The Right Place at the Right Time

Yes that really is me photographing the FMX rider whilst he jumps over me some 80 feet in the air and travelling at 60mph!!
Working as a professional photographer its sometimes quite easy to be in the right place at the right time but even on this job I still got to know the guys who were jumping and spent several hours watching them practice before the competition started. Vital if you need to know what it is they are actually going to do. I guess its a bit like wildlife photography you have to know your subject to capture the right images. I think this is true for every type of photography, I also attend weddings and always make sure that I'm in on the rehearsal just in case they have planned something unexpected. One wedding even saw a look a like Elvis walk a bride up the isle of a catholic church singing "the wonder of you". Always expect the unexpected!
The images above were taken by my partner at NASSFEST last year as she couldn't believe exactly where I had positioned myself for the competition. You can see the photos I took at http://www.nassfest.com/ in the photo section of the website as they are being used to promote this years event which I will again be attending. You will notice that the final images barring one were taken from a better vantage point but it was still fun to have those guys flying over my head during the practice runs. You will also find many other images in the photo section from around the event. If you like photographing extreme sports there is no better summer festival to catch all the worlds best riders and jumpers as well as some very cool music to while away the evenings.

Photoshop Glamour

As a wedding photographer I have been asked to do many strange things from add people to the photographs who were not there to on one occasion talk to the groom to coax him out because he had cold feet. Needless to say on that occasion I simply reminded the person asking me that I was a photographer not a councillor. The most common request I get though is to "photoshop" the brides complexion or some other guests complexion, by this they mean can I add that magazine glamour look minus all the wrinkles and blemishes and in some cases make them look younger than they really are. Whilst I have no objection to doing this I do think you can go completely over the top using this technique and make a 40 something woman look closer to 20 which I think can be very unflattering. There are many programs on the market that will do this job for you in no time with a few clicks but they are global effects and again I personally don't like them.
This image above is of my partner who kindly posed for me to allow me to enhance her natural beauty with a few simple techniques in CS3. All I have really done is remove some of the blemishes on her skin as most professional cameras are such high quality that they show up every pore. I then saturated her lips slightly and brightened her eyes. Finally I thickened and darkened her hair slightly. To pull her out of the background you will also notice that I darkened the door and in so doing I created a halo effect around her hair.

mental health

This is an image I was asked to exhibit at last years Brighton arts festival. I was approached by a mental health charity called Impact Workability and asked if I could come up with an image that conveyed the way mental health sufferers feel when they try to get back into the work place. Many sufferers have a vast wealth of talent and skills to be able to satisfy employers needs but because of there illness they are often overlooked. Sufferers themselves report that they feel isolated and forgotten and that they need those around them to be a little bit more understanding of their needs. One in three people in the UK at some point in their lives will suffer a mental health issue and it is a very traumatic experience.
having spent sometime with Impact Workability I was more than glad to see what I could produce to highlight their cause. This image shows a faceless person reaching out for both help and understanding. I deliberately chose the striped jumper as it breaks a number of so called rules on photography and what makes a good image. I wanted to show that there was a person in the background and that they wont just fade away and be forgotten.
I'm pleased to say the charity were delighted with the piece and it took centre stage of their photographic exhibition at the festival in 2007 and was one of the proudest moments of my life to be able to contribute to such a worthy cause.
There is no real technical data with this shot other than to say it was shot using natural light on my driveway when I was brainstorming with my partner. She is also the model and quite often helps me out when I'm in need of a bod to photograph for a project.

Textures

I am becoming more and more aware of textures and borders as a means to convey a mood or an atmosphere in my photographs. As someone who is not a great exponent of photoshop I tend to need all the help I can get to achieve this. As well as learning techniques from the Internet and from a number of books I have bought on the subject I also use programs such as OnOne and Alien Skin to make the job that much easier for me. Its true these programs are expensive and if you apply yourself diligently then all the effects these programs create can be created by simply using photoshop. I also make a point now of photographing textures and storing them for use later.
My picture of the lone gondolier was kind of reminiscent of my time in Venice from previous years. Although I was there with others I felt very alone almost as though I was seeing the place simply for myself and unable to share it with others. I wanted to create a photograph that looked old with all the colour drained from it, kind of a snapshot in time as though found by accident many many years later. he is not in fact a tourist gondolier but simply a man going about his daily business. Of course this being Venice he has to go via the canals. I thought a normal black and white tone just didn't do the shot justice to decided to tone it with a kind of sepia tone but I brightened it up somewhat. The border was created using OnOne borders and is an acid border. I then added some scratches over the surface of the image to create this aged look.

Vert Ramp

In 2007 I was asked by sports vision to be part of the team that covered "Ripcurl Boardmasters" event in Newquay in Cornwall. I guess the only reason I was asked to cover the event was because a considerable number of my shots from NASS had been published and it was the same PR company who were running this event. Proof if ever there was that attending the much smaller festivals can lead onto bigger and better things. The surfing at the event was world class and it was one of the few occasions that I got to actually enjoy the spectacle as well as photograph it. I spent most of my days at the event stood on the rocks armed with my camera fitted with a 400mm lens with a 2x converter added to it as well. Along with the surfing there was also a large prize fund for the Vans Vert Ramp so it attracted some of the worlds best vert riders. This shot was taken on one of the practice sessions with me stood on top of the vert ramp on a ledge no wider than 3 foot armed with my camera and a 20-40mm lens and my flash which was connected to my camera with a flash chord so that I could use the flash off camera. For this shot I was kneeling down and had been watching the way the skateboarders set themselves on the opposite bank to see where they would pop up in front of me. Some would say that this was a lucky shot and indeed there was no way I could predict the boarder having his tongue hanging out at just the right time but I like to think that because of my observations and where I had set myself I had to some extent predicted the shot. The exposure is 1000th sec at F16 with an ISO of 800 the reason for the high ISO is because I wanted to get the opposite side of the ramp in focus because I had hoped to sell some of my shots to the sponsors so I needed to make sure their logos were pin sharp. As it was I didn't manage to sell this particular shot to the sponsors because of the "blind" logo on the skateboarders board but did manage to sell another shot taken from the base of the ramp. I like this shot though because the boarder seems to be weightless in the air.