Magazine cover concept

Magazine cover concept, a photo by Pat MacInnes on Flickr.

It's always exciting when editors work with you on a concept, especially when it comes to covers that push the envelope.

Traditionally, our fishing mag covers have always featured a man with fish, a man with a net of fish, or on odd occasions, a man playing a fish. However, the new editor of TCF really wanted to create a 'hero' shot that would stand out on the crowded newsstand so we took our lead from an issue of Field & Stream where a hunter was nicely lit holding his hunting equipment. We decided to use a different kind of 'hunter', well-known predator angler Mick Brown.

The studio space at work is 'bijou' to say the least so we had to work around the amount of working area; to camera left are two 24" soft boxes stacked on top of each other to replicate a strip box for soft fill, and you can see the other two lights and what they're achieving.

There's obviously a considerable crop taken place to fit the image on the cover, plus some heavy Photoshopping. However, as a cover that stands out from the crowd I'm really pleased with what we achieved.... sales will tell if we made the right decision, but nonetheless we've produced something we can be proud of.

*Nikon D7000
*Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8
*ISO 100
*1/250th @ f/7.1

Robin

Robin, a photo by Pat MacInnes on Flickr.

Just a quick snap from today's feature with Bob Nudd for UK fishing magazine, Total Coarse Fishing.

This cheeky little robin was doing the usual winter trick - look cute and then steal maggots form your bait tray. I couldn't begrudge him that when he was so willing to model for the camera!

*Nikon D7000
*Nikon 70-200mm VR
*ISO 1600
*1/320th @ f/4

New Toy...

I've been after a small HD camera for ages after seeing a friend's GoPro Hero. Thankfully, at a recent angling trade show I chanced upon Ultra Sport Europe (http://www.ultrasporteu.com), who were displaying fishing kayaks but also distribute Contour, one of the main rivals to GoPro. I'd heard about these cameras but didn't know the spec and to be honest, wasn't sure on what spec was required; all I knew was I needed a small HD camera that could be attached to a fishing rod, submerged in the margins or secreted somewhere out of shot to get cuts that could be edited into DSLR footage.

Anyway, I ended up ordering one (thanks to USE for giving me a bargain price) and today it turned up. So what are the initial thoughts? Well, it's a simple camera, as these units tend to be because they're being operated by skiers, rock climbers, surfers (etc) who all have limited time to be faffing around with buttons. Build-wise it feels like it'll take some abuse and one great plus point is that it's waterproof straight of the box - no underwater housing is required if you want to give it a quick dip, which is what I want for filming fish coming to the net. There is a housing for deep work but I believe that as it is, it'll be safe for a metre of so of submersion.

I'll have to do a bit of reading up about changing modes and frame rates - there's no real instruction manual supplied - but other than that, it seems a logical product. There are two sticky mounts for attaching it to hard surfaces such as helmets, cars, stuff like that, but there's a pole clamp that'll I'll get on order for getting on-rod action of anglers fishing. For the time being I'll mount it on a landing net pole and use it like that.

I just now have to hope that I get to venues that have clear water - in reality many of the venues I'll be visiting over the winter will suffer from colour due to excess rain, but fingers crossed that I'll start getting great underwater footage ASAP....

REVIEW: Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S

I rented this lens as an addition to my own 70-200mm, simply because the event I cover (Evesham angling festival) requires me to get a lot of shots from across the river and at time, the 70-200mm just hasn't got the reach.

I rented this lens from Lensesforhire on a four-day rental for about £40 (plus return delivery costs).

The lens comes in a well-made, padded case that gives a snug fit around the lens and features a shoulder strap.

The lens came equipped with a high-quality UV filter for protection.

First impressions of the build quality are excellent; as solid a lens as I've handled, it's actually smaller than I thought (the same size as the 70-200mm) and marginally lighter. There's an integral lens hood that slides out and locks in place with a twist.

I used it with a D7000, which is felt well balanced with. The manual focus grip is tactile and very large so can be gravid easily (I use a lot of MF for video work).

AF for stills is precise and quick, as good as the 70-200mm. Absolutely no complaints at all in that department.

Image quality is top-notch as you can see below from the full shot and the crop I've done in Lightroom.

(EXIF: ISO 800, 1/800th @ f/5.6)

This shot was taken on a tripod (I was videoing at the same time) but even shooting handheld, without the aid of VR, which doesn't feature on this lens, I was getting sharp shots every time down to 1/200thsec. Of course, handling technique dictates how low you can go, not the lens, but the lens feel really easy to handle and promotes steady shooting at low shutter speeds.

I had to apply -15 AF fine tune adjustment but once that was applied, even at f/4 it was sharp. I wish I'd done a test at various apertures but as I write, it's in the post winging its way back to LFH.

I knew I'd like this lens going by the favourable reviews, but within minutes of using it I knew it would be a lens that I'd have to get at some point soon. I love zooms and it's peculiar using a telephoto prime where you're so limited in the angle of video, but as a lens to get you extra reach it's a very good option for very little money - 10/10 in my opinion.

More work! Yes please....

Back in February my boss, with an ever-increasing workload of film-based project, he asked me to expand my job role from just stills to taking on filming and editing duties. I’ve done a little bit of filming over the past few years (but no editing) so it was something new that would hopefully allow me to capture parts of a shoot that stills just didn’t do justice. He was adamant that it was as simple as me being able to take a photograph qualifying me to take up filming – I saw it in a more complicated fashion.

For one, I knew nothing about editing, other than some rubbish holiday clips I’d done on my phone. I knew the edit would be the key to good film-making (for our needs) and not just relying on taking some jazzy shots. The other concern was that I knew our (then) video cameras were pants; consumer levels jobs that captured on HD but had poor autofocus and limited focal range, adding to a small sensor that would limit creative use of depth-of-field. For that I new I had to shoot with a video-enabled DSLR so a long story short, I ended up with a D7000 to replace one of my D2x bodies (I’ll write a review at some point)….

So far I’ve enjoyed shooting more and more video as I’ve become confident with the equipment and more confident in knowing what shots I want (and need) to take back to the editing suite. I’m using Final Cut Pro X, a ‘marmite’ piece of software in editing circles; personally, aside from performance issues that stemmed from too little RAM in my MacBook Pro, I’ve found it to be a decent buy, although I’m finding the built-in default effects and transitions a bit basic at times – Apple’s Motion and Adobe After Effects are next on my learning list – but for piecing together 60-second clips for our magazine apps, it does the job quickly and efficiently.

As far as the equipment goes, I only recently turned on to the idea of DSLRs as serious video kit. A mate had a 5D2 for the last few years but rarely used the video function. I don’t like the 5D2 as a camera anyway so never wanted to investigate its ‘dark side’, despite so many reports of it being an awesome video machine. More and more cameras have come along featuring HD capture, although Nikon have been slow on the uptake, with the D7000 and D3s being the only models of note that were seriously useable. Now, I’m sold on the technology… but it’s not without its faults: a lack of built-in audio monitoring on the D7000 is a pain, although erring on the side of caution (mic set well away from mouth, mic level set to ‘1’) seems to work well enough, and the lack of aperture control in manual mode during Liveview being two main hurdles. Mind you, for an £800 camera it is still impressive and the quality is more than adequate. I’m sure the recently announced D600 will improve on these faults….

One thing that has captured my imagination when it comes to filming (aside from those jazzy angles I mentioned earlier!) is the plethora of kit that’s available – dollies, stabilization gadgets, cool microphones, follow focus rigs, LCD magnifiers…. loads of stuff that will keep me skint for a long time but will ultimately help me find my creative ‘mojo’.

I’ve got a few interesting ideas floating around in my head for work and for personal projects, although at the moment I’m pretty much just focusing on honing technique and getting fully to grips with making film-making as automatic as stills photography has become.

Here’s to learning and evolving, things that are essential if you’re going to make it in this business….

It's good to cheat....

I have no qualms about using digital manipulation to get a shot to work. I many cases, it's a simple adjustment of levels or fill light to lift shadows (my usual style) but on occasions I'll do a proper cheat to make a shot have additional impact.

Today I was out for a carp fishing magazine and with the weather being crap, we had tiny windows in-between the rain to get shots done. One shot on the list was feeding bait into the margins. I knew the focus was on the splash of the bait so threw the angler out of focus in the background using f/2.5. Unfortunately, when you're working quick like this you do hit upon mistakes that you don't realise until you get back to base.

In this case the best splash had the angler, Rik, with his throwing arm by his side so it just looked like some random stuff hitting the water. I knew I had another shot with his arm outstretched so that was a good starting point to do a merge.

I rarely use a tripod because I work quickly so there was obvious discrepancy in the angle of the horizon between shots. Thankfully, I'd shot wide to give some room for cropping. However, with the wind howling, the reeds where the bait was hitting was blowing all over the place and didn't stay still between shots.

The one point that was the same was where some reeds came out of the water (middle right) so this was the 'anchor' point, so to speak. If this point was lined up in both shots then i could work from there.

In Photoshop I overlaid the shots then applied a layer mask so I could uncover parts of one shot yet leave in bits of another. This merge is relatively straight forward; a gradient mask and then a bit of brushwork to tidy things up. The result is acceptable and although it's been Photoshopped, I don't class it as a fake - it's just a shot that I improved from circumstances that were hard to shoot in.

Making A Magazine Feature

I'm often asked just how many photographs do I take and how is it decided which images make it into the mag? The latter is pretty much up to the editor, and to a lesser extent, the designer. But I can influence the images they have to choose from during my editing phase.

I'm quite trigger-happy while I'm out on shoots, working on that little-known adage of 'more is more'. I ALWAYS make sure that I have more images than I need, whether that's the same shot from a variety of angles, or just different exposures of the same shot, with differing light, aperture values and ISOs thrown into the mix. It's all about covering your arse as much as possible and making sure that you give the editorial staff and design team enough material to work with. Keep them sweet and things are good!

To explain, I've revisited a shoot I did at the start of the year;

The angler, Ade Kiddell, is experienced and very willing to do whatever I tell him to do, whether that's re-casting several times or just holding a fish as I want. Anglers like this are a joy to work with. A journalist was in attendance - I rarely do any editorial writing these days - so that also made my life a bit easier because we could talk about the brief on the way there and adapt it as we saw fit through the day.

Anyway, we'd come to the River Wensum to shoot a piece on bread fishing. The fishing wasn't going to be easy but we had a chance of chub - in fact, Ade had one pretty much straight away so that was the important part done. Thankfully, chub deal with being keep netted quite well so he was retained for more shots later. It's always nice to get at least one fish in the bag when you're doing features about bigger fish, because it puts me at ease and allows me to focus on the incidentals and sequence shots.

So, the feature gets wrapped up after having a few fish and doing all the shots we'd talked about. Job done so far but then it's a case of working out what images work best. My instructions for the the types of shots depend on the magazine; some editors want things shot in a specific manner, but most just let me take creative control. We knew a pic of a big chub would work well, especially at a time of year (March issue) when big fish weren't exactly throwing themselves on the bank to be photographed. I also had to make sure sequences were submitted, plus some incidentals of Ade fishing, casting, netting, holding up tackle etc...

The images are loaded into Lightroom 3 and then the key wording and metadata is synced, then it's a case of selection. As you can see from the screen shot, there are 139 images in this specific folder; not a massive shoot by any stretch, but enough to gee me plenty of options. The ones of out-of-focus grass and the backs of people's heads while setting up flashes are rejected and then I go through and from each set of shots, I pick the best one, giving it a five-star rating. These 'keepers' are selected by how they'll process, how the focus and depth-of-field look and whether facial expressions and such-like are acceptable.

Once I have my five-star images I then get to work doing adjustments; sharpening, fill adjustment with black point and contrast are typical ones, as is noise reduction. I rarely crop or straighten, because the designer is going to be placing the images so they may end up as cut-outs and the horizon won't appear anyway.

When I have my final set of images then they're given to the editor, either in person (on a disc or loaded onto our server), or if I'm not in for a few days then they're uploaded to dropbox and the editorial staff take it from there. Images are put over as full-size JPEGs by the way and then TIFFed later by the repro department after being corrected for print.

Then it's a case of the editor teaming the images up to the copy (the text) and submitting his final choice in a job bag to the designer with any instructions about image placement, sequences and which images are available as main (opening) images.

As you can see by the final feature, the 'grip-and-grin' of the angler with a fish made the opening spread, with sequences and incidentals over the remaining spread. Am I happy? Yes, and I know that my editing procedure ultimately influenced the images that made it into the feature. Job done :)

Peter

Peter, a photo by Pat MacInnes on Flickr.

Took this today while out on a shoot in Essex at a trout fishery.

This is Peter, he's the fishery manager and a thoroughly nice bloke. Looks-wise he's a tad rough around the edges but as far as fishery staff go, he's one of the most welcoming I've met. Oh, and he also sound like Harry Hill.

EXACTLY like Harry Hill.

All I could think about was the knitted toy and people in crazy suits having fights on stage!!

*Nikon D2x
*Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 AF-S
*ISO 100
*1/250th @ f/6.3
*SB-700 through softbox from camera left (power set to 1/8th)
*Processed in LR3

The Fishing Scientist

The Fishing Scientist, a photo by Pat MacInnes on Flickr.

An old shot I unearthed while browsing my archive.

I took this during a trip to Berkley's Gulp bait factory in southern Holland. This was a press trip so there were all sorts of people who were trying to get shots of the chief scientist called Franz (or it could have been Frank - he dazzled me with science!).

Because of the melee of journos all wanting to get something for their mags, I had to work quickly so just set up an SB-800 in SU-4 mode behind him, with an SB-800 from camera right trigered by an Elinchrom Skyport. The shoot took about three minutes from start to finish before we headed out to the coach back to the airport.

Can't rememebr the settings but it was all manual obviously.

*Nikon D2x
*Nikon 12-24mm f/4
*ISO 200
*1/100th @ f/8

Although it did the job, this is the kind of shot I look back on and think "I wish I'd done it differently". The shot is fine in general and fitted what the mag wanted, but I know now that there needed to be more fill on the labels, the ambient needed to be dialled down in the background, and a gel on the rear flash could have given it more impact.

Still, it was true 'on-the-fly' indoor shooting, something I don't get a chance to do very often....

Flatholm Island

Flatholm Island, a photo by Pat MacInnes on Flickr.

Between massive thunderstorms and epic hail (and waiting for fish to bite) I thought I'd grab a shot of Flatholm, one of the islands that lie in the Bristol Channel.

*Nikon D2x
*Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8
*ISO 400
*1/4000th @ f/5.6