Best Day Of 2008

While more conventional photo blogs are posting subjects like “Best photo of 2008” (I assume, the only ones I look at never seem to get updated – you know who you are), here at simonbills.com we’re doing things a little differently. And by a little differently I mean just that, a little differently. My personal spin on the well worn topic is to bring the whole day into it, what was my best day in 2008, and what photos did I take that captured the essence of that day.

I’ll start by saying it’s impossible to narrow it down to just 1 day. In previous years I’ve had to have a good long think about my best day so this year I started the thought process early, some time in November, but even then I was well aware that some incredible adventures were yet to come so my list was far from finalised. Anyway, enough of the yip yap, I’ve managed to cull my list down to the point I can cull no further, so here we go, in chronological order, the top 4 days in 2008 for Simon Bills (of simonbills.com fame).

July 6 – Wimbledon Final

I’ve already spoken about this in a previous blog so I shant talk too much about it here, what I will do it show you a photo of how the day started…



how it ended…..



and a collection of 3 shots I put together to form 1 image, I’m thinking of blowing this up and pinning it on my wall somewhere.






August 24 – Sweden Kayaking Day 4

After 3 days of semi-gruelling kayaking through Sweden’s stunning St Anna archipelago we decided to enjoy a day of rest. The previous 2 days had started with an early breakfast before taking down tents and dismantling the camp, a necessary chore in the world of kayak camping, day 4 however did not require any such chores as we were spending that night in the same camp spot. There was a minor necessity to attend to, that of paddling over the sea for 20 minutes to drop our rubbish and collect fresh water, and Barny and I were up to the challenge. After loading up the kayak we leisurely eased our way to the other side, and while Barny was diligently sorting the rubbish for the recycling bins I went in search of fresh water. Like Burke and Wills my pursuit was relentless, but I soon realised we’d need to go for a walk, not a long walk but a walk none-the-less. It didn’t take us long to stumble upon a caravan park, and it also didn’t take us long to realise they sold ice cream in the kiosk. 5 minutes later, while we were basking in the sunshine on some park benches, Barny remarked “Man, this is great, I don’t think I’ve ever had ice cream before breakfast before”. I had to agree.

Ice creams devoured and tooth brushes purchased (my toiletries bag went missing on day 1 so the teeth for screamin’ for a cleanin’) we returned to camp with an ample supply of H20. Waiting for us was a warm campfire and some warm friends who had prepared a couple of egg of toast breakfasts for the hardy explorers, a nice little chaser to the ice cream enjoyed earlier. The rest of the day played out in a very relaxed manner, the sun was shining, the cliffs were beckoning and the mood was chilled.

From Sweden Long Weekend

(the keen observer, ok, super-keen observer, will note that the arm at the top of this photo belongs to yours truly, and as I'm not quick enough to set up a tripod, run around some rocks and get the timing bang on you've probably guessed I didn't take this shot. Photo credit goes to my Old Street Photography business partner Danny Zada)

The afternoon involved some Olympic style kayaking events, we split up into teams of 2 and had time trials to see who could paddle the fastest round that rock over there. Josh and I were clearly the team to beat, with our vast River Murray canoe trip back catalogue under our belts, however this didn’t prepare us properly for working out which rock in particular we were paddling around and we ended up going the wrong way, the long way, and finished a shameful 3rd. Kudos to Barny and Zads for taking the prize. Dinner was tasty Swedish meatballs round the fire, the beer was flowing, as were the finest cask wines Sweden had to offer, and we were all enjoying some fantastic campfire camaraderie in the shadow of one of the worlds finest sunsets.



That night a few of us headed out for a midnight paddle. The water was glass and a single stroke would take you 25 metres. Lit only by the earth’s moon we paddled to the other side and listened to the conversations of those left round the campfire as their sound waves travelled unhindered through the still night. We decided to take a slow paddle round that rock of over there and returned to the fire after an almost spiritual experience of peace.



And then I went to bed, thus ending one of my top 4 days of the year.


November 22 – First full day in Bottlierskop private game reserve

I woke to the sounds of nature from the sanctity of my tent, a million crickets, birds and baboons acting as nature’s alarm clock. Man’s alarm clock came shortly after in the form of a wake up call from reception (oh, did I mention I was sleeping in a king sized 4 poster bed in a luxury tent equipped with 2 sinks, a massive bath, a glorious outdoor shower and, get this, air conditioning?). An open top jeep was waiting for Yvonne and I up the hill and the animals were waiting to have their photos taken. We enjoyed a cup of tea and a rusk out on the deck as I came to terms with being awake at 5:30am.

From Vleesbaai and Bottlierskop

The morning game drive was great, we saw a bunch of crazy creatures doing what they do, and I managed to get some nice happy snaps in the process, but as I’ve already talked about this in a previous blog I won’t go into it any further. Hot towels and a hot breakfast were waiting for us on our return to the lodge, and soon after I was enjoying a hot shower in the aforementioned outdoor facility. After a brief cruise on the river we settled in by the pool for the afternoon, and with drinks and snacks on command it was impossible not to relax and get through a few pages of Midnight’s Children (yeah, that’s right, I read classy books). A tasty bespoke lunch was followed by an afternoon nap, which in turn was followed by a game drive to go see the lions. Again, you’ve seen some lion shots in the previous blog, what I will say is that the lions were a lot more active than when we’d seen them the day before, and the light shining down on them was conducive to some lovely photos.





We were presented with a sherry on our return to the lodge and enjoyed a couple of sun downers on the deck pre-dinner. Dinner itself included some exotic game meats (including zebra, tastes just like horse) accompanied by an nice bottle of merlot, a perfect way to end a perfect day.


December 23 – Northern Lights in Norway

A trip to Norway to see the northern lights is like a trip to the casino, you can either strike it lucky and have the time of your life, or you can come up short and return home with your tail between your legs and your wallet significantly lighter (£6 or AU$15 beers will do that for you). We had 4 days booked in, and with the lights supposedly coming out 2 nights in 3 we were reasonably confident, but the forecast of clouds and rain and snow did not bode well for the clear skies which are required.

December 23 started early. By the time my alarm sounded at 5:30 my fractured sleep had already been interrupted by countless false alarms, brought on by the fear that I’d overslept and missed the train to the airport, the flight, the lights, the rest of my life. Despite climbing out of bed at the planned time my inablilty to manage time properly when I’m in the spell of a lovely warm shower resulted in my usual fast walk / jog / full blown sprint to Liverpool St Station to board the Stansted Express and make the flight.

It’s a surreal experience boarding a plane at 9am, when it’s light, then proceeding to fly into darkness. We touched down some time around 1pm local time and there wasn’t a lot of light in the sky; with Tromso being deep within the artic circle and the winter solstice having taken place only 2 days earlier we knew the sun would never rise above the horizon in our four days. After a quick taxi ride and a seemless check in we decided to explore the town while there was still a tiny amount of light remaining. There had been quite heavy snow soon before we arrived, but we were welcomed by clear skies so the magic of an pristine arctic town blanketed in Chistmas white with deep blue skies made the whole scene feel like a fairy tale. By 2:30 the sky was pitch black and I was spotting stars. Unreal.

While it’s possible to see the lights from town the best views are away from all the light pollution. We’d not planned on taking a trip on our first night, but with no guarantee of clear skies for future nights we decided to book something last minute, and I’m so glad we did. A 30 minute ride took us to the Tromso Wilderness Centre where 200 huskies were waiting for us, we’d planned on leaving a husky ride for later in the trip but rain the following day washed away the snow and out dream of dogs pulling us over it. We’d been patting, wrestling and generally immersing ourselves in dog for about half an hour when the guide pointed upwards and said “There’s the aurora, just starting”. It looked like a faint long white cloud, not quite what I was expecting, but I instantly lost all interest in the dogs and wanted to get further away from human lights to maximise the viewing experience.

I set up the camera and captured this white cloud on my digital sensor, when I reviewed the image I was thrilled to see the white long cloud was in fact green! I’d captured the lights!!

From Tromso and the Northern Lights

But it was about to get a whole lot better. Over the next 20 minutes the aurora gained in size, the green become more prominent, and it started appearing in all parts of the sky. Looking east I was blown away by the swirling beams of light, then when I looked west another one was starting up that usurped the eastern aurora in every regard. Soon enough the whole sky was lit up by green fingers of light dancing slowly through the atmosphere and my eyes filled with tears, unable to register what they were seeing. In total the lights were out for close to 2 hours, with the peak time lasting for about 40 minutes.





A friend had advised me to not take photos when I saw the lights and to just watch them and take them in. Obviously this was impossible, there was no way I could have sat there peacefully and allowed such an incredible scene to go unphotographed. Fortunately when taking these shots I was using a 30 second exposure (at f/4.0 with ISO 400) so once I set up the tripod and pressed click I was able to bask in what I was witnessing for an uninterrupted 30 seconds. Once the exposure was done there was a frantic further 30 seconds or so setting up the new shot before being rewarded with another blissful 30 seconds of sweetness.





If I was going for the best hour of 2008 this one wins hands down, and would be well in the hunt for the best hour of my life. And to be honest I think perhaps this one is just a bee’s dick ahead of the other 3 days in the battle for day of 2008, but then again perhaps I’m only saying this because it’s still so fresh.

No matter which way you spin it I’ve been incredibly lucky this year to have seen the things I’ve seen, and the beauty of photography is that in 40 years time I’ll be able to look back at these photos and trigger something in the mind, a long forgotten memory, that hopefully puts me back there. As time goes on we tend to have a romanticised view of past events, so I’m looking forward to how my mind remembers these days, as they were as close to perfect as you could imagine without any mind romanticism required. Or have I romanticised them already?

Attack of the rhino bride

About a month ago I rolled the dice on Air Namibia hoping they could take me all the way to Cape Town safely, I had to go see about about a girl. I also had to go see about shooting some African wildlife (the good kind of shooting, with a camera) which was a new experience for me and something I was looking forward to a lot.

Something I've never understood is people who specialise in one type of photography but are inept at another type. The more I shoot different subjects the more I'm convinced it's all fundamentally the same, compose your photo in an interesting way with a nice balance to it, use foreground interest and leading lines to draw the viewers eye into the shot, make sure the eye is in focus (whether you're shooting a bride or a rhino), try to place things on the rule of thirds (if practical) and try to capture a unique moment rather then simply recording what you saw. Of course making sure the light is right goes without saying.

Interesting Composition

Zebras are very likeable animals, they pose well for photos, have awesome markings on their fur and don't taste half bad with a nice bottle of merlot. I've got 2 photos here which demonstrate my point about interesting composition. The first one is a nice enough photo, the light is good, the markings look great but it's ultimately just a zebra standing in a field, it doesn't tell a story, the animal's not engaging with the camera, and it's ultimately a forgettable image. This next one I think has far more going for it. For starters the Zebra is looking down the barrel of the lens, it's got a few more zebras in the background which aren't distracting (as they're out of focus) but they give the image a bit more context, and you can also see his little mo-hawk. I've put the horizon a little close to the edge of the frame for my liking, but apart from that I quite like it. Although looking back at that first shot it's growing on me too! I guess you'll have to make up your own mind.






Foreground Interest

The day after arrival Yvonne and I headed up table mountain in Cape Town (cricket fans would recognise this as the mountain behind the Newlands ground). Several hours after joining the queue we made it to the top, the electricity crisis meant the cable car was operating at half pace using their back up supply. Once we finally reached the top we realised we'd picked a great day for the trip. The views were stunning, the light lovely and the clouds were whispy and low (we were looking down on them). I decided the best way to capture the scene was with my Sigma 10-20 lens, but after shooting off a few frames I realised the shots lacked something, there was nothing in the shot to draw the eye to and while it was a beautiful scene the photo didn't really capture it. At this point I commissioned my faithful model to act as a bit of foreground interest which helped balance things compositionally but also made the viewer wish they were there. (I think my main motivation when taking travel photos is to make the viewer jealous they're not there. I'm not sure if this is a good photographic technique or a bad ego driven character trait!)

From Stellenbosch and Capetown

Rule of Thirds

As the time passed on top of the mountain a band of clouds rolled in and created a totally different perspective on things. The beach views had been replaced by a blanket of white, and the resulting photos turned out nicely. This shot is a pretty good example of putting things on the rule of thirds and balancing the image nicely, the peak of Lion's Head sits nicely on upper right third, and the cable car is near enough to the opposite third. As soon as I took this shot I knew it would work perfectly in B & W.

From Stellenbosch and Capetown

Leading Lines

Yvonne's folks live on a beautiful winery so we'd often head there towards to end of the day and take her dog for a walk through the vineyards. We stumbled upon a big pile of wood not too far from the house which screamed "Take my photo" so I did. I experimented with different angles and apertures and shutter speed (getting Yvonne to walk past at varying paces to capture some motion blur) and I think this was probably my favourite. Not convinced I absolutely nailed it but it's a nice example of using leading lines to draw the eye into a photo.

From Stellenbosch and Capetown

Focus on the Eye

I remember Dad telling me years ago that when shooting people you always need to make sure the eye is in focus. You get this right and the rest doesn't matter. I decided to apply this advice to animals (an indeed anything which has an eye - should I ever encounter a hurricane I'll know what to do). This shot is also works due to the texture of the rhino's skin which is interesting enough in its own right.

From Vleesbaai and Bottlierskop

Capturing Moments

A dog walking through a vineyard in lovely late afternoon light, sure, a nice photo, but a dog shaking his head wildly in the same vineyard with the same lovely late afternoon light? Now we're talking. I shot this one of Fiela (spelling's probably wrong, can't wrap my head round Afrikaans) after seeing her do a similar head shaking thing moments earlier but failing to capture it properly. I registered my disappointment to Yvonne who said "I can make her do it again, I just have to pull on the back of neck like this". Before this next shake I was able to set the camera up as I wanted (10-20 lens set to 14mm, high speed burst mode so I could hold my finger on the shutter and see 6.5 frames for every second) and get down nice and close to capture it from an unusual angle which I like to call squirrel's eye view (or dassie's eye view if you're from SA). There were about 4 frames that worked nicely but this was probably my fave due to the ears at the angles and the teeth poking out.

From Stellenbosch and Capetown

Finally my favourite photo from the trip. We went on a tour through one of the townships in Cape Town, in interesting experience to say the least. I'm a bit tired after writing all this (and because my jerk next door neighbours were playing loud music till 2am just 1 thin wall away from my head last night) so I won't go into details of what townships are, but if you're interested I'm sure google will fill you in. Anyway, we were being shown around a church / community centre when I spotted these kids peering in through the door, it was split second moment that ended almost as quickly as it started, but I managed to get the camera out in time to shoot 2 frames, one of which was rubbish but the other of which looked like this.

From Stellenbosch and Capetown

I might take this opportunity to give another shout out to google's Picasa software, it's free and it's brilliant for any budding photographers. I use Lightroom for most of stuff, but I've just downloaded the latest Picasa update and discovered I can make videos of it! I obviously had to give this a go, and wasn't surprised to find it was all too easy. Anyway, I uploaded it to Youtube and this is how it's turned out. (this is only 1 of my 2 albums from the trip, if you're interested you can follow the links on any of the photos about to check out the complete gallery at my Picasa site).

Pictures of exciting times

In the spirit of pushing the barriers of the photographic art form, and going places more conventional photographers fear to tread, this week’s instalment of Billo’s Photos will not contain any photos. Take that Annie Leibowitz.

No, instead of showing off some dazzling photos from the week just been, and coming up with some insightful observations, I have decided to shine a spot light into the inner workings of how the blog works. I also get to combine this with my other passion – statistics!

“Statistics can be used to prove anything Kent; fourteen percent of people know that”

SO, when I signed up with this rollercoaster ride back in March I also signed up to Google Analytics, it’s another great free product from Google which allows you to keep track of all sorts of things regarding your website or blog. Here are a few high level stats to get things started, don’t worry, I’ll be going into more detail later on:

* 752 visits so far resulting in 1,099 page views (when your whole site is basically one long page you wouldn’t expect page views to be much higher than visits)

* 349 unique visitors – I don’t know who all you people are but thanks for stopping by!

* Average time on site 1 minute 10 seconds. Can’t read too much into this as I suspect a good number of viewings were just confirming I still hadn’t updated it.

* Most hits in 1 day was on April 8 when I announced to the world via email and facebook that this baby was live and 31 of you stopped by to kick the tyres. A bit disconcerting that once everyone saw what it was all about this lofty total hasn’t been reached again, although I did get a total of 41 hits over 2 days after last week’s long overdue update which was encouraging.


I’ve got loads of other info on what browsers people use to access the site (65% Explorer, 27% Firefox and 4 visits with Seamonkey, whatever that is?) but that’s not all that interesting.

What is slightly more interesting is where people are accessing the site from. As expected the big 2 are UK and Australia with 289 and 254 hits respectively, we’ve got USA a clear third with 128 visits with the vast majority coming from New York (is that you Brian?) although 19 states are represented. Some of the more unusual and unexpected visits have come from Colombia, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, Slovenia, Latvia, Chile, India, Poland and the Czech Republic – especially unexpected as I don’t think I know anyone living in these countries! All up there are 27 countries who can proudly lay claim to its residents viewing the majesty of simonbills.com.

Now, onto the interesting stuff. Most of the visits come from direct hits, ie, typing simonbills.com into the address bar in your browser (or clicking the bookmark you’ve all no doubt made to speed up the process by 1.4 seconds), however my friends over at Google have sent a bit of business my way by people searching for the following things:

* “Live East Die Young” – this one brings more traffic than any other search, 14 visits to be precise. I’ve since done my own google search of this phrase and discovered I’m on the first page of the results which would explain things.



* “Pictures of punks in Camden” – 4 searchers have found their way into my world by searching for this phrase. I’ve also received some traffic from “Camden Punks”, “Punk’s pictures Camden 2008” (if I can figure out a way to block people with bad grammar I will), “punks in Camden photos”, “recent photos of punks in Camden” and even a typo “punks in cambden” which means that I must also have the same typo on my site. Ooops.


* Speaking of typo’s I’m google’s NUMBER ONE RESPONSE for the search “Mini pojects”. I think typos are the way forward actually, if you spell things correctly you get lost in the sea of other literate web nerds, but by misspelling certain important things you’re likely to come up much higher in google rankings for cretins.

* There are practical ones “backlighting for photos”, and “photos from sigma 10-20”

* Some precise ones “bride walking down the isle (sic) and groom comes out late”

* Some exciting ones “pictures of exciting times” and “exciting photos”

* Disturbing ones “picasa- webalbum young kids” and “picasa-webalbum young boys”

* A self indulgent one “beardvember Gerhard”

* And at least one particularly unusual one “picture of jigs white smoke”

My challenge to you, faithful readers, is to see how obscure you can make a search and have it lead to my blog. Go ahead, make my day.

Oh, and the other reason I elected to fly in the face of convention and post a photoless update is because the only photo I took this week was of the TV we’re looking to sell, and there really wasn’t any artistic merit to this (let me know if you’re in the market for a tele by the way, a lovely 32 inch Sony number, not a plasma or LCD but a very nice picture and excellent sound - £100).

Quick update on last week's post- we gave the couple a slideshow last night and it went down very well, they mentioned that in the end there were 760 guests that turned up. Insanity.

My big fat Asian wedding

When my business parter Danny and I put out a few ads out 6 months ago offering our services as wedding photographers one of the first responses was from Shabnam asking if we'd be interested in covering her Muslim Bengali wedding. As a couple of cocksure young snappers there was no job we wouldn't take, no job too small, and in this instance no job too big.

As the big day approached it began to dawn on us that this would be a pretty big operation. For a start there were going to be 650 guests, more than double the total number of guests in the 3 weddings we'd covered to date, furthermore Asian weddings run very differently to those we'd shot before and attended as guests. The groom has a seperate ceremony to the bride, and neither are at the other's ceremony. The groom's ceremony was covered by Danny and had several hundred guests, I was lucky enough to cover the bride's ceremony which as simply held in a small suite at the hotel and had less than a dozen people in attendance.

One of the people in the suite with me was the videographer (there were 2 of these, along with Danny and myself taking the photos, plus a friend of the couple who was wanting some practice shooting weddings and shadowed us all day). I was a little aprehensive about being too intrusive at such an intimate ceremony, but the videographer had no such reservations and seemed to have no problem holding his camera less than 30cm away from people's faces and shining his light striaght into their eyes. This worked very nicely for me for a couple of reasons, firstly I felt a lot better about shooting with my loud shutter, and secondly his video light provided some lovely mood lighting for my shots.





After the formalities were over I finally had a 20 minute window to get some bridal portraits (I'd been at the venue for a couple of hours already but didn't have to chance to take shots of her getting ready as I had expected). I've got a theory that as long as you know what you're doing, have the right equipment and know how to use it, taking great photos is all about putting yourself in the right place at the right time. That place and time was now. There was some lovely soft light coming in through the window of the suite onto the bed, there was a stunning bride dressed in the most ornate dress I'd ever seen with amazingly intricate henna all over her hands and arms. The photos basically took themselves.







After these shots there was a bit of down time while we waited for the groom to finish his ceremony and the 650 guests to enjoy their starters. A kind soul brought some of these starters into the suite for us to eat and it was without question the most delicious Indian food I've ever had. Eventually the bride and her siblings got themselves together and made the entrance into the main hall. Picture the scene, there's 3 official photographers, 2 official videographers, countless other punters sporting SLRs, point and shoots and mobile phones all jostling for the best position, it was the closest thing to a paparazzi scrum I've ever been involved in.



The cutting of the cake was no different.



The rest of the day was a bit of a blur, a chaotic assortment of unpredictable events and situations that we had to be ready to capture. Kids are always great subject for photos and there must have been 200 of the things running around screaming all day, it was tough keeping any of them still for long enough to get a shot, but I did like this one.



6 days till we give the couple a slideshow and I've still got some final editing to do, I've managed to put it of for the last half hour or so thanks to this blog but I need to get into it shortly. All in all I was very pleased with how our photos have turned out, it was a manic, exhausting and often challenging day, but when you're sitting on the train on the way home with the knowledge that you've got some amazing images in the memory cards in your pocket it makes it all worthwhile. And now we've got some Asian wedding photos in our portfolio this could open up a whole new market, a market with over 1.1 billion people in India alone!

Here Comes The Photographer

A few weeks ago I took my second tentative step into the big bad world of professional photography. With a solitary maternity shoot as my only paid work to date (not including a free trip around Ireland for some promotion snaps this time last year) I took on the challenge of recording photographically the most important day in the young lives of a very trusting couple as their “official wedding photographer”.

It’s fair to say I had a few restless nights in the lead up.

I think there’s a view around most of the population that wedding photography is a licence to print money, you rock up for half a day, take a few photos then send the bill for a couple of thou (for the record my fee was no where this amount!). I knew that this wasn’t the case, but I didn’t really know just how much work is involved, especially when it’s your first and you need to learn things for the first time.

Something I learned is that the more work you do before the day the less trouble you have on the day, the problem was that most of the work I was doing before the day was making sure I had enough memory cards, enough spare batteries, another body in case the main body malfunctioned, the right lenses and also that I had the technical know-how to complete the job to a professional standard. This involved reading books on wedding photography, doing research on nightclub photography (while the reception wasn’t at a nightclub I knew there would be dancing shots in low light and I wanted to know the techniques available to create different images), learning how my flash works inside out (learning how to use a flash properly is far more technical than learning how to use a camera properly) and generally looking through hundreds of wedding images online to get inspiration and ideas for poses and angles.

What I should have been doing before the day was building rapport with the couple to make sure they were comfortable around me and the camera, going to the venue to scout out locations, getting a running schedule for the day, working out where photography was fitting in, and communicating with the couple about expectations. The way it turned out we basically did things on the fly on the day, but within the scope of what I had broadly planned, and realistically this is probably how the vast majority of weddings will run, if the bride turns up half an hour late this could throw a strictly regimented day into chaos so the photographer’s role is to roll with the punches, remain calm and get on with the job.

The couple didn’t want any photos of them getting ready so I met the groom at the church. I arrived an hour before the ceremony to meet the priest, have a chat about where I could stand, whether I could use flash, those sorts of things, and generally scope out the place for any good ops. As luck would have it the church was beautiful and ideal for photos. Soon enough the groom arrived, as did the groomsmen, guests, bridesmaids and finally the bride. I took this photo of the bride walking down the aisle, I think it shows off the beauty of the church and has a really nice symmetry about it, I also love how the white of the dress is in stark contrast to the darkness around it.



My favourite part of the day was shooting during the ceremony. It was slower, more predicable, people didn’t move much and there was plenty of time to compose the shots exactly as I wanted them. I moved around a little bit through the ceremony as the next 3 shots show, the place I took the final shot from was excellent, as I was obscured from most of the congregation so as to remain unobtrusive, but I was in the perfect place to get shots of the couple’s faces and provide a view that none of the guests had. The lack of flash during the ceremony made my decision last year to get the f/2.8 stabilised version of my 70-200 lens totally justified, likewise my decision to invest in a monopod a few days before the big event.








I was quite keen to take a nice group shot at some stage during the day, later on at the reception I managed to get up high and shoot down on everyone which was quite effective, but right after the ceremony, while everyone was out the front of the church, I switched to my Sigma 10-20 ultra wide angle and got a shot of the whole scene which I think worked quite nicely. Just looking at it now I’ve noticed something in the shot that annoys me – your challenge, dear reader, is to find this annoyance and leave a comment telling me what it is! First one to find it gets a high from me when we next meet.



While I’m here this is the group shot I took later on, I’ve since cropped it tighter to make the people bigger, it’s really a shot that needs to be printed as big as possible.



Ok, I think I might actually leave this wedding here, half way through, and return for the 2nd half next week (or will it be later this week? You’ll have to keep checking to find out). I will say that I gave the couple a viewing on Friday night and they were thrilled with the photos, and at the risk of getting big headed the words “I’m so glad we chose you and not the other photographer we were looking at” did come out of the groom’s mouth, although perhaps that was the rum they procured on their Cuban honeymoon talking (which was muchos tasty gracias). Until next time…

The Greatest Of All Time

First up apologies for not updating this thing for a month, I had the folks over for a week and didn't update it then, after that there was some other reason I didn't do it, next thing I knew a full month had passed. It's it's not through lack of photos either, I've been pretty busy snapping away this last month.

I decided some shots I took this time last week were probably an excellent place to start. I managed to procure myself a ticket to the men's final at Wimbledon, which turned out to be in the 2nd row and close enough that both players could hear me shouting "COME ON ROG". To say it was a good day is perhaps the understatement of the year, from start to finish - including breaks - it went for about 7 hours, and I wasn't getting sick of it at all. If it wasn't almost pitch black at the end I could happily have sat through several more hours. The quality of the tennis was absolutely breathtaking, at least once every game through all five sets I made a comment along the lines of "What? That's not possible" after one of the warriors blasted an impossible winner off a shot that would have been a winner against anyone else on tour. 5 hours of play hadn't desensitised me at all to this genius, I've seen a fair bit of top level tennis in my time and these guys were so far ahead of anything I'd seen it was ridiculous.

So, on to the photography. I managed to get my 40D and 70-200L f/2.8 into the ground which was pleasing, the conditions on the ticket say photography is allowed but you can't use the images for commercial gain but you never know the reaction of an overzealous security guard when you try and bring in a huge white lens. Fortunately they were more concerned about the 4 x 250ml cans of Pimms I attempted to bring in, you were only allowed 2 cans and my argument that these cans are half the size of regular cans fell on deaf ears. Rules is rules. If you want to know where I was sitting it was the corner that Nadal ran to after the match to get into his coaches box, I could have patted him on the shoulder but I was too busy trying to take his photo, you know you're close to the action when the athlete is too close for the camera to focus on. These shots give you an idea of our position (I went with my flatmate Dave who wore a bright pink shirt which was a master stoke of being identified on tv), and how close we were to the pro photographers (well, one group of them anyway).







(just as a side note that guy on the far left looking at me taking his photo is the chief sports photographer for the times and wrote this article about the final)

So, now you're sufficiently jealous of my positioning it's time to hit you with some action shots. I took over 1100 photos on the day, which is a lot, but sports photography is a game of hit and miss to an extent, the more you take the more chance you have of getting that killer shot with the ball right on the strings, or that split second facial expression, a prime example of one of these shots is this one. It was a combination of new balls, back lighting on the fluff and a bit luck, but they all come together for a cool shot.



Of the 1100 photos I'd say close to 70% were of Nadal. There are several reasons for this.
a) He's more photogenic, ie better facial expressions when he hits the ball, ridiculous arms that translate well to photos, etc
b) At my end I could only get shots of Feds face when he hit forehands, and Rafa was really pumping it to Feds backhand so I didn't bother taking too many photos of his back
c) When Rafa hit his backhands he was facing me, and a backhand is a more photogenic shot than a forehand which often tend to look a bit awkward when frozen in time
d) Rafa won and I reeled off close to 300 after the match of his celebrations, crowd invasions, trophy acceptance and what not.

Here are some of my favourite action shots from the day.








I was looking in the paper and internet before the final this year and realised that most shots that got published were not action shots but shots of players fist pumping or somehow showing emotion. It's so tempting to put the camera down once the point is finished but the trick to capturing great shots is the know the feel of the game, understand the massive points and the likely reactions of the players and make sure your lens is pointed in their direction if they win those massive points. For this reason I pretty much missed the epic 4th set tie break as I was glued to Nadal to get his reaction when he won (which everyone thought he'd do when he was up 5-2). Still though, small price to pay as I managed to watch LOADS of tennis with the camera safely stowed in my backpack.















So there you have it, memories and photos that will last a lifetime.

Oh, other exciting news, I photographed my first wedding last weekend as well, it went really well and I'll put some shots up here in my next posting. Take it easy.

Photoshopping

The devil makes work for idle hands. At least he did last Friday night when I was home alone with a camera and a tripod. Yes, it was time for Simon to do some experimenting. With Photoshop.

Now, I'm not much of a Photoshopper, I use Lightroom for my image editing which basically consists of some levels adjustments, perhaps some dust removal and occasionally some cropping (although I like to get it right in camera where possible). After returning from Italy I had a couple of photos that were really nice, but had an unsightly pole or something ruining an otherwise great image so I decided to have a go at cloning some of these distractions out.

Original


Edit


But this wasn't how I spent my Firday night. Oh no. All this did was whet my appetite for the power at my fingertips with this revolutionary bit of software (I briefly considered selling my camera and going pro as a Photoshop artiste but decided I was getting a bit carried away, despite my absolutely excellent cloning work). So, Friday. I decided to experiment with layers, which I've never done before, so I came up with an idea that involved taking several photos and cutting and pasting them together to make a new creation. By this stage my flatmate Dave had returned home so I summoned him to the hallway and took a few head shots, then got him to do the same for me, I then got him to make the peace sign with his hand and took a few shots of that. All the shots were taken with a hand-held external flashgun to provide a bit of side light. From here I went to work, this is the result.



Now, after completing my creation I unleashed it to the world on Facebook, but to my horror the following comments were flung in my direction:

- It's a bit creepy
- Vanessa agrees it's creepy
- Dude, that is seriously weird. You should use your Photoshop skills for good instead of evil.
- Dave, do you feel violated

It was clear I had to make another creation. And to be fair, I did think it was a bit gay once I'd finished it but I was so pleased with my layering skills I was temporarily blinded to this fact. Another thing I wasn't really happy with on mark 1 was the inconsistent light between the heads (mine is darker) and the lacklustre background. Here's what I came up with next.



I was much more pleased with this effort. I used the sky from a cactus shot in Cinque Terra as the background and made the heads smaller and less like they were about to make out. I think you'll all agree this new one is far less creepy. So, there you have it, this is what happens when no one invites me out for a drink on a Friday night, I get weird and nerd-like. Be it on your head if I descend any further into the pits of computer nerd hell.