It’s that time of year again where the warning signs go up on the surrounding roads, the weather gets colder, and the Stubbington 10k is held. It is also the time if year when I take the opportunity to test out some of my kit with thoughts to the year ahead. Last year I was checking the repairs to a camera body and lens that had been dropped in late December and fixed just after the new year. This time I was testing a recently acquired lens for some specific jobs which I’m hoping I’ll be shooting in the late spring. For those who are interested – single point follow-focus of runners using a very shallow depth of field on a long lens.

So it was down to Titchfield Haven, at about the 7km mark, for 30-40 minutes of sports photography in the bright but very cold January weather. On arrival I had a brief chat to the official event photographer who had also arrived at the same time, and I set up my kit checking for exposure and framing so that when the runners came through I was ready. I got some of the lead runners with the Titchfield Haven Visitors Centre as a backdrop, and then switched to the other side of the road mindful of the position of the official photographer who was set-up behind me – I didn’t want to be in his shots and so positioned myself next to a signpost out of the way to capture some close ups of runners faces – framing some of them between other spectators.

With those shots captured I then crossed back again and headed towards the Titchfield Haven bridge a little for a different viewpoint and knelt down, again to reduce my visibility to the official photographer, and to shoot slightly up at the runners. My timing was good as several runners passed in fancy dress, a gorilla suit, donkey and teddy bar in a fireman’s outfit and then as the field began to thin out I broke down my kit and walked back to the studio – pleased with the results on the back of the camera and keen to check them on the larger computer monitor.

I didn’t get the variety of images I would have liked on a normal job because I was specifically testing my setup, and because I was restricted in where I placed myself so as not to spoil the official race images. That said I’m very happy with the results and really looking forward to some more sports photography over the coming months.

Here are some of the images I captured

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I’m firmly of the belief that it is critical for professional photographers to shoot personal photographic projects.

I’m not in anyway suggesting that they need to be charitable, life-changing, in South-America, only in Black-and-White, or using some vintage or toy camera. Just that they need to be divorced from an immediate or existing client, direct payment, and on the terms of the photographer within the reasonable constraints of the subject matter/sponsor.

Over 2012 I’m planning on shooting several personal projects, some of which will be an investment to develop skills which might turn into payable work, that I would look to prove or push some of my equipment, some of which will be good for my soul, and some are just interesting subjects I’d like to tackle over the next 12 months.

I’m not going to lay them out in detail in this post, some of them are just ideas at the moment, and there are always limited opportunities for everything. But I’m going to outline some of them them as a record of what we are planning – some/most/all of which will hopefully end up as more detail blog posts in later months once I have completed the personal project.

1. I’m looking to do some work around motorsport, not just on the trackside – I’m likely to be doing that anyway as I do every year but also behind the scenes and away from the actual race-day. I’d love to hear from anyone who owns or manages a motorsport team (I’m not necessarily looking for F1 BTW) or does their PR, club racing or the lower formulas would be great as would any of the powered water-sports – powerboats, jet skis, waterskiing, zap-cats.
2. I’m looking to shoot some work around horses. Stable owners, owner/riders, polo club, working horses are all candidates. I’m not talking about event photography here, definitely not on my agenda.
3. I’d like to take some experience I have in shooting performances and develop it, and also prove some newer equipment. Ideally a local theatre company or a national/international company performing in the Hampshire/West Sussex/Dorset counties in the first 8 months of 2012, a theatre itself would be great. Musicals, ballet, stand-up, drama, children’s theatre all considered.
4. I’d like to do something around the Olympics or Para-Olympics, it is such a massive event in 2012. Almost certainly focussed either on the athletes who live or train in the Portsmouth/Southampton area or a supplier to the Olympics from this area. Of course I’m highly unlikely to be unique in this personal photographic project…. and their will be other demands on their time.
5. I want to shoot some Hockey and some Beach Volleyball, local teams and events – both sports I have played competitively at either club or county level.
6. I’d like to do a project around fitness and well-being. It could be associated with a gym, a personal trainer, competition, manufacturer of equipment, clothing, or health products, healer, physio, or a combination of them all.

That’s a fair start. Of course those are all going to be balanced off against the portraiture and commercial work which we shoot for daily fees, and orders week in – week out.

If you have any responsibility for, or contacts in any of those organisations, and you’d be interested in some collaboration then please do get in contact or pass on my details. I’ll be reaching out to my own contacts in the new year to kick off some of these and I’ll likely add some as well as the year progresses.

I just got back from an excellent trip to the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2011. Having missed it last year due to paid assignments I was really looking forward to this year and again opted for the Friday, hoping for it to be slightly quieter, and I lucked out with the weather. Arriving just after 7am I loaded up my pack of kit and hiked off to the entry point where I then diverted straight into the Cathedral Paddock for some detail images of some of the heritage sports cars including some Bugatti’s and Audi’s before working my way through the more modern sportscars.

With the time approaching 8:30 I then beasted it up to my initial shooting point for the hill climb – marshall point 8 with a clear view down to the flint wall. I was more prepared this year with a small step to give me an unobstructed view over the bales of hay lining the road. I shot the first batch of supercars and then switched across the road to the opposite side to enable me to get better images of the cars returning down the hill with a panning technique against the bales. I then moved again for a straight down view of the flint wall again to shoot the heritage F1 cars, and the bikes and WRC cars again panning some of the images.

There was a delay and so I called it a day on the hill climb and moved over to the Rage buggies which were flying round a grass circuit in a similar area to where the Bowler was two years ago and then made my way up into the Forest Rally stage to get some images of the rally cars, working a few different spots to get some variety and also better light. I got some good images of the cars, and was fortunate to get two runs of the new WRC Mini Clubman, as well as it’s grandfather an original mini rally car.

Tempted by the tennis, and safe in the knowledge that I had covered everything I had been looking to I made my way back down the hill and out again avoiding both the busy exit from Goodwood and the Friday rush our traffic along the A27 back towards Fareham.

A small selection of my images taken across the day – featuring though the Mini Clubman WRC.

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Shortly after finishing the image preparation from the LOST Open Day I headed down to Cornwall for a short break. However, I did still take the cameras, and a tripod with a view to taking some Cornish landscape photographs as a rest and reinvigoration from my normal subject matter – portraits, wedding and commercial work.

I managed to get out for a couple of evenings to capture the warm golden light up on Bodmin moor, and for a trip to a gorge with a 60ft waterfall at the end of a 1 mile hike along a woodland path as well as updating some of my own family’s images. Shooting slowly, and taking in the atmosphere as much as making the images…

Here are a small selection from what I managed to take. The rest will get edited once I work through a couple of busy weeks of client work !

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I can’t believe I got two days of personal shooting out of two so far this week with more wind promised….

More strong winds, and an ideal high tide for those employed as well as self-empoyed meant that the beach at Hill Head was again littered with windsurfing boards, and the green area behind it with kites.

Whilst I don’t think it was less windy today, the 2-3 riders out there with kites knew their stuff and were pulling off some very high jumps. So high in fact that I wasn’t able to keep any sense of height in many of my images because they were so far off the deck. The windsurfers were in force, but limited to some chop-hops today – though getting some pretty serious distances and good height.

It was also good to chat to Mark, also shooting today – nice to catch up with another photographer on the few quiet moments.

So here are a small selection from today. Yes that Kitesurfer is sticking his tongue out (at me) from a good 20-25ft up in the air, and landed that. I do have the sequence feet out and back in again, and then a couple from the most consistent guy out there on a windsurfer.

Well the wind from last night continued throughout the day for a rare bright, relatively warm and breezy day. With it being the weekend I knew that there was a good chance that Hill Head beach would be visited by some good quality windsurfers and maybe the odd kitesurfer and I was itching to get out and shoot some watersport – it had been too long since I got some decent windsurfing photography time in. I checked the time for high tide, and headed out around 3:15pm to catch the afternoon sailors as close as they would likely get to the shore, found a space in the car park, kitted up and found a bit of wall to sit on.

Shooting at 200 ISO and f/4 I was getting fast shutter speeds and so I kept it handheld to give me maximum flexibility in framing and trusted my kit on continuous AF to track the guys as they moved across the water.There were between 20 and 30 boards out and of those probably only 3 of those kitesurfers – it was great to see some talented windsurfers at the beach which is normally dominated by kites. It became clear fairly quickly that there were 3-4 sailors out there looking to get some air, most of whom were chop-hopping, and bust some more extreme moves and so I focussed my attention on them with one in particular dropping and landing forward loops, lay-down gybes and either willy skippers or flakas.

I know it isn’t Ho’okipa, the water is silt coloured, and the sky grey but I’m really pleased with the 30+ keepers of jumps and moves I got from my 30 minutes of shooting.

Here are a small selection…

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The Stubbington 10k was raced today around the villages of Stubbington, Titchfield and Hill Head. This was my second year of taking images at the event, although it was cancelled last year because of the heavy snow. In January 2009 I was testing some new equipment purchased in the previous couple of months, this year I was testing some adjustments made to a camera and lens just after Christmas prior to putting the cameras back into professional use again.

The official event photographs will no doubt be found associated with the Stubbington 10k race website – these were taken for my personal assessment only.

I used the area around the Hill Head sailing club and the Tichfield Haven visitors centre for these images. They are probably the most scenic of the Stubbington 10k, and provide some good backgrounds and dynamic composition with the curves in the road, harbour and pavement marker posts. It is also just over half distance in the race allowing the runners to have spread out a little and making it easier for me to track and focus on a small number of runners to test the accuracy of my equipment.

So here are some of the images I captured.

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Just back from Queens Club in London for the 2010 Aegon Championships and day two of the tournament.

On a changeable day the tennis, and practice, was interrupted by several rain showers but the evening cleared and produced some excellent doubles and beautiful light.

I was stationed on court 9 with a view over to court 10 and had the pleasure of photographing the matches between Richard Gasquet and Rajeev Ram and then the doubles match between Novak Djokovic / Jonathan Erlich and the British pairing of Jamie Delgado and Jonathan Marray with some glimpses of Marin Cilic and Andre Sa playing another British pairing on 10.

When the clouds broke and the dry spells long enough the practice courts also saw a lot of players either warming up or getting a good hit for tomorrows play – notably Rafa Nadal who played for over an hour with a huge crowd in attendance so much so I couldn’t get anywhere close.

Here are some images from the matches. Click on an image to view and then step through the gallery…

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Last week I entered a local print competition with two of my favourite images for sometime. With over 80 entries across a wide variety of subjects, and a singular judge there is never any kind of expectation as to how you are going to get on. Well we did great. After all the comments and scoring both of the images were held back for a final comparison and score, and the result was both images were awarded perfect 10′s and also unexpectedly a 1st and 2nd place, which was a first for this competition.

I’d be crazy to say I’m not pleased, because I am, but the reality is I could have walked away with nothing depending on the other entries and most importantly the judge. I am very pleased that when he looked at my images he saw the quality. Notably one of the images is from a professional shoot up at London Fashion Weekend, and the other a personal piece of work of a kitesurfer at a local beach – demonstrating an ability to take high quality images both under the demands of a shoot and when I am relaxing with the camera.

So here they are my two award winning images and a precis of what the judge said about them.

The judge commented on the dynamic nature of the print noting the wave, and the beads of water in the air, and the thrust of the kitesurfer. He commended the concentration of the image on the kitesurfer and not the kite, and acknowledged both the strong directional edge lighting with plenty of detail in the dark areas of the face and wetsuit.

This image is shown as originally posted back in February when it was taken at London Fashion Weekend. The competition image has a panoramic vertical crop removing the London Fashion Weekend TV screens and concentrating on the catwalk, lighting and model only. The judge recognised the environment this shot was taken under,  noted the lighting on the background and the unique lighting on the model and declared that he hadn’t seen another image like it before.

With all of my work I’m looking to make sure I have good quality images in the bank and then push myself to get something different, a little out of the ordinary, but still with good composition, great lighting and impact. I like to think this is one of the ways that I differentiate myself from some of the other Hampshire photographers in every wedding I shoot, portrait session and approach to commercial photography.

Both of these images are on display in the studio at the moment, and I’m looking forward to taking my next award winning image.

Today I met up with a group of great photographer friends at a property in London for a location fashion shoot. Experienced fashion photographer Paul White organised the day for us to learn some new skills, learn from each other and try out some different lighting, and light modifying equipment, as well as pulling our weight with a little assisting. Paul also organised our lovely model for the day and a H&MUA.

I have worked with a model on location before but predominately in natural light, and this was an excellent opportunity to try some things out as well as work with a very experienced model. You may well see images from this shoot on other photographers blogs and websites – these are all mine, including the direction of the model ! I hope you like them.

We also broke out the location lighting for a mains free lighting demo overpowering the sun and getting some striking images.