Loch Lomond Wildlife
Prabha tries to sit on some of Loch Lomond’s wildlife
Photowalk November 2010
I took part yesterday in a London Photowalk hosted by Daniel Davies.
It’s the first time I’ve done a photowalk and the reason I took part in this one was because of an interesting format for the walk.Rather than walking about snapping photos, there were the following restrictions:
1) We were allowed a maximum of 36 exposures during the walk
2) We set the ISO at the beginning and it couldn’t be changed.
3) The display on the back of the camera was taped over so we didn’t know how we were doingWhat made this interesting is that we’re taking the principles of film photography and applying it to the modern technology. By giving us these self imposed restrictions makes us really slow down and really think about our composition before taking the shot.
I knew it would be an adjustment (the last time I shot film was in college), and it was a bit more of an adjustment than I expected. I’m not one to waste shots as it is, but by restricting the exposures to 36 and hiding the display really emphasised this.
At the end of the 2 hour walk I was well under the 36 allowed shots, so I rushed the last few … and it shows.
I took 33 alltogether and we sat in the pub at Tower Bridge (we started at London Bridge) with hot drinks to thaw our frozen fingers while we reviewed the shots on a laptop.If you’re interested in seeing my pictures, then click on either the top image or one of the images below
Squirrel!!!!
I was contacted by one of my favourite clients a month or so ago and asked if I would take some pet pictures of their stunning Pointer breed dogs, mother and daughter Imola and Monza. It’s a bit of a change to the product and car photography I show, but they are great people so I said "sure" 🙂
We discussed the details on what the images were for (a large high-key print/canvas) and I suggested we also did some shots of them just being dogs and playing in the local park as a nice contrast to the posed shots. Everything was set and so we watched the weather and a couple of weeks later the conditions turned to our favour.
I rolled up outside the house with Prabha (girlfriend and pooch fanatic) as my assistant and a 1/2 sized studio setup in the boot. For the ‘studio’ style shots there was just enough room to set up a small backlit background and train, a front light plus a little ‘CallumW special‘ to crisp them up a little 😉
The stage was set.
There’s an old saying never to work with kids or animals, but I have to say that both pooches were extremely well behaved. They were easily transfixed with the promise of biscuits and "coochycoos" from both their owner and Prabha.
Both of them were so well behaved and so adorable, I think Prabha was eyeing one of my bags to see if she could smuggle one of them home (just kidding :))After the formal setup we headed to the park to let them loose.
A short while back I blogged about the JDM Drift cars that I photographed sliding past at speed, but seriously, they have nothing on these guys. Man these dogs are faaaast.
‘meep! meep!’ … blink …. you’ve missed them.
Needless to say there were a few shots where they were flying out of frame before I could track them. So quick … and unpredictable. At least cars follow the track (usually) and are consistent in speed.
These guys … forget it 😀
After a short time (but not before they both went for a swim in the lake) the light began dropping which meant I was struggling to keep the shutter speed up high enough, so we got them to pose for us in a few remaining pools of light to add some variety in style.
We headed back and I packed up my mini studio and we said our farewells.
Both pooches were wiped out from all the running, but you could see they had a great day.If that’s a dog’s life then where do I sign 🙂
A few semi-edited shots below so you can see how adorable they are 🙂
