Porteous Photography The photo blog of James Porteous

Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Five

So, to the final day of my first week in the trenches of Glaswegian editorial photography, and straight back out of the office as soon as I walked in the door.

This weekend sees Glasgow's River Festival take place on the Clyde, with a large number of craft moored for the public to see, as well as more exciting things, such as jet skis, motorboat racing, and of course, pirates. That's right, fucking pirates. For the first job of the day, myself and a photographer nipped down to meet the scurvy sea dogs at their vessel, which was moored outside the BBC building on the South Side, and started looking at my old friend, the setup shot. I must admit, if I'm comparing jobs to the others I've been out on that necessitated a set-up photo, this was something of a target-rich environment.

When you've got several guys who are dressed in pirate garb, and with enough enthusiasm that they're not afraid to have a bit of a laugh and show off, the images that are available are really only limited by time, and your ability as a photographer. I felt quite confident about shooting different things on this job, and the photographers I was with (there was another gent their from an agency, who was extremely accomodating in helping me get the images I wanted, even though I was just work placement bod) were as interested in shooting lots of different stuff as I was. All in, I think it helped I had a positive frame of mind about the whole shoot - I didn't want to get in the way of the two guys who were doing the job, but I was happy that I was at least thinking about setting up some of the same shots that they were using.

Highlight of the whole shoot was getting to climb up the mast, and sit on the high deck for a shot that the staffer accompanying me had already had a go at. I did it a little differently (shot it with two pirates instead of one, and from a higher vantage point), but the photo worked really well. Of course, I still took some utter crap (one idea in particular really didn't work as well as I hoped), but I now at least feel I'm making a bit of progress with all this set-up malarkey.

After we'd finished up there, I headed back in to the office, before being sent out for another GV! I'm not a fan of these things anymore. Buildings are boring. They don't move, they don't dance, they don't play a guitar, and they don't make for interesting photos in my opinion. Still, you get on with it, and I shot a good few different angles. Picture desk seemed pleased enough with what I got, but realistically, Stow College is a blight on the landscape of Glasgow, and taking photographs of it just encourages its existence. Which is bad.

Final task of the day was a still-life bit, again, for some part of the paper that I don't really know - it had something to do with football. Anyway, I was given a pile of A3 paper to act as a backdrop (seriously), and shot an arrangement of props that were designed to help represent the story. I got fed up trying to use the paper to conceal the background, and luckily remembered that there was a huge roll of studio backdrop paper kicking around (the stuff I used for the fashion shoot the day before). Once that was found, it was a lot easier (infinite curve!), and with my little bodged-together lighting studio, featuring two chairs to hold the paper roll, a window as my light source, and a slighty grubby backdrop, I was good to go. Unfortunately, I don't really want to put up the image here, as I have no idea when and if it'll go in the paper. Don't want to piss people off now, do I? Oh, also, I got more vox pops in the Evening Times, and this time, I got credited.

So, week one done and dusted. So far I've got a good grounding in the bread and butter parts of being an editorial photographer, shooting images that spell out what the story is, either by using people or places, as well as other simple stuff, such as fashion cut-out content. I've done my best to get a handle on setting up shots, and feel I'm in a better position than I would have been previously, although I'm still very aware that this is going to be something that will come with practice. I think I just need to mellow out and have more confidence in the situations I find myself in, rather than crapping it when I realise I'm out shooting for a newspaper. I am only on work placement, after all.