Firemonkeyphoto

Sam Simmons for Fest0
neil posted in Travel on August 25th, 2010

“He uses props.. he has a lot of televisions” was my brief from my editor at Fest magazine. Sam Simmons made time for a Fest magazine shoot in Teviot (Gilded Balloon). Sam was easy to work with and did’nt baulk at the zany. No suprise when you see his act.

I had James Robertson assisting me on this shoot, which proved invaluable. One pocketwizard died, a cable failed and the optical trigger for another slave would’nt work when held in the hotshoe. This combination flummoxed me temporarily. It was a few minutes before my three strobes were all behaving.

I made the above shot and thought “right.. got SOMETHING in the bag”, my expectations of the shoot drastically lowered by the malfunctioning equipment. However Sam mentioned “I’m good to play” and there was no real time pressure. When a subject says this, its time to step up!

So we got a little crazy, moved around and in the end we came back to that original setup, but changed the light. Sam stuck his hand out towards the camera on a reflex while I got James to splash the left side light on the wall. It worked, the pose wasn’t quite right first time, neither was the framing, but we were ON! The flashes were running low power so we quickly banged out 26 exposures with different poses, expressions. We had it. I walked away from the shoot happy, not kicking myself and pushing out a mediocre image. Other people have put this better, but my take is this: Don’t walk away ’til you are done, looking “professional” by being quick is worth nothing if your shot is only mediocre. Keep working the scene!

I need to laminate my own advice and use it to cover my screen.

Stage lighting1
neil posted in Travel on August 16th, 2010

Portraits over 3 years0
neil posted in Photos, Neil, phototech, 5Dmk2 on July 31st, 2010

I have been shooting headshots of  Edinburgh University Sports Union’s committee for three years now. Often I’m shooting the same people in different committee positions. Meanwhile my lighting has been evolving. I have more kit available and considerably more know-how. Here is a comparison of my shoots over the three years:

Year 1: Unfamiliar rental kit and a wierd location. I pulled over a golden divider wall to make a cleanish background and put two light lights in the ’safe’ 45/45 configuration.

Year 2: Arranged a speedlight to flood a neutral coloured wall. Large silver brolly camera high right, softbox for fill. Using lots of large modifiers in a right space (to get the background) was a bit intimidating for some of my subjects.

Year 3: Weather was good so used a wall outside. Lit the background with a gridded flash aimed to rake across the stonework. Two lights to rimlight and a rotabox stood off a few meters as the mainlight.

I’m happiest with the single left photo from year 2, however the setup had a flaw in that it created a “dark eye” on the right that was underlit by the high mainlight and was’nt filled properly by the softbox. The lighting had to work on ten people of different ages, sexes and builds. The year 1 photos hit a problem with cases of “rugby player brow” due to the all the lighting being set high and aimed down. The year 2 low softbox was specifically tailored to deal with this, but did’nt always get both eyes. By year 3 I just dropped my mainlight to head height and made sure if was sufficiently backed off not to vary in exposure dramatically across the face or be a distraction when shooting. It could have been closer to the middle for more even exposure, but I was fine with how it fell. A subtle gradient in lightroom could even things up if it looked like a problem. I concentrated on giving my light a bit more depth, making sure there were shadows and a decent hair/side/backlight that I varied from person to person.

The examples I am happiest are generally the women. I hypothesise this is because a generic light looks better on ladies and OK on blokes, wheras a special “bloke” shooting light would make the men look great would’nt work on the ladies. There are a number of other factors that may explain it, but thats my first thought. As a compromise in the 3rd year I walked the rimlights around to form a side light when shooting the men, this was a change I could make while chatting to the subject and getting them in the right spot for all the other lights. Over all three years I used a marker on the floor so I could guide people easily into the right place.

Got pain? Edinburgh Nocturne 20100
neil posted in Travel on July 11th, 2010

Someone elses idea0
neil posted in Travel on July 4th, 2010

This was Kirsty’s third graduation. However there was a photo she wanted. She passed the idea on and it was up to me to run with it. I enjoy the challenge of realising someone-elses vision, but the pressure is still on. The brief was basically: “I want the ‘Scottish Widows’ shot in my gown”

I used a combination of side light to give an edge to the image and on-axis fill. The on-axis light picks out her eyes and makes sure the black gown does’nt mix with the shadowy background. The fill E-TTL dialled down 3 stops and interpreting this quite generously in the first image (-1 stop if that…). We then got the gown moving for the next image:

In hindsight it looks a bit like Kirsty is handing off a relay baton… but to who?

Making this image to order would be troublesome with ambient light. The ambient is shafts of raw sunlight (like the one she is running through) and dappled light through the leaves. This means you have a mix of green light (ewww….) and enough white light to stop you compensating for the green. If you lose the raw sunlight you lose the interesting light and thus the drama.

From the Archives: Paje, Zanzibar, 20070
neil posted in Travel on June 11th, 2010

Relaxing on the Meadows0
neil posted in Travel on June 8th, 2010

English literature student has her hair cut in the last of the evening sun

Long dark night…0
neil posted in Travel on May 30th, 2010

Working with big glass in low light requires patience, planning and preparation. For Beltane all of my vantagepoints were carefully scoped out in advance and the timings carefully worked out. It takes several minutes to build the tripod, attach and balance the lens and ballhead and couple and focus the camera. Once rigged onto the tripod the lens and camera cannot be touched, to do so induces too much vibration. Hugh had leant me a cable release, which proved invaluable. Focus was done manually and the lens left to settle (vibrations are pretty obvious on x10 magnification in live view) before the shutter could be released.

This may be the first time that the image on the camera was both bigger and brighter than could be seen with the naked eye. It was almost a shame to trip the shutter and lose the view while the camera made an image.

Photo of me by Richard Milnes Link
This being my second outing as BFS’ long range photographer I was getting used to hanging out on top of buildings behind a huge lens. However I was also tasked to cover Fire-Point who were performing on the reverse slope of the hill. This involved crossing a hundred meters of crowd to my shooting position. Before I could even start working through the crowd I had to descend from the acropolis. I had to jump down from the acropolis with the 400mm strapped across my back and both cameras sat on the wall with straps dangling. After some hair raising tip-toe recovery efforts I was off through the crowds. The plan was to use my 70-200mm and 24mm to cover the point while staying out of the way of the red men. At a predesignated point in the performance a torrent of reds would be unleashed straight down the wet grassy slope towards the procession. Anything getting in the way stood to be damaged and violated. Pretty soon I realised the 24mm was useless as it was’nt safe to get close and use it properly so I remounted the 400mm on my 1D.

It seems if you give a 1D a sliver of light it will focus anything you put in front of it. Whenever the performance seemed especially well lit, I put the 70-200mm down and snatched up the 400mm lying at my feet. I would focus the lens on a performer and hold the button down until the frame rate dropped. Once the 1D’s buffer was full I would pick up the 70-200mm and 5D and get back to more considered image-making. The IS system meant that suprising number of sharp images were recorded. The below was shot at 1/80th of a second!

The size of the lens with its hood attached gave the crowd behind me a start, including the chap who had to ask: “Is that lens real?” I resisted the temptation to tell him it was “all natural”.

WOCA: The Drunken Master of Photography0
neil posted in Travel on May 19th, 2010

You lug this sodding plastic box around for the entire wedding. The camera body is so light it hangs awkwardly upside down on its strap. The film inside costs £5 and the development and scanning cost yet more. You flick past unexposed negatives where you wound the camera on twice by accident. For days you wait, suspecting that the ill-fitting lid has burned out all of the film inside. Then it goes and does this:

Photopoint0
neil posted in Travel on May 1st, 2010

As I write this, photos are up on the BBC, flickr and this website and I’m happy with them. Thats not saying much as my brain-stem is the only working part of my brain right now.

    

  

The images you see are made possible by the incredibly hard work of a team of people. Not even counting the performers who worked so hard to look so good. Months of meetings, discussions, painstaking planning, working with the performers, the Beltane Fire Society, technical staff, torchbearers and stewards followed by rehersals, walkthroughs, route planning, lens planning, training, logistics, costume planning and production and a lot more. Nobody could do this alone, so a team of photographers (normally a bit of an oxymoron) do this, combining skills, contacts and pooling resources. The work goes on and on, harder and harder until everyone is about to crack on the day of Beltane. We do crack, just a little, but we look after each other and finally we get to Carlton Hill. The hard bit is done, now we get to make the pictures.

So next time you see a series of images from an event like this, just bear in mind that the photo credit is just the tip of a very big iceberg. The shutter speed, aperture, ISO and flash are the least part of the making the image.