Another Glorious Victory

What's this, a Blog update on a Saturday? Yeah, that's right, just another example of my unconventional approach to photography and my total disregard for society's conventions.

I write this 7 days after another fantastic photographic treasure hunt, this time round it was Shoot Portobello. This is the third such event that my cohorts and I have been involved with and somehow we've managed to come away with 3 winners badges. To put this in perspective there are actually 14 of this badges per event and roughly 60 teams competing for them. I was also linked to the overall prize as a group of friends who called their team "Better Than Simon's Team" managed to win it all after Shane jumped into the canal in the name of art. Kudos.

I'll start with our winning photo. This wasn't our most aesthetically pleasing photo but I think it got the nod for being a bit clever. The event was scheduled on the same day as the famous Oxford Cambridge boat race which I otherwise would have gone to, so this was our take on that. Dave came up with the idea of doing a drinking competition style boat race and went the extra mile to pour beer over his head for the first shot of the day. It's the little touches that bring the jewelery. Clue: You can al(l) get nautical along this nearby waterway.



We were struggling to come up with something creative for this next shot. The clue was "Knotting Hill" so it was very open to interpretation. We left this clue to last and by this stage we thought we'd already taken some good shots and motivation was low. I spotted a shop selling Notting Hill bags for just £3 so I thought it might make a good shot to attach the 10-20 lens and get down low to shoot someone holding the bag while shopping. We bought a leak to have sticking out of the bag and bulked the bag up with some police hats we'd purchased as props for another clue. The light was very flat so I decided to shoot in black and white. In the end I was really pleased how the shot turned out, we sort of ignored the "k" at the start of the "knotting" in the clue but we decided to leave it as a nice artistic photo rather than add the K with a marker and cheapen the shot.



Last but not least we have my favorite shot of the day. There are strict rules in the comp about digital manipulation of photos, so I came up with an idea before the comp whereby we take a few shots related to a clue, take them to snappy snaps (locations had been researched before the day) to get them printed, then include them in the final shot. The clue was: "Waterford crystals? Napoleon's pistols? You'll find what you want in the......('Beautiful Port')....road." so that seemed perfect. Here's what we came up with.



So, as I said at the top, 3 on the trot...