Christmas tree project - Lesson learnt

As a mentioned on a previous post I shot my first multimedia project. Unfortunetly I fell short of being able to complete it due to the poor sound recorded and lack of planning. One thing I have learnt is to put much more emphasis on producing good sound and having a clear idea where you are planning to take the story in terms of what sound you need. As a photographer its easy to pick up the camera and create good images, producing good sound is much more of a challenge. So as the title says, its lesson learnt and I will be better prepared next time.

Here are some images from the shoot with some of the background to the story.

A Family Affair
The Band family have been seling Christmas trees to the local community for over 30 years and making wreaths for the last 20 years. Headed up by Jean Band, who despite being in her 70's still does a tremendous amount of the manual work, three generations of the Band family work daily in the period up to Christmas to satisfy demand for their festive fare. The tree are grown locally and cut daily before being brought to the house for sale. The wreaths are all made from scratch on site.
On the day I shot a large 20 foot tree was being cut for the local pub. (A picture of the decorated tree will appear soon).

Junior Scottish Cup

I had the pleasure of shooting a whole match yesterday when I covered he Junior Scottish Cup 3rd round replay between Blairgowrie and Banchory. It was a typical cup tie with all the usual bad tackles and sending offs providing some good photo opportunities. Here are some images with more currently on my Sportsshooter page.

http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=6385

Perth Railway Amateur Boxing Club

Members of Perth Railway Amateur Boxing Club pictured during their training session on Tuesday evening at their North Methven Street Gym

This image was just shot while I was waiting for the group photo to happen. Just liked the feel of it.

Age no barrier

On Saturday morning i shot my first multimedia project on a local family business that supplies christmas trees to the local community. Hopefully I will have this completed by the end of the week and will post the results.

What was impressive was the woman in charge was Jean Band who despite being in her 70s still takes an active part in the business. By active I mean she is out there cutting down the christmas trees ready for the visiting customers. Hopefully her doctor doesn't read this as she was told to take it easy and only do light duties.

You were an inspiration Jean!

Look out for the story in this week's Evening Telegraph.

Lazy Saturday afternoon

I didn't shoot too much on Saturday. Just enough hence the title. Why? Well if you live in Perth you will realise it just kept raining and raining. So yeah I wimped out and went home early.

Anyway here is some of what I managed to get for 45 minutes shooting Junior football and rugby for press use.

Team photos

When I take team photos it tends to be 5 minutes or less before the game/match starts. Yesterdays basketball game was no different but I decided to plan something in advance to make the photos a little bit more creative than the usual team photos (Back row standing up with front row crouching in front) Although these are not technically brilliant at least I think they are a move in the right direction. Although I still think football team photos work best in the traditional way.

Perth Phoenix Cadet basketball team pictured before their game against Glasgow City played at Perth Academy on Saturday 1st December 2007.

Perth Phoenix Junior basketball team pictured before their game against Glasgow City played at Perth Academy on Saturday 1st December 2007.

The wonderful world of the high school gym

Today I decided to cover some basketball. Perth Phoenix were playing at home against Glasgow City. The matches were played at Perth Academy where they have great facilities for basketball. It is unfortunate that this doesn't extend to good lights. To achieve an usuable picture you have to push all the camera setting to the limit. So these images were shot at ISO 3200, the camera was set to manual f2.8 and 1/400 which was around 1/2 a stop under exposed to achieve a half decent shutterspeed. All images were shot with a 18-50 lens.
The other problem with this gym is lack of space to work in due to the court being a couple of feet from the walls which again leads to bad backgrounds.
Anyway believe it or not I actually enjoyed shooting the basketball despite the aforementioned restrictions. The solution will be to get a flash set up where I can light the court which is a method alot of photographers use in these circumstances. And to think I complained because it was overcast outside whilst shooting football today.