Always check and double check...

T'was way back in the eighties. I was stringing in London and providing images for some twelve different newspapers and magazines.

One particular day found me at a function for the Restricted Growth Asociation (RGA) . It was a standard job. Just get some pics of The Duchess of Gloucester with the children. I was also told that the children were not to be identified.

Bang on time, the Duchess arrived with the normal entourage including the Mayor of London and associated members of the RGA board.

I shot away with my Canon A1 and a Vivitar 283 flash (which incidentally I still have).

The duchess was being shown around by a gentleman who was also affected with restricted growth.

I took my pictures and made sure the include the aforementioned gentleman.

Afterwards, I went to take my notebook out of my bag but discovered that I had left it in my motorbike locker. Still. I knew the Lord mayor's details as I'd photographed him several times previously. Same for the Duchess of Gloucester. All I had to do was memorise the short gentleman's name and I could leave.

I approached one of the Duchess' ladies in waiting and enquired as to the name of the gentleman. She told me.

"Really?" I asked.
"Yes" she replied. "Easy to remember eh?"
"Yes" I answered and left to do another couple of jobs.

I finally got around to developing the film later that night but blame it on the fumes of the D76 developing fluid because I had a mental blank as to the correct name of the man in the photos when suddenly it came back! It certainly was an easy enough to remember name.

I left the pictures on the desk of my picture editor with the names and captioning details of everyone involved and went home to bed. right and early the next morning, I went into the newspaper offices and got talking to
the picture editor.

"Tom. Are you sure about the names on this picture?"
"Yes. Why do you ask? Is there a problem?"
"Well I think that you may have made a mistake on this gentleman's name"
"Which one?" I asked
"The chap standing by the Duchess. The short gentleman"
"Oh." I replied. "I asked his name and of of the entourage told me he is called "Winston
Churchill" that's easy enough to remember"
"You absolutely sure?" he again asked
"Like I said, it's easy enough to remember. Check it out if you want"

 Not Winston Churchill

It's a good thing that he did because when it finally appeared in print, he was given the correct name of " William Shakespeare! "

62 degrees!!

An interesting problem presented itself last week when I was on location in the small town / village of Horn on the shore of lake Constance.

My brief was to photograph the Spa area of a luxurious hotel. The spa area has recently undergone a complete refurbishment and my friend, the lighting designer, Renato De Toffol, asked me to provide images of the finished lighting.

I arrived early and scouted the location which comprised indoor pool with a lake view, a sauna and a massage area. Due to the fact that the whole complex was still in use, I had to wait until ten in the evening to begin shooting to ensure that all the guests had gone.

After a meal in the restaurant, I collected my gear from the car and bought it inside. I attached my 17 - 40 zoom to a 5d body and entered the pool area. Condensation formed all over the camera and lens immediately due to the warm humid temperature in the pool area compared to the outside.

I didn't want to wipe the lens with a cloth in case it left smear marks.  Normally, I would have left it in the pool area to acclimatise but there was no time. The cleaning crew were anxious to begin work and there was lots to photograph.

Seeing an open fire nearby, I had an idea. I held the camera pointing lens first at the flames from about 50 cm (about 19 inches)away. After about three and a half minutes, the lens had cleared and I could start shooting.

The pool area with fire

After the pool area we moved to the sauna area. I opened the door of the main sauna and a wave of very hot and dry air hit me. I looked at the LED temperature readout on the wall. It was 80 degrees. That's 176 degrees Fahrenheit!!

As I was still dressed in jeans and a T-Shirt, I decided to cool the room a little before beginning my shoot. I tried opening and closing the door to try and "waft" the air out, but the building manager came and told me not to as it would trigger the fire alarms. The temperature was now somewhat "cooler" at 62 degrees. That's 143 fahrenheit.   :o)

 Somewhat warm

There was no other option but to go in and work through the heat. I set up my tripod and the sweat immediately began running down my back, my legs and dripped off my nose. The lighting in the sauna was quite dim and it was a struggle to focus. Even the built in autofocus was finding it difficult. Eventually I found that an exposure time of 13 seconds at f13 was just about right for the conditions with the ISO set at 400.

 The finished image. 13 sec at f13 at 62 degrees.

When I finished the sauna shoot my clothes were wet through and luckily that was the end of the shoot and I could get myself back to my hotel for a shower and a well earned sleep.

Seeing your work on the internet etc is all well and good, but nothing beats seeing it printed on dead trees!!

Photography in the evening

T'was a full day of photography yesterday.

I spent the morning photographing a new lighting set up at Zaugg AG, a large construction company based in Rohrbach.

The afternoon and evening were spent about 10 kilometers (six miles) away surprisingly enough, in a another construction firm also with new premises by the name of Koenig.

Of particular importance to us was the exterior lighting provided by the company for whom I work, Regent lighting.

Dusk is the best time to photograph "night time" images as you sill get detail in the sky. Unfortunately, you only have about 20 minutes to a half an hour before it gets completely black and featureless.

Luckily, darkness is coming earlier as we draw towards the end of the year and that meant that dusk (or Dämmerung as it's called in German) is earlier. I took some twilight photos for Regent earlier this year and had to wait until a quarter to ten for it to start to get dark. Last night I began at a quarter to eight.

Luckily I have a standard exposure which I use for twilight shots. I set the exposure to 2.5 seconds at f10 and bracket one and a half f/stops each side. Then I combine all three later into a HDR which I DON'T (most of the time) Tone-Map.

Here's a picture I took of my EOS 5 on the tripod. I used my new Samsung Galaxy phone to test it^s night time capabilities.

 Taken with the Samsung Galaxy

This image however is the finished HDR picture.

Taken at 20:04 in the evening

 That's it for now. Have a great weekend.

Tom