June 11th, 2009 § § permalink
Earlier in the week I travelled to Bournemouth in Dorset on Assignment for Triathlete’s World Magazine. The subject was PC Rob Hammond of the Dartmouth & Poole Constabulary’s West Howe Safer Neighbourhood Team who has represented both the Great Britain and Ireland teams (he has dual nationality) in international Triathlon competitions. I was to meet and photograph PC Hammond at a primary school in Bournemouth where he was spending the day talking to the pupils about triathlon as part of a community outreach program; kind of an odd job for me as it involved spending the day at a primary school for the first time in twenty years… The portraits will illustrate a feature about Police Constable Hammond in the Personal Record segment of the next issue of the magazine.
February 22nd, 2009 § § permalink
Photo shoots rarely work out exactly like planned, regardless of the groundwork put in, but that’s not a bad thing; often opportunities arise that are far better, and the trick is to be able to work around those challenges and roll with whatever comes your way. That was the case this week when I shot local triathlete Heather Booth of Plymouth Tri Club; it was the usual deal of trying to fit in the shoot around the subject’s busy schedule but we eventually arranged to meet early one morning at Heather’s local swimming pool where she trains several times a week. Everything was arranged with the pool beforehand but on arrival the duty manager vetoed the whole thing; I tried to talk my way around it (after all, they’d already told me there wouldn’t be a problem), but I was clearly wasting my breath so politely thanked them and focused on re-scheduling with the subject. So Heather makes some phone calls and within a few minutes she’s secured us a new location; a secret training bunker on a private compound on the edge of Dartmoor National Park; a two lane 50 metre training pool built for the owner’s son who’s competing in the next Olympics! We had the whole place to ourselves, and it has this cool industrial feel to it so we set-up some lights and started out with some very simply lit portraits of Heather training in the pool for a paired down natural style, and then grabbed a few frames poolside for a completely different look.
January 14th, 2009 § § permalink
I met up with Paul from the Plymouth Tri Club last Sunday for a series of images that I’m currently working on featuring local triathletes; location portraits which hopefully capture the personality and dynamics of both the individual athletes and the sport itself. We got to the location about an hour and a half before sunset to capture the last light of the day, and it’s the dead of Winter with a howling gale blowing in straight off the sea; Paul was a legend, going back into the sea on command several times and never once complaining while my assistant clung on to the lightstand for dear life as the wind continued to batter us. We got the shots wrapped up as soon as possible and we were really lucky with the sun which was just starting to poke through the clouds as we finished setting up; I was a little concerned as it was looking like the backlight might become too hard and bright ruining the soft overcast light that I wanted, but then it turned into this beautiful hazy golden yellow that you can see in the images, which lasted just as long as the shoot and had disappeared entirely by the time we packed up.
