Wide angle for people

This is a very different style of photograph to the one in the previous post. It was taken just a few moments after the first in a busy camel market in Cairo.

This time, though, a wide angle 24mm lens has been used. The action is far more static. It is a reflective moment while the group of camel traders sit together on the ground smoking and talking. This time I wanted to emphasise the arrangement of the four people in the group while retaining lots of information in the background. This background information tells the story of who they are and what their work is.

So I have moved right in and filled my foreground with the wide angle. This has slightly exaggerate the perspective and placed more emphasis on the men themselves.

Of course the men knew I was there and that I was taking photographs. But I had been in the market most of the morning and had build something of a rapport with these people. In the end they were quite happy to let me get on with what I was doing while they carried on working.

My normal way of working is with two camera bodies – one fitted with a wide angle lens and one with a longer lens. This completely cuts out the need to keep changing lenses. It is just a method I have got used to over many years working as a travel photographer with The Sunday Times and for other magazines. There are many conditions in which you simple would not want to change lenses especially these days with the problems of getting dirt on the sensor. The dusty conditions of this market would have played havoc with the sensor of a digital camera.

Photographing still life - part 2

If you really want to progress with you still life photography, set yourself tasks and projects – start off simply with one object and a plain background and work up from there. Try adding more objects and think carefully about the positioning of each, but remember that simple compositions are usually most effective. Photographing a vase of flowers or bowl of fruit presents lots of interesting challenges in light and composition… artists have been painting these things for centuries.

Vary the lighting, bearing in mind the different attributes of each object you are photographing – its texture, colour or shape. Move on to more challenging subjects – try photographing a glass decanter or wine glass; you might try doing this without any glaring reflections – you could fill the glass with a rich red Rioja to add colour - and then celebrate a successful image by drinking the prop. Cheers!

It is always best to start the composition very simply and add one thing at a time until you are happy with the result. For the top pictures, I just leaned a plank of old wood at the back of the bench placed the horse on the bench in front of it. I liked the combinations of subtle blue colours. Following the blue colour theme I then hung a coil of blue rope on the background to add another shape and colour – see lower picture. I prefer the simplicity of the first shot.

It’s a really useful idea to gather together a collection of still life props. Almost anything that attracts your eye might come in useful – a small piece of driftwood, a colourful pebble or two, dried flowers, a few different fabrics for background and foregrounds. Every one might be used at some time when you really get into still life photography.

Below is a photograph using one of the many props I have collected in my shed for still life photography. It is just a an old tea chest half-full of unglazed pot jugs. I have cut away two sides of the box to reveal the jugs inside and make it easier to

photograph them. The jugs can be arranged any way I prefer and all I have to do is turn the box around for the best light.

Travel photography rating method

I have been extremely fortunate to have spent a great deal of my working life gathering photographs in some of the most interesting places on earth. Not always beautiful, but nearly always interesting.

You will notice that I use the word ‘gathering’. That seems the most appropriate way to explain the way I work. I really do go out there to gather pictures that capture something of the essence of a place. When I leave my hotel room and walk into the street I am in ‘gathering’ mode.

Quite apart from the fact that I have only ever been able to throw 100% effort into the things I undertake, there is another very good reason for this approach to photography. Getting to, and staying in, a place (travelling) is almost always the most expensive aspect of any photographic assignment. So my attitude is very simple: once I am on location, I work flat out to gather as many sellable pictures as possible. That doesn’t mean that I don’t thoroughly enjoy what I do, but the job has to pay and I have a job to do.

I rarely, if ever, worked ‘on spec’. I was always commissioned by a newspaper of magazine to photograph a particular country or assignment. When I was working for The Sunday Times, for instance, this meant they paid all the travelling expenses. Great, but that put the responsibility squarely on my shoulders to provide them with what they were paying for; to give them what they wanted – and more.

Over the years I adopted a very simple ‘rating’ system in order to cut down time wasted on trying to capture pictures that were never going to ‘happen’.

When I see a subject that I think has good visual possibilities, I will, in the back of my mind, give it an instant time rating. I might, for instance rate a subject as just ‘two-minutes’ and will expend just two minutes exploring it and trying to realise its potential. If it fails to produce a worthwhile photograph that pleases me in that time, I simple drop it down a hole and move on. I’m afraid I apply the same rating system to some people too while I am working – time is just too valuable to waste. This may appear calculating and cold-blooded to photographers who take pictures purely for pleasure.

If I believe a subject has tremendous picture potential it will, of course, get a far higher time rating, and I will be prepared to wait many hours for that special shot. The picture of the gondolier above was a ‘three day’ rating. I saw the potential of the shot as soon as I saw this particular canal corner and the way the sidelight was striking the buildings facing me. But think of all the ingredients that were vital for the success of a picture:

I needed a gondola in the right place.
The gondolier had to be positioned precisely between those two window.
He had to be wearing the proper straw hat.
He had to be pushing the gondola along
There had to be the hint of a passenger in the boat
The lighting had to be coming down the alley from the left.

I went back each afternoon when the light was perfect and waited for about one hour. I photographed many gondolas passing down that canal, but only on the third day did a get exactly what I wanted and what I had envisaged on that first day.

Photographing in hard light - part 2

As promised yesterday, here’s the other – very different - photograph taken for The Sunday Times at Aberdaron in North Wales.

This time, rather than use a wide-angle lens and move in close, I have moved right back from the scene behind the village churchyard and looked at the beach through a small telephoto lens. I’m still shooting into that hard, contrasty light, but the effect is quite different.

The outlines of the gravestones are picked out by the backlight – remember, backlight exaggerates outline shape – while the curve of the beach stands out because of the glare of the sun on the breaking waves. This backlight has also isolated the silhouette of each of the small figures in the water and along the beach.

Slight under-exposure has given an almost ‘moonlight’ effect, but in fact the shot was taken around midday with the sun very high in the sky. This under-exposure and ‘night time’ effect can be even more noticeable when shooting into the light and using colour. It is most noticeable when shooting into the light over a bright, reflective surface – like the sea.

Photographing in hard light

Here's a photograph I took for The Sunday Times some while ago. They commissioned me to photograph a whole list of British seaside locations, and this was taken on the beach at Aberdaron in North Wales on a hot summer's day.

The light was very hard and contrasty - what I would normally consider to be poor quality light, especially when shooting in black and white - but as a professional photographer working to tight schedules, I simply had to make the most of what I was given.

I started to look for shapes and shadows, and noticed the shadow of this chap cast on the windbreak. His shape has been distorted due to the angle of the sun, and this has added a touch of whimsical humour to the situation.

It is always good practise to look for unusual angles and the way light and shadow falls on different objects.

Of course, with this shot in the bag, I photographed the man from the other side as well - with the light behind me. But this produced a very ordinary shot.

The other advantage in photographing a subject's shadow is that those of you who are a bit nervous about taking pictures of complete strangers can do so without drawing attention to yourselves. In fact you may not be noticed at all.

Tomorrow I'll show you another, very different type of photograph taken in this same location on the same day.

Travel photography

It is part and parcel of the travel photographer’s job to come up with different pictures of well known places. Of course he, or she, must photograph the obvious – it is a foolish photographer who is sent at considerable expense to the other side of the world to photograph the Taj Mahal and who comes back without the standard shot of the Taj looking along the row of fountains. It is very likely that you will be asked for these standard shots at some stage. But then you simply MUST look beyond the obvious. When I stood on the walls of the Taj I realised that just across the river was timeless India – people were still ploughing the fields using oxen – that’s where I wanted to be, over there looking back at the Taj.

The result of my trip across the river was a set of photographs that still sell many years later and the joy of meeting people who rarely came in contact with tourists – despite the fact they were just a few hundred yards away across the River Jumna. The picture was taken for The Sunday Times

Black and white photography

I’ll be showing you lots of black and white pictures in these short articles. Partly because b/w has always been a great passion of mine, and partly because I have a vast library of b/w images from my time in newspapers. Certainly, a lot of my work for The Sunday Times was in b/w, and it’s good to share them with you.

My love of b/w photography is not the reason for showing you this picture. It’s to drive home something I’ve banged on about a couple of times recently – good timing – and the importance of keeping that camera to your eye when the subject is in front of you. Sounds obvious? Well you’d be surprised how many photographers miss the best shot because they are either looking down to fiddle with the camera controls, or watching the subject while their camera hangs around their necks. Don’t so it!

Whe the action happens, the camera has to be ready.

Had I been doing anything but look through the viewfinder when that one swan stretched its long neck, I would have missed the picture. The action was just too quick to be caught in the time it would have taken to lift the camera to my eye.

The picture also demonstrates the potential of ‘breaking the pattern’ to create a focal point and add interest. I’ll tell you more about that soon.
These are the famous Berwick swans, and the picture was used half page in The Sunday Times. It was taken with a Nikon F3 with a 180mm Nikkor f2.8 lens - one of the finest lenses Nikon every made.