It's (County) Show time!

Baaaahhhh!!!

I spent two days up on Detling Hill this weekend covering the Kent County Show. It's a chance for people to be reminded about most things agricultural, and to meet some of the Kent services, businesses and charities.  And of course, there's plenty of retail opportunities.

In times past, this was a well-staffed and reported gig by newspapers. Not any more. In these lean times it seems that the coverage of everything, even the county's biggest show, is scaled back, to the point where you wonder what will happen next year and just what editorial policy is?

However, here's a brief look at two days up on the hill...

Early starts - both Friday and Saturday at before 7.00am, to get in and parked, then set up in the press room in the middle of the showground. Thank Heavens for bacon rolls....

More after the break...


There's only a vague brief nowadays, with just a suggestion of likely numbers of images to be used (I made it 55'ish) the following Friday. I decided that I'd need to file double that, just for choice. I was also expecting to see reporters asking me for their specific requests. Hmmm.

Whinge Alert! Let's just say I barely saw a reporter on both days, and only had a handful of texts/e-mails asking for specific images. Nothing like being given some guidance... In the end I just set out to shoot what I could given the number of images required, and just hoped that I got what was needed.

Saturday's weather forecast was looking grim, so I also decided I needed to break the back of the job on Friday, which was a good plan in the end.

There's a lot of walking at events like this, so I did without the camera rucksack and took the new company D7000, one of my D3s, and 16-35, 24-120 and 70-200, with a flash and my 2 X converter. The extra lens and converter went into waist pouches on a belt, flash on the D7000 as the "wide" camera (yes, odd decision to use full-frame as long camera, cropped as wide, but I prefer the D3 for long action work...).

And start walking... I'd sort of set up a rough itinerary from the timetable, and then set off. There's almost too much going on, as usual, and I have to say I found it hard to be too creative, given the numbers of pics and my paranoia about not getting them! However, the weather was decent, I walked around getting images of the competitions, Young Farmers from the schools, odd things that did catch my eye, and events going on in the display arenas.  Incidentally, one of the biggest moans the photographers have at Detling is there is never a clean background to be had, so you just have to do the best you can.

I nipped back to the press room every couple of hours or so, loading the cards into Aperture on the laptop. This is the first time I'd decided to use Aperture exclusively, because I knew that images for different papers would have to be titled slightly differently, so I set up one County Show "Project" and then set up "Albums" within that for the 2/3 papers that I knew would be interested. The advantage here is that the overall project still lets you see every image, but the albums only show whats dragged to them - which would make captioning simpler than trying to pick them out of the whole.  That was the theory, and I'm pleasantly surprised that it worked. Even better, you simply click "Duplicate project structure" to set up the same again the following day.  By the afternoon I was spending some time actually selecting the images I wanted to file, though captioning would take well into the evening after I got home.

Friday is always a long day. I left for the car at 6.20pm, and noted the queue simply to get back to the main road. Out came the map, and I followed the back lanes instead - some very narrow - which got me home at 7.00. After another couple of hours selecting, editing and captioning, I have 95 images to send. Allowing for variations of the same image - uprights of views etc etc - I guesstimate that I filed about 75 unique images. That was according to plan, which allowed for Saturday's weather.

And Saturday was NOT good! I arrived at 7.00 again, to a light drizzle, which got slowly worse as the wind picked up until, at about 10.30, the rain proper arrived and didn't let up until gone 3.30...

Sadly, I've taken to calling the D7000 the "toy camera". Don't get me wrong - it produces nice images, but it isn't one I enjoy using, mostly because it cannot be set up to work as I've had my company D300 and my D3s set up for years.  It's just that simple things that I use a lot, like the "one-click" zoom function on the LCD monitor, are beyond the D7000. There's no reason why it should be - it's only a function of the camera firmware - but this way Nikon choose to differentiate it from the higher-end cameras, and I don't like it.

And it's also not as weather-sealed as a D300, let alone D3 so I spared it and risked both my D3 bodies, on the basis that they were built for this!

This gave me a true "wide" body, though keeping rain off wideangles is a constant battle. And Blood Hound drool, come to think of it... I've also acquired a very fetching waterproof poncho, which lets me hook the cameras over my shoulders, then do up the sides with poppers. This was a bit of a faff, but it did mean that it kept the worst of the weather off unless I actually had the camera out getting pictures.  I'll spare you the sight of that, though!

And so we walk again. It was obvious there were less people, and eventually everybody was getting very bedraggled, so I got some images of people enduring the conditions. I dodged in and out of the press room again, but because it was so miserable did more selecting and captioning during the day. I also had left some of the "indoor" stuff to do today, so that was picked up as best I could. Being a slower day, I was also able to meet up with some friends for a few minutes - a swift Sheps shandy, with thanks to Mrs Palmer!

Not such a long day on Saturday - left the press room at 4.20, back to the car and no queue to the main road (no surprise) and back home at 4.45. I'd kept on top of today's editing, so I had got another 45 images ready for sending by 6.00'ish. Again, allowing for variations of the same image, I think I hit the "110 individual images" target I set myself...

"Snail Lady" Helen Howard, with her edible snails.

The Coakham Blood Hounds - how to get covered in slobber...

The Bolddog Lings motorcycle display - had to wait for
their finale, but it was worth it...

I have no idea - I just take the pictures and the names...!

Some local winners in the Herefords competition, from K and S farms.

Coloured glass ornaments in Hadlow College's show garden.

A pupil from The Westlands School, Sittingbourne, with one of the
cows from the school's popular farm unit.

Stiff upper lip. Soaking wet jeans.

The Devils Horsemen Cossack Trick Riding display.
This is Roman Riding, on two horses. The group also provides
stunt riders and horses for the movies.

Captain Jack Sparrow - a really great look-alike, who could mimic the
mannerisms of Johnny Depp's character well.

I wasn't really looking forward to the show - it's a slog, there's precious little brief (in the sense that I fear I'll be fielding calls all week asking "Did you not get so-and-so?" - Paranoid?) and the weather was not good. But in the end I almost "cough, choke" enjoyed it... However, at the moment, I have to say I feel that for all the legwork and time involved in getting them, these images are adequate, no more. Whether I'll appreciate them more from a little distance; Hmmm, we'll see!!!