I’m really pleased to announce that I’m working with Canon UK and The Flash Centre to present Shooting Supercars at The Yorkshire Air Museum on 9th September. [click to continue…]
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It’s something I needed to do. I’m moving more and more into shooting video and as I climbed the learning curve, it made my head hurt, but I really needed to do it.
There are lots of stills photographers out there moving to video as an extra skill. Right now, there are great new oportinities to use video and new technologies to tell stories in ways we’ve never been able to until now. You’ll have read how I shot the Ice Driver video in Sweden on the Canon 5D Mk2, but how easy is it for a professional stills photographer to move into shooting video? Until this year I’ve been a 100% stills photographer. I shoot a combination of car editorial and commercial work, together with commercial aerial photography and ground based building assignments. Early last year, I could see the potential, but [click to continue…]
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If you’ve read some of my blog posts from earlier this year, you might have come to the conclusion that I’m starting to dance on the grave of the traditional car magazine, but you’d be wrong. While I’m a big believer in blogs and online car mags (I’ve started writing some myself) I still enjoy picking up a magazine and flicking the pages, before settling down for a good read. But I’ve been struggling to put into words just what it is that means that one car magazine should survive [click to continue…]
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Having got all excited in early June about starting the first of several new websites about cars, photography and driving, I paused for a moment to re-assess exactly what I was trying to do. This ‘moment’ turned out to be several weeks long, as I re-thought my whole plan about these sites and decided to totally re-write one of them, so apologies for the lack of forthcoming info.
So, here’s the first site I’ve been working on. [click to continue…]
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Philip Bloom is a lighting cameraman who’s teamed up with Dennis Lennie to create F Stop Academy, specifically tailored to people who want to know how to achieve the film look from a video camera. Personally, I also think it could well be a very useful course for stills photographers like myself how are making the move into shooting video. It that’s you, here’s my thoughts on the Podcast you can download from them. [click to continue…]
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My quest for global domination starts today. Well, no not really. But the websites I’ve been tinkering with for a while now are going to get vastly more attention starting right now. More and more people, both close freinds, clients, Twitter followers and others have been telling me to basically stop poncing around and just get on with it. “We like your stuff” they say, “Write more of it, shoot more stuff, get it online”, so here goes. [click to continue…]
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Here’s a quickie I hope will be useful. Have you ever wished that you could download a streamed video from YouTube, Vimeo etc to watch offline later? My older Powerbook sometimes stutters like crazy for reasons I can’t figure when streaming over our WiFi, so here’s a workaround if you’re on a Mac with Safari:
1. Open the page you need in a new window and begin playing the video
2. Go window>activity. A new, small window will open showing the files downloaded.
3. Scroll down the files. You’ll be looking for a file with an extention such as .flv, .mov or other format. Easy to spot, as it’s far bigger tha all the other little Gifs and style sheet files.
4. Double click on the file. A download window will open and the file starts downloading to your hard drive.
5. Once it’s finished, find it on your hard drive, double click and off you go. No stuttering or buffering and saved to your hard disk.
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What should I do? Should I automatically follow back everyone who follows me? After all, it seems rude not to return the compliment. But, I use TweekDeck. I find it usedful for checking Tweeks with a quick glance. It makes a cute little noise and a small square appears telling me when a tweet’s happened. It takes seconds to check and move on.
If I followed all those people, my Tweekdeck would be bonging away like a rail crossing and I’d never get anything done. Plus, I could see at a glance that some people probably didn’t really have that much to say that I would be interested in. No offence, just not my cup of Yorkshire Tea.
Queue Yaro Starak. He hit the nail on the head today about building his Twitter following. His list is smaller than many and he wondered if he should auto-follow, but doesn’t for the same reasons I don’t. He uses Twitter like many as a marketing tool and he compared auto-following as building an un-targetted list. If you have 48 hours to spare, you can quite quickly gather a list of followers of several thousand. But will they be paying any attention to what you want to say when the only reason they’re there is to fatten up a list? I want people to follow me because they’re actually interested in what I tweet and vice versa. It’s an exchange of views, the same as any other discussion.
Yaro asks the same question as me and, like me, doesn’t have the definitive answer and it’s probably the choice of the individual. For me, I want to communicate and broadcast my new blogging and online publishing efforts to as many people as possible, but only if they’re interested. So I see some of the huge Twitter followings as just like an ‘un-targeted’ mailing list. I hope people have a ‘reason’ to follow me that’s not just because it adds one more notch to their list.
I regard Yaro’s views highly on this and that’s because as a traditional writer / photographer moving into self publishing to generate an income, his blogs have been a massive help and considerable inspiration
So what’s your thoughts?
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My posting on car magazine websites and video content certainly generated interest. Many writers I spoke with and indeed one publisher reckoned it summed up the way they were feeling, but they also felt I was being a little harsh – not all videos are bad. Indeed, that’s true, so to put the record straight, here’s a vid from Australian blog Car Advice giving a run down of what it’s like to drive two Astons along one of the great driving roads in that continent. It’s a bit long, so you might need to take the load off and grab a coffee, but I think it’s a pretty good stab at it
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A very frequently asked question indeed. Although the majority of my work is for commercial clients and stock images, it’s very easy to get a photograph of your own house. The photographs can be supplied as a large format print of any size ready for framing and make a lovely gift. The example case study detailed below shows an interesting job last year to create just such a gift and seeing as we’ve finally started to get some nice weather here in the UK, I thought I’d post this from last year.
Aerial photography nearly always has a tight and specific brief. It’s rare that you take off without a deadline / weather issue / particular view required. But this unusual request from the father of a bridegroom recently got the brain cells revving up.
His son was getting married in just ten days time and lived a few doors from the church. However, straight afterwards, the newly weds would be moving home, so it was thought a really great present would be a large format aerial print showing both the church and the grooms old home, all in one shot.
Easy. All we had to do was fly directly over the top of Beverley, a built up area, wait for the cloud shadows to move, the heavy traffic constantly moving in front of the small cottage to clear, get the aircraft at just the right angle so that the houses opposite didn’t block it out and get a selection of shots for the client to chose. All the while looking at the late September haze that was developing at 1,000 feet and remaining legal in the aircraft. Which, of course, is what clients pay me for.
It’s on briefs like this that a pilot experienced in flying aerial photography shines and the two of us working together that day made my job a lot easier. The final image chosen was the one here, click for enlargement. And the house was in the bottom right of the shot, facing the camera. I love it when a plan comes together.
If you have an aerial shot you’d like, whether it’s a straight forward image or a more challenging shot, get in touch and tell us all about it as we love solving your problems.
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Many people in the motoring and lifestyle magazine publishing industry are looking at online versions of their publications with mixed feelings right now, especially with regard to the video content..
Journalists and editors are just thinking, “It’s for the IT department, nothing to do with me, I’ll just get lumbered with extra work…. And as for doing a ‘piece to camera’, you can forget it with my accent and crooked teeth…”
Publishers are thinking, “We know it’s coming, we know we need content, but right now, the advertising revenue from online sources just doesn’t justify investing in creating bespoke content. We’ll just keep embedding those grainy YouTube clips and take the free stuff the readers send in….”
Some photographers are thinking, “Jeez, this looks like a load of work, I’m outside my comfort zone and I guess they won’t pay any more money either, so lets keep quite about it, I can’t afford a Sony Z1 / EX1 / XL1 / JVC this year…And as for editing in Final Cut, that looks horrible. Time to look at weddings…”
However, I’m thinking, “What a great oportunity – there’s never been a better time to get your reader’s attention and hold onto it…. For the first time ever, if you do it right, you have as good a chance as any broadcaster of getting an audience for your content”
But with one or two notable exceptions, everyone’s missing a great oportunity here.
I’ve been looking at some of the video clips on car magazine’s own websites this month and I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t work for me, until suddenly the fog cleared….
So where do I think they’re going wrong? [click to continue…]
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Graham at The Flash Centre sent me over this link I though was a really cool idea and had to share it with you. It’s not often I see a technique that’s so effective, yet so blindingly simple it makes you laugh out loud and wonder why you’ve never seen it before, but this is the one for me. (Updated with new video, thanks to Hano Nimous!
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A photographer’s email list gave me the heads-up on this guest post on Scott Kelby’s blog by Jay Maisell. It’s about the power of the still images as opposed to moving / video and is a very interesting read. I’m very excited about the new ways to use motion content to tell a story, whether it’s editorial or a commercial idea we’re trying to get across, but this post reminds us of how the most important images in history were almost always still photographs.
He also talks about some of the great photo editors he worked with and some of the things they said that made him stop and think. I won’t quote it, but head over using the link above and take a read, it’s worth having a coffee in your hand too.
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Just a quick note to say that the movie is currently on The Eoscars. If you haven’t already seen the site, it’s a great place for gathering together all the good short movies out there that have been shot in the Canon 5D MkII. The idea is to move on from all of the initial wave of ‘novelty’ clips such as ‘my first low light clip’ and ‘cat licking it’s paws’ and showcase some of the really great work beeing produced on the camera now including ad campaigns and complete programmes.
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Here’s an edit of the final footage. You can see a hi res version on SmugMug here. The learning curve for me as a first time user of Apple Final Cut Studio was a steep one and thanks go to various people for their help and advice in getting me up there. Most notable being Graham Fox at The Flash Centre and Canon for helping put the idea together and for trusting me to bring back their gear in one piece. For the edit, Final Cut expert Dave Hackney provided virtually a constant stream of email advice from his iPhone and together with advice from colleagues on the excellent Pro Imaging Membership List we figured the workflow.
When I have time, I’ll put together an edit showing how we did it and how the camera was rigged, plus some notes on what worked, what didn’t and what we plan for the future on the back of this idea. Finally, thanks to professional driver and my mate Andy McKenna, the man whose creativity behind the wheel you see here.
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Previously, I described how I prepared the lightest possible collection of gear to use the Canon 5D in Sweden, hoping that we could cover all the bases and get what we needed. My 1DS works fine in temparatures below -30c, so I had no worries about the camera dying, though previously when shooting stills and rigging cameras on cars, the speeds are very low and the shutter speeds slow to create speed. This time, we are shooting HD video, so the speed was real and the effect of wind chill on the 5D was a factor on my mind. No way to test beforehand, we just had to rig it up and shoot.
Because of the light weight of the 5D compared to my 1DS, I was able to rig the camera on the roof and bonnet (hood) of the car with just a couple of Manfrotto Magic Arms and some suction cups. Normally, I’d be using several suction cups, some Arri grip heads and all manner of belt and braces. I’ve since read on Luminous Landscape and other photographer’s forums about Canon 5D’s failing in the cold. If I’d read those pages before I set off, I’d probably not have tried this, as the air temp was -25c, plus the cars was travelling at up to 80mph at the fastest part of the track….
Photo by Beefa
Happily, the mounts stayed in place, the camera kept rolling in various configurations and rigging points and everything worked just fine. In my next post, I’ll try and cover some of the points we found when editing Canon 5D video footage, plus what it’s like to use the Steadicam and the 5D together.
Finally, although I’m used to working in these low temparatures, I forgot about the effect on cold metal of a 80mph breeze…. Taking off my glove to remove one of the Superclamps resulted in a sharp burn across my palm….
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Just to bring you up to speed about this project, it started more than six months ago when I first saw video footage from the Canon 5D Mk2. Then I saw more footage shot on it and managed to try one briefly at The Flash Centre in Leeds and was hooked. I knew just the project for it. [click to continue…]
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You’d like to think that more than two weeks set aside for a trip to northern Sweden would be plenty to shoot a short movie about driving at high speeds on frozen lakes, wouldn’t you? Me too. I’ve been to Sweden working plenty of times before and while there may be a few days overcast with snow, it’s never long before the sun breaks through and the stunning landscape makes you catch your breath.
But as we reach the seven day point with snow waist deep outside and more forecast, the light dull and flat I’m reminded of Joe Cornish and his book First Light It’s not a book full of dawn photography, but a play on words, because as he so rightly points out, without light, we can’t do anything. Joe spends a lot of his time waiting…..and waiting…for just the right light.
Previous trips had produced similar conditions, but then I was shooting stills not video. On that ocassion, a result was needed with no time to wait, so that time, we worked around the dull skies by using Lee ND Soft Grads and a couple of strobes on Pocket Wizards, giving the shot you see here. It’s not a view of Swedish wilderness, but it illustrated the Subaru for the magazine I was shooting for. This time, the project is a video shot using the new Canon 5D Mk2, so we wait….
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