
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Now that I can see what will be dark and what will be lit, I can begin to build up my lighting. I add one flash at a time and shoot a frame to check it out.<br />
Here's an overview of what I'm trying to do - I ought to have pulled back and shot a frame to show the umbrella stand but I forgot to!<br />
Anyway, I put the lights in place and shot a few frames to test them out for power settings, light coverage and angle. The umbrella would throw a broad soft light over the scene from camera right and I kept the power down so it would act as a fill light not a key light. I think it was set to 1/8th power.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiodW7wsmrqMuQULr3s-Z_MWTK7HNshFAwrdSseRiwZTIFocA9JUz8MJ2jrus887JJp2Dc9V_0yS_MV_dUTPcQEwwghUGqMaRyUAIolHLqGxjOCAftP2Xd-2z0Uy1spu9s_hPoYLfkzqjI/s1600/d4014-4642.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiodW7wsmrqMuQULr3s-Z_MWTK7HNshFAwrdSseRiwZTIFocA9JUz8MJ2jrus887JJp2Dc9V_0yS_MV_dUTPcQEwwghUGqMaRyUAIolHLqGxjOCAftP2Xd-2z0Uy1spu9s_hPoYLfkzqjI/s400/d4014-4642.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Next comes the backlight, tucked down behind the log. I did a test shot to see what the light looked like with the rider stood there so you can see where it was placed. In the final set-up it was out of sight. <br />
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Finally, I added the key light which would be the dominant, feature light. It was placed on the ground just off to one side of the riders line, and zoomed through a home-made snoot. This was a deliberate move to contain the light and not over-light the foreground landscape. I needed to light the rider, not the ground - that would have drawn the eye away from the action too much and it's something I've learned as I've used off-camera flash more and more.<br />
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Now it's time to test the set-up in anger! My rider hurls himself at the ramp and we start shooting frames to gauge the timing and get a feel for the speed, direction and lighting effect. Seems to be working out OK. That backlight is looking really nice - I use a backlight anytime I can get away with it. And the key and fill combination are having a good effect. You can see how the key light is picking out the riders face and legs really well but making no impact on the landscape, whilst the fill-in umbrella is just lifting everything out of the shadows. And that background ambient sun is providing a really nice backdrop, ensuring that we aren't left with a featureless expanse of black murk behind. That's all working well - but...<br />
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It's not quite as dynamic as I would like. Actually, to tell the truth it's a little dull and predictable and bit too static for my taste. It needs something more. Ooo, I know, how about some motion blur? Oh, and some panning too. Yeah, let's give that a go. Drop the shutter speed to around 1/30th - that means the ambient is going to get a bit bright, might need to loose an F stop or two - maybe f11 or f16 - Ok so that means upping the power output on the flash a bit. But that's no problem with this set-up because I'm using Pocket Wizard Flex TT5's and Mini TT1/AC3 contoller so I just dial up the power a bit from on-board the camera, easy-peezy! If you haven't read up on the PW Flex and Mini system yet, go to <a href="http://www.pocketwizard.com/">http://www.pocketwizard.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhp38yuSHhdiYExVnXJAgh0zIludeDWGrvDZJLCMWcMEdWQ0rbbSVNv28IMjGf3is_x1l6yxiXAhPZOnaf5_RnxFFiZWO8uSAibIOsO_qxJpiY-aWbGUhwp-FjlfqE5KPBDexyJIaBOvc/s1600/d4014-4651.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhp38yuSHhdiYExVnXJAgh0zIludeDWGrvDZJLCMWcMEdWQ0rbbSVNv28IMjGf3is_x1l6yxiXAhPZOnaf5_RnxFFiZWO8uSAibIOsO_qxJpiY-aWbGUhwp-FjlfqE5KPBDexyJIaBOvc/s400/d4014-4651.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Ooo, now that's looking better!<br />
Ok, so let's recap. For shooting under the trees, you need to test the ambient and find a shutter speed that effectively kills it off so you can add your own lighting with off-camera flash.<br />
That will often mean using the max sync speed and that's good, because if there's no ambient light, your flash guns can operate at low power levels, so fast recycle times and long lasting batteries - great.<br />
Next, we added an overall fill-flash using a light stand and a reflecting umbrella to create a soft, wide light. A shoot-through umbrella will do just as well and if it's windy then leave the umbrella in the bag and just use a diffuser dome.<br />
Next we added a key light shooting through a snoot to project a focused beam of light on the rider. We kept the light off the foreground landscape with this set-up. Placing the light low down allows us to get the light up into the riders face, under the rim of the helmet which would otherwise cast a strong shadow over the face.<br />
Finally, we added the backlight, a crucial addition in my view, by hiding it behind the log.<br />
Then we tested the whole rig for a fast shutter speed - which worked fine - but ultimately decided to get a bit more creative with a slow speed, motion-blur panning shot. So that's all right then.<br />
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Thanks to my rider for the day, Harris Parker-McLoed who was also learning some photography on the day and pulled off this shot of little 'ol me showing that I can still ride a bike over a log - just! Thanks Harris.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029819392549236471.post-69651670705597662132012-07-30T18:31:00.003+01:002012-07-30T18:31:51.385+01:00A new hang out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQIgvgPiqB5fnQ3T9ogkS1lzmPf8JWCEl0xl5OzOe_8nP02bfuEblw2KSc7JQzpjlqXXgfmPY-F6W95KgAQVKalkET78Z1npnzQsvh4xgUwyVmuHmjqaFfi5LtJfJ3a0jEC3KyBZdDLu0/s1600/d16-4736.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQIgvgPiqB5fnQ3T9ogkS1lzmPf8JWCEl0xl5OzOe_8nP02bfuEblw2KSc7JQzpjlqXXgfmPY-F6W95KgAQVKalkET78Z1npnzQsvh4xgUwyVmuHmjqaFfi5LtJfJ3a0jEC3KyBZdDLu0/s400/d16-4736.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Note to self; Don't start this post with the word "So"...<br />
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You won't believe this but the climber in this photo, hanging from from the roof by ice axes is called Paddy Cave! Honestly.<br />
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Anyway, Paddy was telling me about this whole new thing in climbing - "sport mixed" or "dry tooling". The idea came about as a progression from climbing hard mixed winter routes which rely on climbing sections of steep rock between bands of ice - using the ice tools - and climbers training off-season for winter routes on artificial climbing walls with ice tools. Supposing you used disused quarries instead of climbing walls, and manufactured some really hard routes by drilling or chipping some axe placements, bolting the wall for the placement of protection ( what climbers call running belays or just "runners") and seeing just how extreme you can get with dry tooling? Et Voila! This is the result.<br />
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This cave was made as part of slate quarrying activities at Hodge Close, near Coniston in the English Lake District. Hodge Close is already well known as a world-class, slate rock climbing venue and also as a dive venue for scuba divers in it's flooded quarry pool which is over 25 meters deep. Being a quarry, no-one is going to worry about chipping and drilling holes - obviously.<br />
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As a photographer of outdoor "extreme" sports, I would definitely be wanting to shoot this, all the more so because of my background of 30 years in rock climbing and mountaineering. I arranged to meet up with Paddy, who has been responsible for creating most of these new routes (including the one we photographed) and his pal, Alex who would be belaying.<br />
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Normally at this point I would be complaining about the disastrous summer weather we are having - with endless rain and grey skies - but hey, ho, this venue is under cover - it's a cave! Excellent.<br />
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Logistically, shooting this sport is both very easy and very hard. Access is easy in terms of getting close, you can park about 100 meters away, but then to get into the quarry you have to down-climb a vertical rock wall (over-hanging actually) with aid of an in-situ bit of old rope (!) whilst carrying 15 kilos of camera kit, lighting kit and abseiling kit. Don't try this if your personal climbing skills are iffy - it could end badly. Then you have to make your way to the rim of the cave (vertical wet grass and mud) and then rig an abseil line to access the line of climbing bolts to shoot the route. Once you have established yourself on the route, hanging in a harness, with your camera kit hanging from your body in various bags and with a 25 meter drop under your toes, you are ready to shoot. But you better make sure you rigged all your lighting gear in the right place first, 'cos it's a lot of work to get back to your flash guns and re-direct them! Maybe you should have brought an assistant? And you <i>are</i> going to need those speedlights because it's a cave remember? I think by now you get the idea that this takes some planning.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4t46wOb1hu1xMd7OA77k28qIp00rbnCn5ItolRbQSg2eaGZSSf6M8M7CUYMQQZE25GJPTraAtuflKQI_ADPe4XS-dAeSkAy9389vPAsxDW3JECAC9XE3MztDmpmy7hDoDkMzrnST3G4M/s1600/d16-4808.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4t46wOb1hu1xMd7OA77k28qIp00rbnCn5ItolRbQSg2eaGZSSf6M8M7CUYMQQZE25GJPTraAtuflKQI_ADPe4XS-dAeSkAy9389vPAsxDW3JECAC9XE3MztDmpmy7hDoDkMzrnST3G4M/s400/d16-4808.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Let's take a look at the gear I packed for this shoot.<br />
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First the lighting. I used three Nikon speedlights in these photos. An SB800, an SB600 and an SB28. All three were triggered using Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 transceivers from a PW Mini TT1 on the camera with AC3 zone controller to adjust the power output remotely.<br />
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The SB28's power output can't be controlled by the AC3 because it's not a "digital" flash, but once the power setting is dialled into the flash you can still fire it remotely using the Mini TT1. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to alter it's power output once I was in position on the rope, I chose to position it on a lightstand, at the entrance of the cave, pointing up at the rim. You can see the effect in this shot above.<br />
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The SB28 was zoomed to 80mm with a snoot attached, with the idea of using it's power to pick out the climber. I'd use whatever f stop was required to expose for the SB28 at half power and dial the other two flashes up or down as required. I really have to swap that flash out for another SB800 because it's getting to be a pain not having full remote control.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeSOGuYeSVJXH-oQm42sqdO3uiySikeXHCaLROZRJfSj-WjW16sSGdI4rO89xanIPhlbM6e9_jDIIre0j5vK7KImnlq541469miYsaTs3Q6goCR5FgM_5uCW7O9zuF2rCSZC-HNqEaRk/s1600/untitled-4027.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeSOGuYeSVJXH-oQm42sqdO3uiySikeXHCaLROZRJfSj-WjW16sSGdI4rO89xanIPhlbM6e9_jDIIre0j5vK7KImnlq541469miYsaTs3Q6goCR5FgM_5uCW7O9zuF2rCSZC-HNqEaRk/s400/untitled-4027.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
The other two guns <i>would </i>be fully remote so...The SB600 went into a food container as pictured - I have a bunch of these - to keep it protected. I was going to take this on the rope with me and hang it from someplace to act as a fill light for the climber. The SB800 was put on a stand at the back of the cave and pushed through a shoot-through umbrella to act as a large rim-light or "kicker". I was hoping/expecting Paddy to hide that flash when he climbed towards me and get a nice edge light around him to separate him from the rock and give me a "look" that I like. So, with all that in place, I picked up the D700 and headed for the abseil rope.<br />
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Once in position, first thing was to get the ambient looking good. Being a cave, (and a rainy day) there wasn't a right lot of ambient to deal with, but a dialled the shutter speed down from 250th to 125th to see what happened. Hmmm, not a lot. So I upped the ISO to 800. OK that looked fine, nice touch of ambient light, not too strong so the flash can do it's stuff.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhza35dxboPDXnr6zT64vaR05BP69j_4nl9C5omDm1DiXCJUHg_eu6cJHj_pw6mz2ZcRj969goiRhx5nM7j95xbmcttOgWGSaJ4q_LeGPpMZEOYJ_b8VlaDbpssJ_i1RSiRlYBPKUCk0cI/s1600/d16-4758.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhza35dxboPDXnr6zT64vaR05BP69j_4nl9C5omDm1DiXCJUHg_eu6cJHj_pw6mz2ZcRj969goiRhx5nM7j95xbmcttOgWGSaJ4q_LeGPpMZEOYJ_b8VlaDbpssJ_i1RSiRlYBPKUCk0cI/s400/d16-4758.jpg" width="265" /></a>Then I shot a couple of test shots to get the flash power dialled in on the remotes and figure out the right f stop to go with SB28's output. Turned out to be f5.6. The SB600 fill flash in the tupperware worked fine just hanging off the top lower-off bolt just off to my right side, as long as I dialled the power right down to about 1/28th power. With everything working and looking good, it was time for Paddy to perform. Which he did!<br />
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To describe sport mixed climbing as "physical" would be an under statement of very large proportions. It's muscle-screamingly tough to climb at this extreme overhanging angle, carefully placing and weighting crampon points and gripping axe handles whilst trying to clip the protection and still look good for the camera. Particularly when the photographer casually asks if you wouldn't mind just doing that move again but this time a bit to left to hide the flash gun! After half an hour of this we were all spent. Worth it though. If I'm going to go to the trouble of hauling this gear, getting on a rope and dangling over a cliff, I'm going to do it right and I'm going to light it!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDxrOmRJZT8s2nmZayMUu7uisANXlnDmRgjOY0B0jdtRIj6M2ROZ9PWVvPJVkS1LlhYiWWVCfFVdT3XOp67qURHjWrGeAQS27p9BB0_ScB0K1dx2v2kvepqaaKfKFUzzlpZGoHywjUFE/s1600/d16-4824.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDxrOmRJZT8s2nmZayMUu7uisANXlnDmRgjOY0B0jdtRIj6M2ROZ9PWVvPJVkS1LlhYiWWVCfFVdT3XOp67qURHjWrGeAQS27p9BB0_ScB0K1dx2v2kvepqaaKfKFUzzlpZGoHywjUFE/s400/d16-4824.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
This is the first go at shooting dry tooling and I think there's a lot of potential here so we'll be back to try some more and see if we can get even more radical.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00896303329017646219noreply@blogger.com0