A Monkey's Revenge - My Blog
Apr 3, 2011
Whether the weather
Continuing with my theme of the weather- sometimes it can be a hindrance if you are a photographer, but at other times it's possible to turn it to your advantage, as I did this week. I was photographing the footballer Robert Pires of Aston Villa for The Daily Telegraph and we decided to do some shots outside as it was a sunny day. Unfortunately I hadn't bargained on extremely strong winds and as Robert is lucky enough not to be follicly-challenged like me, every time he turned into the wind his face disappeared under his hair. The simple answer-use God's wind machine and shoot the image into the wind!
Another good example of using the weather to your advantage was when I was sent by The Guardian to photograph the BBC aerial masts being dismantled at Daventry. It was a really foggy day-not ideal and from a distance not even possible to get photos which showed the top of the aerials. So the answer here was to get in close and shoot with a wide lens from right inside the aerial itself. The lack of a decent sky actually helped with the graphic simplicity of the image and I was very pleased that The Guardian ran this photo across a half page.
It's not just the weather that can mess things up on a shoot. This week it was the police deciding to close down both carriageways of the M6 near Birmingham one evening. Fortunately it was on the way back from a Sunday Telegraph job and not on the way to it-but I have been held up on the way to a job on the same stretch of M6 before, once for two whole hours! This time it was under an hour and after boredom set in I decided a stock photo was in order-just as the opposing carriageway was re-opened. My image is 'at full bore'-f1.2 on an 85mm f1.2 lens to try and soak up the atmosphere without resorting to flash.