White Easter

White Christmas? Check - Fernie 2003, La Plagne 2006
White Easter? Check - Lakes District 2008

Before heading up to Lakes District over Easter I'd heard there was talk of snow. I thought to myself it would be nice if we had a massive dump of snow one night and by the next day the clouds had cleared and we had lovely blue skies - I think I'd be able to take some nice shots of that. As luck would have it this was precisely what occurred.

Over the first few days we experienced ridiculous continuous 20 minute cycles where it went from blue skies to gray to sleet to hail to snow to blue skies, but none of the snow was settling on the ground and the mixed weather wasn't producing great light for award winning photographs, water drops on the lenses weren't helping things much either. But after hitting the sack Saturday night and trying in vain to get a good sleep on my super tiny caravan single bed (I was tossing and turning like a rotisserie chicken on slow spin all night) I awoke to clear the bladder some time around 7. As I was about to head back to my "bed" I looked through the frosted glass window that was our door and thought things looked particularly white. As any good detective would have done I opened the door to investigate and was gob smacked to see 15cm of fresh whiteness blanketing the entire region. Like an excited child on Christmas morning I woke up the entire cabin and insisted we go and play. And by play I mean take photos.

This first photo was taken on our first day. Like typical boys we didn't have any sort of plan, we just drove for a little bit, saw some cars parked, decided that was as a good as anywhere to park the car and go for a stroll, then we were off. We had no map, no water, no food, no nothing, apart from a couple of super heavy digi SLRs and a backpack overflowing with even heavier lenses and flashguns. So, off we went, walking, shooting, walking shooting. After a pretty long time we realised we appeared to be going in some sort of loop, and figured we were heading back to the car, problem was we didn't take note of the town name where the car was parked and neither of us were entirely convinced we had our bearings sorted. Long story short we decided to head back from whence we came and when we returned the car (via the pub was some Guinness based rehydration) we drove along the road and discovered we were about 400m from the car when we decided to turn back. Checked the guide book and they reported the loop as a 6 mile walk - and we virtually did it twice! Anyway, to the photo, we walked past an old shed type building, this pot was under the drain to catch any draining water, it was obvious a narrow depth of field and a fast shutter speed were required, and fortunately these are complimentary settings, the light was low so I cranked the ISO up to 1600 and proceeded to take 38 shots. This one (number 23) was the pick of the bunch. I've applied the "Aged Photo" action in Lightroom to give it that ye olde feel.



This next shot was taken on the Sunday morning. Josh and I had been out for about 45 mins taking shots when we decided to head back and grab some breaky in the cabin. As we returned to the caravan park we thought we'd just go for a quick walk in the opposite direction before heading back. Turned out to be a great move. Photographic opportunities were far better in the this direction (sheep, cool trees, great old building, guys in 4 wheel motorbikes with bails of hay). When I took the photo below I'd spotted the scene and thought the road really led the eye through teh shot nicely, there were some interesting trees, a cool building roughly on the rule of thirds, some blue sky and some excellent snow. Then I head a buzzing from over the horizon, right as I'm about to take the shot the local farmer comes over the hill on his little 4 wheel bike to really make the shot. Wasn't sure whether to go with B & W or colour, in the end I decided colour was the way forward, what do you think?



Soon after the above photo was taken I took this next one. The sheep was at the fence but for some reason it ran away when we got near, I thought the path it chose to take was interesting, winding all over the paddock, I used my 10-20 Sigma (very nice lens BTW) to really highlight the distance the sheep had traveled then snapped away.



Last but not least (well, maybe it is least, if this one's not least then it has to be one of the other 3, and let's face it, it's not going to be that pan shot at the top now is it?) we have this one. It's basically just a bit of experimentation with rear curtain flash. Josh and I had trekked for 20 minutes to this spot by a lake (a spot we scouted on out 12 miles hike on day one) as the sun was going down with a view to nailing some first class twilight photos. Unfortunately the clouds weren't helping us and the sky wasn't the deep blue we were hoping for. As we were waiting for it to get dark Josh decided to keep warm by doing some jumps of a rock and genuinely being active, I thought it would look cool to get a shot of him mid flight with the eerie night light as the backdrop. In virtual darkness I was able to locate my flashgun from my bag and attach it to the camera, I set it to rear curtain, put the camera on the tripod, attached the cable release and set the camera shutter speed to bulb. I'd determined that a 4 second exposure was about right to get enough light in so I pressed my cable release and counted to 4, once the time was up I gave the word and Josh ran in and went all Jacki Chan off the rock. When he was at his peak I took my finger off the shutter, the flash fired and the result you can see below. Had I been better prepared I would have sorted out a helmet torch for Josh to wear as this would have resulted in a stream of light flying in off the side of the frame and the photo would tell more of a story, but for my first crack at this technique I was pretty pleased with the result.



So, there you have it, a long one but at least I have some recent photos! This weekend I'm going to this , not sure if it's too late to get tickets for this or not but for you Londoners that read this (Chris, I'm talking to you!) you should get yourself along to these events in the future, they're loads of fun. I'll put up a couple of our best shots from this event next week.

Exciting Times

On the weekend I decided to brave the crowds and head to the TNT Travel Show. My official reason for going was to hear a talk from some punter on Travel Photography (does that need capitalisation? It felt like it did for some reason, if only I had Fowler's Guide to Modern English Usage handy - or a direct line to Mr Callaghan). The show was free and you could tell, every antipodean and his sheep was there trying to get inspiration for their next adventure, and to gain the valuable discounts on offer if we booked then and there. I'm still furious at myself for not taking advantage of the £3 discount offered for a day trip by one particularly generous travel company. For what it's worth the talk was nothing special and at the risk of sounding like a dick I pretty much already knew everything he had to say, but what's that they say about gift horses and mouths?

The day was not a complete write off however as I had a clandestine motive for attendance. Most of you probably know (who actually even reads this blog anyway?) that last year I did some pseudo pro work, instead of being paid in pounds I was paid in holidays and flights, but as it was the first chance I'd had at doing something like this I wasn't really in a position to make demands. I went on an 8 day trip around Ireland with Shamrocker, a backpakers travel mob, and since the entended photoshoot they've gone on the use about 16 of my photos in brochures (which you can pick up at your local Australian travel agent no less), their website and magazine ads. I had a suspicion that they may have converted one of my shots into a big poster which would be in display at the travel show, and I wasn't disappointed!

I'd never seen one of my shots blown up so big before, the resolution looked good even though the camera was *only* 8mp and the shot was taken with an 18-200 lens which isn't the sharpest lens in the kitbag, the fact they'd cropped the shot quite heavily made it all the more miaculous. I'm sure if I got close enough there would have been some quality issues, but who goes that close anyway? I struck up a conversation with the girl behind the counter, casually asked her what happens to the posters once the show is over, she said they re-use them at other events and asked me why I was asking. Thus came the highlight of my week.

"Well, I actually took that photo on the left so I thought it would look pretty good in my bedroom. And I think you'd look pretty good in my bedroom as well"

"Wow, so you were on Kevin's tour were you? I think it's about time I went on your tour..."

Okay, so each of those quotes had a true sentence and a fabricated sentence, but you get the idea.

Long story short I didn't get to take the poster with me but I did manage to get a shot of it. I actually much prefer the way they've cropped it, not sure why I didn't do it that way in the first place!

I'm doing a test, if you've read this post down to here can you do me a favour by leaving a comment saying you've read this post? Thanks muchly.

It started off so well

After starting off in a blaze of glory a few weeks ago my photo taking seems to have stalled somewhat and for a second embarrassing week I have nothing new to show you. I'm blaming it on the fact I've started work this week so have 35 hours less to get out there, and also the fact I've got some sort of bug at the moment that means I'm permanently light headed like I've had a couple of beers on an empty stomach - as far as sickness goes it's pretty darn good! (As a side story to support my "drunk" bug I sit next to a Chinese girl at work, this afternoon I asked her if she was singing any karaoke or eating any dim sum this weekend).

Anyway, back to the topic, it looks like I'll be making another trip to the stock collection for this week's installment. So, let's see, how about we make the theme Portraits this week, yes that'll do nicely.

This first shot is of my flatmate Dave, it's part of a series of shots taken to document the life of his beard in Beardvember (the month formerly known as November) last year. It was fun having a project, every week on a Monday night we'd get the camera out and come up with interesting ways of capturing its growth. This particular one was taken towards the end of the month, soon after I returned from NY with my big white lens so I was more than happy to put it through its paces. You can view the entire collection by clicking the first photo below

Gerhard's Beard - A Study

This next one was taken back home of my mate Cam and his bro Alistair who in recent years has come to resemble his sibling somewhat. I took it in my folk's front room with a skylight providing the lighting. I wanted to shoot it in profile as that's when they look most alike, the biggest problem was getting a shot when they weren't laughing as I needed their faces really close to get the shot I was after and looking at your brother from 5cm is enough to make any grown man release a nervous giggle. The background is a little distracting which is unfortunate, but if I ever learn to use photoshop properly I think it can be easily rectified.



This third shot was taken a few weeks ago when I went on a shoot with some houseguests. I've used this scene for a few other shots in the past, it's a wheelchair ramp make out of wood and painted a dark gray colour, I spotted it once walking home and thought it would look cool with a head or 2 popping out of the darkness, ideally with heads at different levels on the ramp. Because most of the shot is a dark colour it tricks the metering on the camera which causes it to overexpose the faces in the image, I overcame this by setting the camera to manual and metering off the model's faces. This is my favourite shot so far at the ramp.



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