Last week I spent 3 days at Henley Regatta, I’d been for a day last year and knew it was an event I wanted to go back to. I wasn’t very interested in the rowing itself as photographing boats going by every 10 minutes gets very boring very quickly. There were guys there who sat on the little photographers pontoon-y thingy churning out images of every boat all day long. I did it one morning when there were some GB crews competing and nearly died of boredom. So I spent most of my time either walking up and down the river looking for photos or wandering around the boat tents and launch area. Overall I wasn’t that pleased with my work from last week, there was some alright stuff but nothing that stood out portfolio wise. The highlight of the week came right at the end of Sunday when the Abingdon crew, having won their final, returned to the boat tent. It was the first bit of emotion all week and they had a huge number of supporters on the banks. I was lucky enough to get a nice big picture of the day in the Independent with the last image so was pleased with that.
Excuse the lack of blogs but have been pretty busy lately and finding blogging a bit of a chore. Will put up some recent cricket soon… Meanwhile there is some recent cricket work on my website at www.harryengels.com
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Here are some photos from the weigh-in for the rowing varsity on Saturday. Pretty odd thing to photograph but some of the pics are alright. Really looking forward to shooting the races from the referees launch on Saturday.
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I’ve been meaning to play around with the video on my camera for a while but never really got round to it. I much prefer making stills at the moment so I find it hard to force myself to try video. Anyway I went down to rowing on Saturday with the aim of shooting just video. The light was great and I would’ve loved to have shot stills but I made myself persevere. I’d read about the basic rules to do with dslr video a while ago so I was ok on the technical front. The only thing I found tricky was focusing in such bright light, you could hardly see the lcd screen so half the video wasn’t sharp which was a shame. It was really foggy when I got there about 7.30 but by the time we were on the water the sun had burnt through which was a shame; the light was still great mind. So all the video was shot on a 7D with a 16-35, 50 and 70-200 lens. Pretty hard keeping the longer lenses stable in the launch so didn’t use them much.
I edited the entire thing in imovie. It was the first time I’d used it and it was a breeze to use. Everything was easy to pick up and although its by no means a complicated edit, it was pretty simply to make. So here’s what I’ve put together using the footage from Saturday morning. It’s work in progress more than anything as I’ll keep going back to shoot more footage and hopefully put something more cohesive and impressive together in the future. I converted everything to b+w as I just thought it looked better and music is open your eyes by snow patrol. I purposefully chose a song I don’t like too much as I’m sick of hearing it now after all the editing! Oh and try and watch it in HD, the quality is much better.
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Saturday, February 19th 2011
Spent yet another afternoon on the river photographing rowing training on Wednesday. The weather was great but now the sun is setting later in the day it was a bit early for the really golden light that there’s been in the past. It’s a challenge trying to get something different now I’ve been quite a few times and thats why the light is so important. I’ve really taken to photographing rowing and I’m enjoying it more and more every time I go. As I’ve said it’s a challenge trying to make a good picture and I love the creative freedom that comes with shooting personal work. No ones telling me what to shoot or how to shoot it, I can do it exactly how I want. I like the idea of specialising in shooting a small number of sports and I reckon rowing could be one of them. Its something a bit different that not many people shoot well and it would be nice to be known as the ‘go to guy’ for rowing. I first got interested in photographing rowing after seeing the work of Richard Heathcote. He covers quite a bit of Oxford and Cambridge rowing training as well as the Boat Race and I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from his work.
Anyway I won’t bore you with lots of pics so here are two which came out quite nicely. I’ve put the one below in B+W on the front of my portfolio. For some more recent rowing (+ other stuff) check out my recent work gallery.
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Tuesday, January 25th 2011
I went down to rowing training again on Sunday morning. The weather was cloudy and the light was rubbish so didn’t really get anything worthwhile. I kept pushing the shutter speed down and down though and came out with one pic that was shot at 1/4 of a second that I quite like. The welly pics are pretty random but I saw them all lying around at the side of the river and thought they’d make a nice little sequence.
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