Wedding photography: It’s a dangerous job …

… Well it is if you do it in London: Terrorism act cited over wedding photos.

A new sign soon to be introduced ...

As if doing as wedding wasn’t stressful enough; having the police to contend with just adds to the mix!!

I don’t know if George Orwell is spinning in his grave or just laughing at us from on high!

Playing to the gallery

Another day and another meeting and, best of all another assignment …

Get a portrait of Andy Cooper, Editor of Look North for the North East and Cumbria – easy enough, know the chap, nice guy; and I’m over in Newcastle where he’s based this week so should be fairly easy to sort!

So he looks after a busy newsroom, loads of people,  TV news output for the North East & Cumbria – so making him look dynamic and giving a “sort of insight” should be fairly easy, and to be honest I thought it would be …

As usual I carried far too much equipment with me, on the basis of  “If I don’t have it, I can’t use it” – Big mistake!!

Get there early – scope out the place and get a few ideas of what and where.
Long meeting … but Andy’s there, so arrange to shoot him at lunch (the best combination of times for us both).

Andy Cooper, Editor of BBC Look North for the North East and Cumbria.

Lunchtime, out to do the shoot, a quick look at an empty office and we decide the gallery (where the TV output is controlled from) might be a much better bet. But the programme is due on-air in 15 minutes!

So with too much kit to carry we take over the gallery and shoot 10 frames – that’s it! Times up there’s a programme that needs to go out – but second last frame is the one and it uses virtually nothing of the kit I had with me … I never learn.

And just for info, I was carrying two Norman 200B power-packs, four Norman LH2 heads, grips, stands, camera, other flashes etc … Doh!!!

Technical details:

Canon 580EX to camera left mounted on a Manfrotto 680 self-standing monopod, snooted (probably should have gridded it too) and set at 1/4 power; triggered by a “poverty wizard” about six feet from Andy and slightly above.

Sunpak 550 with red gel and light trigger behind Andy.

Camera set at 3200 iso (should have been lower – a lot lower!) exposed at 1/60 sec at f22.

Noise reduction applied through Canon DPP. Cropped to 5×4 ratio in Photoshop.

The Norman Brothers

Someone mailed me recently asking about my Norman 200B set-up, so obligingly, I took some snaps of the whole lot and put it on Flickr.

It made me realise just how much stuff I’d collected, and how much more I want to get. Whether I actually need it or not is a totally different question.

So, what do I want? Two/four Manfrotto Nano light stands, two Norman 19″ octoboxes, two Westcott collapsible umbrellas, some descent wireless triggers – so not a lot really! Just too expensive living in the UK …

Free is the …?

Two opposing reads about the “joy” of photographing for free.

One from the chief strobist, David Hobby on why it’s good to shoot for free and another from Matt Brown on why it’s killing the business.

Personally, I think there’s a very fine line to be tread here; shooting for free should be because you have decided to do it, not because it’s the only way you’ll get hired! Read the posts and see what you think.