Weekly Roundup 26/09/09 – 02/10/09

Seems like ages ago now as I have been off for a week doing very little. This was a week filled with animals and rural charm, lots of quite light jobs with no real pressure. If only all weeks were like this.

26/09/09

Football first, and its Market Drayton Town v Gainsborough a game which Gainsborough (Yellow) dominated dispite a solid effort from Market Drayton. This was taken during the second half after a really dull first half where I shot very few frames.

29/09/09

These guys were spraying the lawn at Market Drayton cricket club as a freebee for the club, which of course makes it news! they were nice and co-operative and allowed me to move their vans and pretty much do whatever I liked.

It was lit with two lights. The first, lighting the guy infront was bounced off a gold reflector below him and to the left. The second threw a little light on the guy behind, this was just a bare head on the floor. To be honest I was looking for something a little more punchy, though I was pleased with the overall outcome.

30/09/09

This lady is starting a series of courses aimed at making felt from the fleece’s of her herd of Alpacas. I shot enough for a 7-8 piece spread here (what I was asked for) and was pleased with my results, although in the end the paper in their wisdom decided to use 1 shot, and not one of the best at that, but it had an Alpaca in it so people go ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

This one was lit with two lights, 1 bare flash high and to the right of camera to light the scene,and 1 bare flash left of camera zoomed in on the face to lift shadows. I did try bouncing the high light off the ceiling but this didn’t produce brilliant results (probably because the ceiling is transparent).

01/10/09

Its Fordhall farms art thingy, I don’t think I ever found out all the details for this one but it involved children coming to the farm and painting/drawing. Very easy to shoot, as Fordhall farm is fast becoming one of my favourite North Shropshire photographic locations as it always provides a decent shot.

This particular shot relies on the foreground art materials, (the look this is what its all about bit) leading you through to the lady who is supposed to be drawing a picture. Nice simple composition which works time and time again.

I used one flash to help light this positioned to the right of the frame to help fill in some tricky backlighting.

02/10/09

Whitchurch was holding its annual Blackberry fair the day after this was took, and I was sent out to conjure something up out of thin air as they had not even arrived with the equipment for the day. Having said that it was somewhat tricky to get this set up for a same day deadline, especially as I had radio Shropshire breathing down my neck almost as soon as I had gathered some props wanting to do a live interview.

Lovely!  It was a case of quickly compose the shot, yes we do want the two year old in as he is the only thing im happy about so far, bugger hes crying, “look who’s that” (showing child the screen often works when silly noises and funny dances fail) snap snap refocus snap annnnnnnd………..done!!