Getting all Historical

By shendyNo Comments
Thinking about published photos of mine, it reminded me of by far and away my most successful picture. This is legendary Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee being carried off the pitch in Northampton in 1988, after he'd slipped and knackered his ankle ligaments. Basically, I scooped the world on this one. I was the only person on the ground with a camera on a fairly dull day in a match against Leicestershire. I offered the photo to the resident journalist from the Chronicle and Echo, and they published it on the front page. It was also printed in Wisden and Cricketer magazines. I must have made all of £30-40 out of it. Mind you, to a student 22 years ago, that was a decent bit of cash! And it's in Lillee's autobiography "Menace". When the book came out, I just happened to see it in Borders and had a flick through. And blimey, there was one of my photos! I rang up the publishers and...
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Flinty Red

By shendyNo Comments
Forgot to post this lot. I've been developing the website for Flinty Red, the restaurant opened by wine merchants Dominic and Rachel from Corks of Cotham and chefs Matt and Claire (formerly of the Lido and QV), and went along in January to take photos for it. I started with an exterior, based on the shot of the Corks frontage that the late Pete Chinn did for them - you can see the final cropped version on the "how to find us" page of the website. It was an ideal opportunity to take the photo as the Indian restaurant over the road was closed for refurbishment, and the neon lights in their window reflected in Flinty Red's - it was impossible to get a shot without a garish purple reflection somewhere. We then moved on to an interior shot, which took several goes to get the waitress blurred but still visible. Really pleased with this one, which appears on the front page of the...
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Welsh Wales

By shendyNo Comments
We've been spending a few days in Welsh Wales - the weather has been pretty good, but it's been damn cold. It's bloody May - it shouldn't be this flamin' cold! First up was Manorbier in Pembrokeshire. We've heard how lovely it is - it wasn't. Might have been something to do with the Arctic gale blowing, but we didn't hang around for very long. There's a surprisingly pristine castle, but it's not National Trust so we were buggered if we were going to pay to get in... After that, we went to Colby Woodland Garden, which *is* National Trust. Quite nice, with a reasonable walled garden, but nothing desperately exciting. When we were in Wales in September, SWMBO was trying to find a beach on the Cardigan Bay coast that she visited as a child. We've been to about half a dozen of the damn things now, and we still haven't found it. I suspect that the passage of 30 years has...
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Getting creative

By shendyNo Comments
A bit of experimentation following a chat with a friend - try and photograph water drops. Pretty easy to do - poke a small hole in the lid of a plastic bottle and an even smaller one in the bottom of it - that provides the drips. Gaffer tape it to a tripod that's sat over a bowl of water. A single flash off to the side works pretty well, and then a bit of colour from some card/paper under and behind the bowl. It worked pretty well, but looked a little bland. The stroke of genius was adding orange squash into the water! Another way to do it is apparently to drip milk into ordinary water. Setting it all up is pretty easy - the hard bits are first of all focusing correctly and then getting the timing right. But, once you work out the timing, you can get really good results... ...
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