Biffy Cider / Bulmers Clyro
It's Festival time in Edinburgh right now, which many grumpy Edinburgers will tell you means nothing but expensive taxis and expensive pints, whilst simultaneously dabbing their moist brow with the handfuls of £50 notes that they're making from renting out cellar cupboards to aspiring comedians. Personally, I think the Festival is one of the best things that happens in Scotland, but this year, I've been unable to see as much as I might like, due to the shining inconvenience of twelve glorious days that I had to spend in Florida. Sigh.
Still, I had time to grab a triple-threat comedy combo before I hopped on my flight out to the land of the free / home of the brave, catching some acts that ranged from bollocks and overpriced (Danny Bhoy, whose humour is about as exciting as a wet day at the zoo), to tiny and brilliant (Abandomen, whose hip-hop improv saw my mate dragged onto the stage, and my good self playing a mean cowbell bassline on the closing track). I've actually got some photos from something related to that, which I'll put in a later blog (chronological order be damned!), but to get back to the point of this one, I'm going to talk to you about music, of which there is a boatload at the Festival.
In previous years, I've been lucky enough to be covering various acts (Maximo Park, Editors, Muse and Pendulum amongst others) at T on the Fringe, and subsequently The Edge Festival, but this year, I got a fairly special invitation to come and shoot an intimate, acoustic Biffy Clyro gig that few knew about, let alone had tickets for. Having last shot Biffy several years ago at a sweaty Barrowlands in Glasgow, I put on an air of professional nonchalance, and drove through to Edinburgh rocking the **** out to a pile of their best tracks, head banging like a child that's been on a sugar binge.
For this year, the ever-disappointing Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens has actually had a little thought put into its use, and there's a decent little beer garden down at the bottom. Quite nicely, this means that if you fancy sitting out with a pint of your favourite refreshing beverage - say... a Bulmer's Summer Blend - then you don't have to hike all the way over to the Spiegeltent (although they do have cheeseboards available in that part of town). This little pad was the venue for the evening's acoustic showcase, aboard a special bandstand, belonging to the hosts for the evening, Bulmers cider - who were also doing a fine job of making sure that nobody went thirsty.
Biffy sauntered onto stage in the early evening sun and played a mellow acoustic set, comprising pretty much exclusively of recent material, which although not as eclectic as some hardcore fans may have wished, certainly tied into the summery theme of their surroundings. They chuntered away with the 200-ish strong crowd between tracks, supping the sponsor's brew throughout, and just as everyone wondering exactly what flavour of Domestos had been poured on frontman Simon Neil's head, they made their exit, heading backstage to be greeted by their fellow West-Coast export, funnyman Kevin Bridges, and leaving the excellent Sun Lovin' Criminals to play out the evening.
Hell of a strange thing, seeing a band of that level of exposure playing to a crowd that would barely rival that of a school sports day, but it was good to have the freedom to shoot for as long as I wanted, from wherever I wanted, with a backdrop that shames any festival or venue I've been to - even if it did resemble some sort of carnie ride on acid. A unique experience, both as a photographer, and as a fan. 'Mon the Biffy.
Imagining and making real
The USA is a strange place. On the surface, it seems so similar to the UK, and the history of the two countries has been frequently intertwined - both for good, and for bad. However, the sheer scale of America is the thing that always makes me realise the difference whenever I visit - it feels more like going to a collection of small countries than one huge nation, each state as different from the next as Britain is from the USA as a whole. Despite this scale, or perhaps because of it, the country seems to bind together in pride of their nation, in a way that the UK simply does not. It comes across a lot in every day life, and much of it is hard to grasp as someone from another part of the world.
Why do I mention this? Well, on the subject of scale and patriotism, it's difficult to consider a better metaphor for them than the US space programme. I recently spent a day at Kennedy Space Center in Florida - the first time I've been there since I was a child. Visiting as an adult, it's an entirely different experience than that of a kid, who despite being impressed by rockets, was a little miffed at being dragged down to the coast at the expense of a day's mouse-bothering at Disney World.
The scale of the Center, like the country itself, is one of the most impressive aspects; towering space craft, the vast amounts of money involved, the number of people involved in the operation. That said, the most impressive thing, by a long way, is the scale of the ambition and achievement that you see. As you walk through the exhibits, wander around the craft involved in the exploration of space, and peer into the history of the subject, you constantly feel dwarfed by everything around you - it's a real shiver-up-the-spine environment, and relentlessly epic. The memorial dedicated to those who have died in US space programmes (a towering, black marble wall with the names of the 24 astronauts who have lost their lives) is a surreal and humbling reminder of those who chose to go into space, and have surrendered their lives as a result, while running your fingers across the atmosphere-scarred heat shield of a Gemini command module, recovered after being dragged by gravity back to Earth, is difficult to put in context.
And that's the thing that really, really gets me - much of space flight has been fuelled by relentless ambition in achieving what is difficult to even imagine. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy stated: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Everywhere at Kennedy Space Center, you see the legacy of a ridiculous suggestion that despite never even having sent a man into orbit, the goal was set to put one on the surface of another planet. And the US did it in less than seven years.
Ultimately, the Center, and everything within, is symbolic of something that we are losing, or in some cases, never had. The ability to think of these outlandish, fantastical ideas, and not to scoff, or deem them impractical or prohibitively complex is vital if we are to progress as a society - playing safe ensures the survival of what is current and existing, but strangles evolution. In an era of austerity, we risk grinding to a halt.
This strange country, with all its flaws and differences, and with a patriotic urge that generally goes over the heads of many in the UK, is something I can entirely comprehend and appreciate, when you consider the $136 billion, 400,000+ employees, and the most complex machine ever assembled that sent 12 men to the moon. It is brilliant, and it is inspiring, and for me, shows the power of an idea, and what can happen when people get behind it and believe in a massive way.
And as a designer, I fucking love that.
A Grand don’t come for Prix
I may have mentioned before, but I bloody love cars. My previous post about my track day eluded to my enthusiasm for petrol-burning banter, and I also enjoyed taking photographs whilst I was waiting on my turn in the car. So, this weekend past, my pa's latest outstanding idea for a Chrimbo present - a pair of tickets for the British GP - lunged into relevance, as the F1 circus rumbled into the sleepy hamlet of Silverstone.
Fittingly, the whole trip began with me behind the wheel, blasting the six hours down from Scotland to whatever bit of England Silverstone is actually in (roughly Milton Keynes distance for those as useless at English geography as myself). Unfortunately, due to the timing of work, myself and Tim, who nabbed the other ticket, had to leave at about 2am, in order to hit the camp site in time for opening... not a fun drive.
Still, regardless of the hellish hours, we arrived to blinding weather - clear skies, sun, soaring temperatures, and rocked up to the circuit at about 9am, ready for some hard racin'. Of course, with it being Friday, all we got was F1 practice and various other support racing events, but it was still epic. Our general admission tickets meant we could saunter around all the expensive stands for the day, so I managed to grab a few decent shots from the raised seating - the safety clutter of catch fencing and runoff areas means that it's a bugger to get any good photos as a punter, which is a shame really. Saturday was more of the same, although not being allowed in the stands, we explored where we could sit for the race on the Sunday.
The night brought a lot more fun - live music at the campsite, with Eddie Jordan turning up on stage to swear a lot and play the drums, and a hearty selection of scrumpy from the on-site bar. The campsite itself was fantastic, and compared to the crap that people at festivals get shafted with, the difference is staggering - parking your car next to your tent is a much more adult way of organising things, although it's obviously not going to work with the T in the Park chavs...
The race itself was epic - the atmosphere amongst the fans was brilliant, and being so close to the blasting noise of the F1 cars as they battle on the circuit is incredible... you have no idea how loud these cars really are until you hear them flying down a straight, jumping onto the brakes, and listen to the engine blast and rumble as it gets cycled down through the gears. It is a sound that is totally sterilised by television, and one that any F1 fan would love.
Getting any shots on race day was an exercise in futility, due to the number of fans crammed in at the fences and the sight lines being full of chain link fencing, but I didn't really care by that point; watching Webber win was brilliant, seeing Hamilton keep right on him, despite having an inferior car, was great, and watching Vettel and Button haul themselves up the field was inspiring.
So why have I written a photo blog about this? Well, there's a few reasons. Firstly, it's a great sport to photograph, and as a punter, you can certainly get some good photographs of the F1 cars, if you have patience, a vaguely long telephoto lens, and know how to pan. Unfortunately, it is a sport that has a vast, yawing chasm between what the pros can shoot, and what the public can - and that's not going to change, given that the best spots are in front of the catch netting, where only marshals and press photogs are even allowed.
Secondly, it gave me a sharp poke with a stick. Motorsport photography is something I've always had an interest in, ever since I got a run round Knockhill in a Ferrari 360, and took loads of pictures with my wee digicam, but this weekend made me realise something that I feel about a lot of the things I photograph, but couldn't quite put my finger on - I like to be involved in what I photograph. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching the GP, but I know that I would love it even more if I was there working, doing something creative and productive - it's the same way I feel about music photography, and also shooting mountain biking. I think it's to do with knowing my subject, and the confidence it gives me to shoot it, but also that I don't like sitting back and letting things just wash over me... I need purpose!
So next year, I want to be at Silverstone again, but wearing a vest, and shooting from inside the track. It's a big ambition, but now that I'm shot of uni, I can really apply myself and see what I'm capable of achieving, without worrying about how photography's going to ruin my grades... Just have to figure out who to badger to sort out a pass now. Oh, and if you're an F1 fan, and haven't been to a GP, then in 2011, go to Silverstone. And take your camera, because even if you can't shoot the F1 race, there's a hell of a lot of other good stuff to shoot, even if it is just an Irish former team boss playing the drums to Cocaine, for a crowd in a field. It is festival season, after all.
10 Years
10 years ago, I decided that I liked photography.
A fairly odd statement you might say, but I can pretty much pin it down to that time because of one event - the 2000 British National Mountain Bike Championships, held at Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders. Me and my mate Iain pitched up there for two days, collecting the currency of every adolescent biker-nut the world over - stickers, autographs and photos with the riders straight out of the pages of MBUK (and randomly, chatting to Fionn Griffiths' mum whilst the dual was on). For a 14 year old kid, it was unquestionably the best thing in the world.
I took lots of photos. Panning shots of riders, podium shots - you name it, I took a badly out-of focus photograph of it. But still, the best went in a big clip frame, along with a big bit of the RAV4 branded course tape for added authenticity. Not one of those photographs was passable in any technical sense, but I still felt immeasurable pride in the fact that I had taken them. I still have that clip frame - it reminds me of why I decided that photography was something I wanted to be good at. Of course, the trump card in that frame was undoubtedly the photo of myself and Steve Peat - the downhill equivalent of one of the shiny football stickers that you could trade for major components of other kids' packed lunches.
Why do I mention this (somewhat rubbish) photo? Well, ten years down the line, I've taken a lot of photos of Peaty, and even managed to get the odd one in focus now and again. From SDAs to NPSs, from World Cups to World Champs, he's ridden in front of my lens a boatload of times throughout the ten years since the photo above (check out the images at the bottom of the post), and images of him racing are scattered throughout my photographic development. Ultimately, at one key moment in Austria last September, I shot him whilst competing in the World Cup Finals - the first foreign race I'd ever covered.
In the last few weeks, this image has become an incredibly important photograph for me, as a result of its association with an upcoming event - the event in question being the Fort William round of the 2010 UCI MTB World Cup. With the management company behind the event basing the branding around Steve (what with him being the reigning World Champion and all), my photo is being used as the main brand image; I've been involved in this event every year since 2002 when I volunteered as a course-worker / marshal, so this means an unfathomable amount to me. It'll hopefully be plastered all over the place in marketing material for the race, so keep your eyes open, or take a look on FortWilliamWorldCup.co.uk - the main image in the downhill section on the site is also one of mine. Bit bigger than the clip-frame, but the pride's still there...
Cheers all...
Read this book now.
As some of you may be aware, I'm studying the the development of photographic conflict coverage for my dissertation. After being recommended a review to read by my tutor, I subsequently didn't bother reading all of it, and went out to buy the book it discussed - The Photographer - from Borders. If I'm going to use a source in the most important academic piece of writing I'm going to do, then I want my own opinion of it!
The graphic novel tells the story of a French photographer (Didier Lefevre) embedded with Medicins Sans Frontiers in Afghanistan, during the Soviet conflict of the 1980s, who spent several months documenting the mission for MSF. Lefevre's photography is built into a rich tapestry of a story, through the use of illustrated insertions between images that add his own comments, memories and opinions to the material, in a manner not so blunt as a caption or accompanying written copy in a newspaper. The depth in which the method of storytelling immerses you is really something - certainly beyond traditional photojournalism that I've seen, with Frederic Lemercier's artwork fitting like a jigsaw between the images from Lefevre's contact sheets. Until this book was published in 2003, only a tiny number of the images had ever been used in print, never mind knitted together into a tale of this type.
Put simply, this book is outstanding. I bought it tonight, read it in one go over a couple of hours, and finished it feeling like I'd read something really special - and I'm certainly not normally a fan of graphic novels. If you have any interest in photojournalism (I'm talking about the tiniest glimmer of enthusiasm), then you have to read it; if you don't, then you should pick up a copy anyway. It is one of the most fascinating, enjoyable things I have ever seen done with photography, and I'm completely blown away by how a dull trip to a bookshop for a dissertation source has turned into something so rewarding.
"The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Medicins Sans Frontiers" is out now, costs about £10 from Borders (click here), and should be in your basket within 10 minutes of reading this. You can also see some samples of the work, by looking on this site - Click.
(Thanks to Richard Brunton on the Forbidden Planet blog for the link to the sample)
Welcome back!
Instead of dividing my efforts between my site and my blog, I've decided to roll the two into one - that way you'll be able to keep up with my photographic work in a much more visual way than simply reading a little blurb on the main site. My site will continue to showcase my best work, while this blog will give you a little bit more behind the shoots I'm doing, with extra photos and ramblings about photography.
Anyway, look around - I hope you enjoy what you see.
Summer's end
After a summer of mixed photographic fortunes, the previous few days have seen the swansong of the sunnier months as I headed out to my first World Cup race on foreign soil. I've shot the British round at Fort William for years (working for the event organisers this year), but have never had the opportunity to shoot the races abroad. To say I was happy to be doing it is a screaming understatement.
The finals this year were in the Austrian ski resort of Schladming, better known for the amazing Schladming Night Slalom race (50,000 people watching the top guns of slalom skiing competing under floodlights), and it's a cracking place to have a bike race. As it turned out, the weather forecast of rain, thunder, and low temperatures was a load of bull, and the whole weekend was bathed in blazing Alpine sunshine - exactly what you want for a weekend's shooting, especially when the last race I shot was the Fort William endurance downhill, which was essentially six hours in the pissing rain and cold.
In terms of the racing itself, there were six individual events - men's and women's races in downhill, four-cross, and cross country. Personally, cross country doesn't really tickle me, so I was following the DH and 4X action over the weekend, which provided more than enough to keep me occupied and entertained, especially as the four cross - in the same vein as the aforementioned ski race that takes place on the Planai piste - kicked off when the sun went down on the Saturday night.
As I've often said on here, I'm always keen to learn more, and most of that comes down to trying new things and practicing them when I can. With mountain biking, my recent aim has been to try and make the most of natural light. The reason I'm keen to do this comes down to variety, especially during 4X races - due to the nature of off-camera flash, you spend time setting up, time adjusting, and time getting some good shots. Given the small amount of time available during the race to re-locate and fanny around with radio kit, I decided to shoot the whole of the 4X at high-ISO, and rely on the floodlights. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but then again, Nikon really have made one hell of a camera in the D3.
After the 4X, Sunday was the main deal - downhill. I shot practice up the hill, and then moved down to the last straight before the finish for the race runs. Again, most of what I was shooting was natural light, although I did play around with flash a bit now and again (as was the case all weekend), just to keep my hand in! The finals were great, and I got what I needed from where I parked myself, although a 300mm lens would have been a real bonus.
So all in, a pretty good weekend. I could quite happily shoot all the races next year if anyone wanted to take care of the financial side of things (I was shooting for Descent-World this weekend, who put up for my flights and accommodation), but realistically, I'm now a fourth year product design student, so I doubt I'll have much of a life until next June. Guess we'll play it by ear, but I don't want to be a stranger to the World Cup for much longer.
Oh, and as a nice little closer, I have a tale to tell. Today, I left Schladming at 6.30am, with Doug driving the trusty Ford Maverick that Hertz had cursed us with when we arrived in Zurich (cheap flights being the reason for the epic roadtrip required to get to Schlad). Plenty of time to make our flight at 2.50pm. Unless you drive for over an hour in TOTALLY the wrong direction, end up near the Slovenian border, before realising the error. Cue 640km of trans-European driving, averaging a respectable 120kph throughout (and a max of about 175kph on the German Autobahn!), and a sprint through the airport terminal to get to the plane before it left. Whether you believe it or not, the difference between us making the flight and being stuck in Zurich came down to a matter of seconds.
Speed, tension, and exhilaration - that's how every World Cup should be... although perhaps not the drive home.
Back to reality…
So, my two weeks at the Herald up, I've been back in the same situation I was before - with naff all to do, other than to try and get work from any possible source. This has left me with a bit of time on my hands - as such, I've been getting up late, putting in the hours at the gym, and then going to the pub far too often. That said, I did end up in a bar at 4am in Edinburgh this weekend, where I met McLovin from Superbad, so it's not all gloom and doom. I promise I'll stop talking about it now. Maybe.
Occasionally, a job rears its head, and I have to say, no matter what it is - it's a phenomenal feeling to have someone say that they want to pay you to take photographs. I'd say it's like being paid to have fun - but that's not true. It IS being paid to have fun. Maybe that's just a sign that I'm immature, naive, and have a lot to learn, but I'd rather think that I'm right, and that I've found what I want to do with my life. That's much more appealing.
Anyway. At some point in July, I ended up going down to the Scottish Borders to cover the biggest mountain bike race of the season in the country, the British National Championships. Now, this was a good four weeks ago - unfortunately, I need to sit on images until I know one way or the other whether they'll get used by magazines. Even more unfortunately, considering I spent two days in the undergrowth snapping away, they weren't used by anyone. Ho hum. The race itself was a cracker - World Champion Gee Atherton took the win in the Senior category, with favourite Steve Peat stuffing it in the last corner whilst looking very safe for the win - and a welcome reminder that downhill racing in the UK can be a spectator sport outside of the World Cup round at Fort William.
I've been a lot more aware of exposing my images differently of late. It's very easy to take a brightly lit photograph in a forest when you've got remote flash, but it's also very easy to make it look like the race took place at night if you don't balance the ambient and flash light. It can actually make quite a cool photo, as it gives you clean backgrounds and lots of contrast, but I was keen to try and make the most of the lovely light that was floating around through the trees - most of the day it worked well, but right at the end, the clouds came in, and it got dark as the fastest guys did their runs... also when my second remote flash decided to die on its ass. No time to change settings, so it was a case of throwing my primary flash into a new position, and hoping for the best (check the last shot to see what I mean!).
So, I've got two days worth of images and nowhere to put them, other than archive storage, so here's a few for you to take a look at. I've just found out I'm off to Hong Kong later in the year, which I'm hugely looking forward to - definitely taking the camera with me, having seen the potential for great photos on-line.
Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Twelve
And so, to the final day of my internship at The Herald and Times, and an update that will be remarkable for one reason - I'm not able to tell you what I did today, as I was assisting on a closed shoot. Sorry! So, instead, today's update will consist of what I did very early this morning - which is actually an acceptable thing to blog about, as it was technically day twelve by the time I was taking photos. At any rate, last night kicked off with me, knackered, on my way to do some nightclub photos at around 11.30pm. Unfortunately, the nature of a Thursday evening in summer basically means that myself and the reporter had very little in the way of options for clubs to drop in on. As a result, we had a pleasant chat for a while about various stuff, and I headed back to my car, with a view to heading home for the evening.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple in the mind of James Porteous. Remembering that someone in the office had sent my good friend and work experience colleague, Franck Martin, out on a late-night job, I dropped him a line, and arranged to meet up with him at somewhere I'd already been that week, sans camera ... The job was a photo opportunity with the Transport Minister at the new M74 Completion Project, just over the Kingston Bridge, which already had someone covering the photo side of things. Nevertheless, I hooked up a high-viz and a hard hat, before making like the budding news-gatherer I am, and diving in to the photo opportunities. I shot a couple of set-ups with the minister, and then some general shots of the massive crane as it got ready to haul big bridge sections into place over the M8. With everyone strapped up to the nines in Scotch-Brite jackets, I opted out of the traditional flash-blasting, and hauled up the ISO for some ambient light work. I was actually very happy with what I shot, and filed a few images to go with the article. That said, none of them made it in, but Franck did get a front page splash on yesterday's Evening Times, so I'm chuffed for him.
So, how has my two weeks been? Well, I'll be honest - at times, it wasn't brilliant. There's a lot of boring, crossword-filled waiting around when you're on work experience, I don't like being sent out on jobs when I would be better learning from someone doing them properly, and doing the same task several times in a few days is really not very much fun, especially when it's pretty much un-skilled. However, the place is full of really helpful, passionate photographers, and even just being able to sit and talk crap to them about photography was good fun. When I did go out to shadow people, I felt I learned a lot, and I also felt that I'm much more comfortable with setting up photographs than I was at the start of last week. I've been able to get involved in work that would otherwise be out of my reach, allowing me to So all in, I think it was definitely worth doing, I really enjoyed myself, and I'm glad I did two weeks instead of one.
The final tally for what happened with what I produced, is roughly as follows:
- Images published in both The Herald and Evening Times
- Over thirty-five images published in print
- Four full-page style sections featuring only my images
- Two videos live on the Evening Times website
- One reporter embarrassed in print, by taking a photo of her learning to air-guitar
I'd like to thank all the photographers at The Herald and Times, all the people on the picture desk, all the reporters who I ended up stomping the streets of Glasgow with, and also the people who featured in my photographs these past weeks. It's been a long, hard fortnight (stop laughing, it has!), but I think it has helped my photography, and regardless of whether I've seemed pessimistic at times, it's made me realise that it's something I could definitely enjoy doing for a living. Without a semblance of a doubt.
Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Eleven
I feel like a bit of a fraud posting this at the moment, as my day at The Herald isn't actually over - I won't have to go back into the office, but I will have to go and take more photos for them later this evening. I've picked up a wee gig with them doing their feature on clubbing in Glasgow, which involves me heading out into the wilds of Thursday night's best dancing dens, and snapping whatever lies within. Not sure what to expect, but you never know until you go...
That was an aside really - today was mental busy compared to what's been going on. I arrived in at the office, and was turfed back out the door with a fellow work placement minion, and dispatched to Ibrox for a photocall. The best bit of this situation was that there was a staffer going out too, which meant I had someone to follow. Although not the most challenging job for the guy I was out with, it was interesting to see how you work with politicians - the event was a photocall with a Scottish Parliament Minister, who was asked to perform various tasks for the benefit of the waiting press - and what you need to do when presented with a horde of small children that are part of the story.
I was especially happy I wasn't taking photographs (other than for myself), as there was only time to do the setup shots, and nothing more interesting. I watched how the pros were dealing with the crowd, the Minister, and what they were trying to say with their photos, and then just did my own thing really, shooting candids of the set-up images. The most amusing bit was the mental little kids, who were running around like nutters in the pissing rain, so I took some candid stuff of their hopeful attempts to keep dry, before it really started horsing it down, and we legged it away to the car.
Back to the fort, and it wasn't long before I bounced out again with the same staffer, as we headed down to meet a couple of actors - a brother and sister pairing who both have a relation to the part of Hamlet. Due to the time restraints on this job, there was little chance for me to shoot anything, but it was probably one of the most useful shoots of the fortnight, with the photographer giving me a good idea of the different types of photo needed at one job, especially when a tabloid and a broadsheet share the same picture desk and often the same stories, even if they are told differently.
The broadsheet-style material was shot with a simple off-camera lighting setup, and posing the two actors in an interesting way, while the tabloid images were tighter, more straight-forward conventional images, taken outside in natural light - the differences produced two very distinct styles of photograph.
My final job of the day was one that I'd been told about the day before, which I was pretty interested in - shooting one of the work experience minions throwing down some famous air-guitar moves at the Classic Grand. We met up with the organiser of an upcoming competition that was being held at the venue, who then guided the reporter through the moves she had to learn, which I filmed for the paper's website. Once we'd captured the footage needed, I spent a while snapping what she'd learned, which I decided to light like a gig (thanks to a very co-operative lighting engineer). My favourite shot of the day came after that, when I decided we needed some shots of the tutor, upstairs in the main performance space - decided to try out a little off-camera flash, fired from the side to avoid lighting up the background, with the two big floodlights behind helping draw him out. It's an image I've had in my head for a band interview for a while, but have never had the chance to set it up.
So, a pretty good day - so far! I'll be heading out to the clubs soon, and then tomorrow I'm in early to assist a photographer who's shooting something that sounds interesting. Oh, and today, I had fourteen images used across The Herald and Evening Times, as well as a video on the Evening Times website. Not bad for a work experience minion - time to bring it on home!