- Skomer Island - Puffin workshop
- Keswick Beer Festival
- Fix the Fells
I decided to start with my Fix the Fells idea, as this is closest to my home in Cumbria, and would be the most challenging in terms of conditions.
March 25th
I met Tanya Oliver (author of "From High Heels to High Hills") who works for the National Trust and co-ordinates the Fix the Fells activities.
My plan is to capture a start to finish Fix the Fells project, from the helicopter dropping the stones off to the volunteers having a pint at the end of a hard day's labour. The motivation behind this idea is because I have seen and side-stepped volunteers working on a narrow ridge at altitude on Helvellyn Lower Man in dreadful weather, plus as a keen fell-walker (as keen as you can be at my level of fitness....), I benefit on a regular basis from the repair work these kind people do to the paths, not to mention the protection against erosion that everyone benefits from.
So I met with Tanya to discuss ideas:
- helicopter dropping stones - one drop a year - coming up soon
- boulders in large bags
- volunteers digging and repairing paths
- using sheep fleeces to line under the paths
- planning meeting
- meeting a couple of volunteers
- manual labour at altitude
- any interaction with passers-by (human or four-legged)
- the final "fixed fell"
- pint of the real stuff at the end of the day
Now waiting for Tanya to confirm date of helicopter drop off and projects that are available during the time I am in the Lake District.
Countdown to improving fitness so as not to be embarrassed on shooting days has begun....
March 27th
Quick research on the Internet for tips on snapping helicopters:
- use as slow a shutter speed as poss for blade movement - 1/100s or slower
- use as low an ISO as poss - 100 - to ensure body crisp and bright
- use centre-weighted metering to avoid camera taking in too much sky reading and compensating - make body bright and shiny
- consider overexposing by half to two-thirds of a stop
Question remains - what lens?? Prime, wide-angled, zoom or fish-eye? Would I have time to experiment? How long would the helicopter hover in one place for? How far into the mountains would I be lugging my kit? I like the clarity the prime gives but a fish eye could be fun? Could I get to the drop zone the day before to practise the scene?
April 19th and 20th
Helicopter days :-)
I was incredibly lucky to be able to catch the helicopter drops on the two days I had off work - previously they had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions, and I would have missed them if they had gone ahead as scheduled!
The first day was in the vicinity of Blea Tarn and the second around Fairfield summit. Both very scenic - both delivered far more than I was expecting! And I was lucky enough to be able to go up in the helicopter on the 20th to the path leading up to Fairfield :-) See my work on a narrative picture essay for more info on this!
The shooting itself was difficult - the helicopter was very dark and did not always show up very well against the purple/grey patches on the mountains. In addition, typical of the lake district, the light conditions were very variable, so things kept changing all the time. I also forgot all the tips I had looked up above, so I didn't manage to work out on the day how to get the best out of the helicopter, apart from getting the right shutter speed.
All in all though, two fantastic days, and out of the 2000 pictures I took, I definitely have a couple that I can use for the helicopter dropping off the bags, and the bags alongside the scar.
The next step is to meet up with some volunteers repairing the paths for the rest of my planned shots.
June 12th
Unfortunately, I've had to abandon my fix the fells project. The work I wanted to photograph wasn't available on the days that I had off work, so a lesson learnt here about planning! This is a shame - I got some great photos on the helicopter days, but fortunately I have been able to use them in other exercises. This is my favourite shot of the lot, although it needs a bit more processing to darken the top of the sky:
I tried my back up plan of making a narrative out of the Keswick Beer Festival on Saturday June 9th - and took a ton of photos there too. Again got some good shots, but this doesn't hold together well as a narrative. What I do have is a funny sequence that would make a great "mini-movie" in my "This is England" series, so watch this space!
So my next idea is to make a narrative around my forth coming wildlife photography workshop to Skomer Island in Wales on June 19th. This would be hard to prepare, and I have learnt from relying on my Norfolk trip last year for the Elements of Design Assignment Two, that it is a risk when you can't necessarily go back to reshoot the same image if something isn't quite right. But perhaps this is something all photographers have to deal with? I will probably take 1000s on the day, so hopefully, safety in numbers. Anyway, not really knowing the exact itinerary of the day makes it hard to predict how a narrative might piece together, so I have put together a rough wishlist, rather than a plan.
I also consulted Michael Freeman: The Photographer's Story for some tips on putting a narrative together. Reading through Freeman's definitions of kinds of stories, this would be a location/activity story (location being Skomer Island - activity being learning wildlife photography) and also a journey - to and from the island and my own journey in photography. The workshop is being led by Welsh photographer Andy Davies:
I imagine my narrative will be something like (following Freeman's Three + One theory from page 22):
Opener: meeting Andy, leaving the harbour, interaction with captain?, landscape of Skomer Island
Body: techniques covered during workshop, approaching animals, reviewing images
Closer: leaving the island, back on mainland
Key shot: much coveted picture of puffin with sand eels in beak
19th June
The day was a great success :-) Andy was brilliant - we had fantastic weather and the puffins were amazing. I had around 800 photos to look through. The difficulties were that the sun was so strong, there was a risk of over-exposing and getting burn out on the white puffin feathers. To resolve that I shot and half a stop under-exposed, which in processing I often had to change back to zero, but it minimized the burn out.
29th and 30th June
Putting together the narrative was harder than I thought. To being with, I had a few opening and closing shots, and masses of pictures of puffins. I had to think through what we had learnt on the workshop and what I had learnt about puffins and try to make them gel as an article. Also, my opening shots were not that interesting and my closing shots were taken into the sun and so plagued with glare....
My initial selection of potential photographs was 35; I managed to get this down to around 20 and put them together into a powerpoint presentation, only to re-read the instructions and realised I had to make a magazine article specifically. I then searched through all the templates on my laptop and also consulted other student blogs to see what they had done. I particularly liked Simon Lawrance's example of Ploughing Match. I eventually found a template that I could use but chose to delete the Latin blah blah blah, inserting my own text based on what I had learnt and found out on the day. I then had to get my number of photos down from 20 odd to 12. This was hard, and particularly as I was so attached to the puffins, I wanted to include them all. Having learnt from previous assignments that I needed to be more objective, I thought very carefully about each picture, what they added to the narrative and how they were composed. I tried to link them back to the Elements of Design exercises and assignment, and to be very strict about the quality of the photo.
When I was putting my narrative together, I also had a look at BBC Wildlife Magazine and National Geographic for some ideas.
Both magazines had dramatic captivating cover photos (they always do - National Geographic is known for this). This is the cover for BBC Wildlife Magazine for Summer 2013:
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| BBC Wildlife Magazine - cover photograph - Summer 2013 - taken by Dr Maurice Hornocker |
I am pleased with the results, and hope I can go back one day!
Here three of the many pictures from the cutting room floor; these were excluded because they did not fit into my narrative sequence:
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