I know two blogs in one sitting, time and tide……and all that. So while I have both on my side I thought I would just go with it.

To boldly Go….Pro

I try to keep you updated on new techniques I use to solve certain problem. For a long time now Gro Pro have been a staple of the video shoot, helping them get the shots that would otherwise be inaccessible, but their quality was just not good enough for a still. That is until the Hero 3, which now offers 12 mega pixel still images; let’s not get too excited it is far from being the pin sharp perfectly exposed high quality images rightly expected from a professional photographer. However when you just can’t get yourself in the position to get the picture, it really comes in to its own.

Let me set the scene Bear Grylls is going to stand on top of the Battersea Power station to abseil down as pyrotechnics exploded around him for the launch of his new show. I of course as any professional photographer would I asked if I could stand up there with him, errrm NO, came the answer. So to plan B, I set up a clamp with a Go Pro set take a photo every half a second and detailed where I wanted it placed. When Bear went up he set it going, here is where the finger crossing starts.

I will let you decide exactly how well this came out but as part of a set of images and for pictures impossible without it, I think it works. Go Pro I don’t know about but almost semi pro for certain.

Like a geek in a museum.

You know the phrase like a kid in a candy store, well then the title explains itself. There is just something for me about photographing historical objects. They hold so much interest, have seen so much history yet getting an exciting pictures of them can be so difficult.

The objects in question are the Cheapside Hoard, a cache of jewellery, hidden during the civil war surviving fire and plague to be dug up by builders. Perfect jewels shinning out for the soil as bright as they were when buried, now displayed by the Museum of London. The dirt gone they sparkled encased in glass, lights shining in all directions, so delicate they can only be handled with latex gloves in short a photographers nightmare, but solving them is heaven. So many possibilities, black clothes to get rid of reflections, studio lights for faces, off camera flashes creating new reflections, macro lenses bringing the detail closer. Using every piece of kit I have to bring these objects to life for the papers, the way museum brought them to life for the exhibition, the way they were brought from the ground, both exposing and preserving.

Assignments for TNR Communications@PA

TO BOLDLY GO……PRO AND LIKE A GEEK IN A MUSEUM