He's NOT the messiah, he's...

Or: "47 seconds with Michael Palin"


So much for weekly updates... Oh well.

Got talked into doing an extra day a couple of weeks ago, as it seems we ran out of freelancers on a Sunday (I should correct this to "ran out of freelancers who could do the job"!) when the new season of paper-sponsored youth football league kicked off.

What it did mean is that I had the rare privilege of being tasked to get a pic of TV presenter, actor and ex-Python Michael Palin. There was a weekend of local history, heritage and art presentations going on on Sheppey, called "Promenade". I'd spent Saturday at some of these, and on Sunday Michael Palin was to give a talk at Sheppey Little Theatre about the countries and, especially, buildings that had caught his eye on his world-wide travels. I should point out that Michael's son Will lives in Sheerness, so he had obviously been charmed on his visits by some of the architecture that still exists around the town.

As you would expect, he was very in demand by fans and the local journalists after his talk, but he had agreed to do a joint interview with the two papers and the local radio station and me and colleague Rob Canis, working for the "rival" paper, hoped we'd be allowed a window to get a picture. It was supposed to happen, but reporters sometimes think our job is just "point and click"...

Fellow photographer Rob Canis, early on in the

pre-production set-up we both did as Michael Palin 

talked to the reporters. I prefer the theatre without 

the striplights switched on, but that's the joys of D3

usage... Smile, Rob!

More after the break...

The search for (soft) proof...

As I've mentioned previously here, I shoot JPEG for work (mostly) but occasionally switch to raw for tricky conditions and almost always for sport. My personal work, such as it is, is also shot in raw.

Cricket, in overcast conditions (it's England...!). Nikon D3, 300mm f2.8 plus TC20E3 converter (= 600mm), 

1/1000sec @ f8, ISO 1800. This is the raw file, cropped to use and sharpened, but otherwise as rendered by

Aperture with no further processing. It looks "flat" here and when seen larger in Aperture, looks very 'flat". 

How you could leave this unadjusted, as some say they do with raws, is a puzzle. I wasn't putting in enough

contrast previously, but even then I knew this would have needed more...

For all the advantages of shooting in raw the biggest single disadvantage is that, if it allows you to process your own images, then obviously EVERY IMAGE YOU SHOOT NEEDS TO BE PROCESSED. There's no JPEG engine doing it for you, which means that decision have to be made on white balance, contrast, saturation, highlights and shadows etc etc etc.  Now, Adobe's ACR, Apple Aperture, Capture One and all sorts of other raw processors come with a set of default raw conversion settings, but what I've found is that these are really only a starting point. I certainly don't understand how anyone can say "they only check for dust spots and that's it for raws", since none of the raw converters really, really, make your files look like what was in front of the camera without you, the shooter, making some further decisions.

Indeed, although JPEGs are much-maligned by some, most decent modern DSLRs make a very good job indeed of rendering what the sensor saw as a useful JPEG - provided considerable care is taken at the shooting stage to get exposure and white balance correct. Most DSLRs also now let you change contrast, hue, saturation, sharpening and other settings for rendering JPEGs.

But there are still advantages to shooting raw, so it's worth knuckling down and learning what needs to be done.

More after the break...

Spitfire blue

A quickie post - again!

I was down at Whitstable yesterday, visiting my parents for  a very pleasant Sunday lunch, and the afternoon ritual of a walk with Small Dog around Long Rock, the shingle bank and open ground at Swalecliffe.

It was Whitstable Regatta weekend last weekend, and there's often a visit from aircraft which entertain the crowds on Tankerton slopes, looping and rolling out over the sea with fewer restrictions as to what they can do, especially height-wise. I picked up my gear as, although we we not going up to Tankerton, we might see something worth a picture from Swalecliffe.

As we left for the walk, a Spitfire arrived and displayed and I thought that was that, I'd missed it. However, as we were walking around Long Rock, both my dad and I realised we could hear a big aero-engine running, and I spotted a small but distinctive speck which looked like another Spitfire, orbiting overhead.

I grabbed out the works D7000, adding my TC20E3 and 70-200 f2.8, which gives an angle of view like a 600mm. It's best to try to keep some "spin" in the propellor blades, so I set 1/250 sec, VR on, +0.7 of a stop and fingers crossed. We still weren't sure if he was going to actually display, but he orbited back over land and we saw and heard him begin a shallow diving turn from the east.

And he went pretty much right overhead, which gave me the best picture - and certainly the closest - of the 10 minutes display.  I shot about 160 frames, and there's an awful lot that are lost because of trying to handhold an effective 600mm at 1/250th, even with VR, and there's a few dodgy framing, focus and exposure ones. But I've got five that I'm happy with, including one where I can read the registration, which allowed me to ID the 'plane and pilot for posterity.

But the best one was still from the sequence where he went right overhead to start his display...

Peter Teichman takes his Supermarine Spitfire PRXI, PL965, overhead to begin his display at Whitstable Regatta,
on Sunday 14th August 2011. This aircraft, a photo-reconnaissance version of the Spitfire, was built in 1944 and
is currently flown by Teichman from the former Battle of Britain RAF airfield at North Weald, Essex.
The image is uncropped: Nikon D7000, 70-200 f2.8 + TC20E3, 1/250th @ f11,
giving the angle of view of a 600mm.

I've deliberately left this uncropped, so you can see just how close I could get - there are two closer images; but in one the hint of blue sky has gone (damn!) and the other there's enough motion blur from dodgy panning that I haven't selected them as "top" versions. If I was to crop it I'd take a little from the left and bottom sides.

Hoowwzzaaat!!!

A quickie post, again. I'll try harder to put something up every week. Honest!

If you miss the "moment" in sport - and it's easy to do that even for the best photographer - it's always worth looking out for the reactions to that moment. You might be unsighted by another player, or spectators down at local level (!!). You might have had too much glass on when the goal comes in from nowhere, the car spins and crashes in front of you, or as here for cricket, where I was actually shooting the bowler on his run up, with 600mm of lens on.

I half-saw the 'keeper dive with my left eye, but actually heard the ball whack into his glove and was just able to reframe on him as the nearest fielder reached him to grab the ball in celebration...

Mark Tucker joyfully grabs for the ball that Minster 'keeper
Jordan Weller has just plucked from the air for a catch, in
their game against Sidcup on Saturday 23rd July.

How is he??? Out!

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...

The smell of Castrol R...

Another quickie post, with a couple of pictures from my first photographic specialisation, motorsport.

I let it go for a few years, when I went pro full-time, but have been getting back into it again over the last couple of years (a back story I won't go into). Here's a nice image from last week at the Brands Hatch Formula 3 and GT meeting...

Caterham Superlight R300 championship race on Sunday 19th July. The cars are leaving the Indy circuit
behind as they race onto the GP circuit, and No32, Paul Wilson, fended off his rivals to win.
Nikon D3, 300mm f2.8 + 1.4x converter, 1/800th @ f8, ISO 250, - 0.3 compensation. Trick here is to keep
enough spin in treaded tyres and a little motion blur in the background , yet keep a high enough shutter speed
that fast racing cars stay sharp when they pass through the plane of focus; even here with the excellent D3 AF
doing follow-focus right up until the shutter opens

The "tilt' is applied after the event in Aperture, because I forgot to get one here in-camera (doh!). I think I could get some better angles in the pic if I'd done it then - told you I was still trying to get back into this! Having said that, I do like the original and so it's up on the study wall as an inkjet print at the moment.

More after the break...

Help, I think I may...

...have a bit of a problem brewing!

I became interested in photography early enough that black and white was still “the done thing” though, like many people, found the lack of any darkroom was a big problem. Colour Neg had begun to take over by the time I had professional aspirations, and I learned to shoot colour transparency in any event, as it was the best medium for the market where I made my first sales.

The arrival of digital technology changed everybody’s outlook on processing their pictures. With easy access to even the most humble personal computer, people who would never have considered getting their hands wet in dev and fix were able and willing to work in the new Light Room. For enthusiasts who previously had no darkrooms, processing and creating was now just a matter of kicking their kids off the PC of an evening :)

More after the break.