You can get an impression from some photography blogs that a certain eternally-blessed band of photographers get up in the morning, in their lovely Hipster-apartments in a fashionably rough part of New York, decide “I’ll take a photo today!”, call up their unfeasibly beautiful bezzie who is free to model and has a conveniently large wardrobe to choose from, then they go to a perfect location which is free of passers-by and dog walkers, the lighting is perfect, the weather is perfect, the shoot goes swimmingly (and, indeed, perfectly), then its home to edit the pics in the comfort of their tastefully-furnished studies, and send them off before chilling with a bottle of wine whilst numerous picture editors fight for the right to publish their pictures whilst throwing money at the photographers.
Whether the above is true or not is a moot point; it tends to be a scenario I (Ben) think about, whilst then also thinking extremely rude thoughts about the mythical photographer in question, usually when I’m being chased by an off-the-leash dog, a train hasn’t turned up, an inquisitive copper is wondering just what the hell I think I’m doing hanging out of a tree with a camera trying for the perfect angle, or I’m up to my knees in mud in some gods-forsaken forest trying to assemble a flat-packed armchair for a photograph. It’s the little things which keep you going in this job.
When we started this blog, we intended it to be a record of the work we’re doing, and something of a detailed (probably too detailed) look at the practicalities which go into the photoshoots we do- good times and bad, failures and successes, all the stuff we didn’t really get warned about when studying at various colleges but which we discovered along the way.
OR to put it another, less long-winded way; sometimes things go spectacularly Tits Up when we are doing a shoot.
For a while (say, three or four years) I’ve been wanting to do a shoot for my long-running “Project: Inflate/Deflate” series. This is an abstract shoot using simple lighting and inflatable toys- see above. So far I've done shoots in an improvised home studio, in a proper studio, outdoors in a forest, with people, and actually at the seaside using underwater cameras. A logical experimental extension was to shoot some pics to the original ethos (like the shot above) but outdoors, at the beach.
I was on the verge of shooting it when we ended up prioritising “The Home Is…” shoot, and all the added complications there. And then with that done, we unexpectedly became sudden Foster Carers. This rather limits the time you can spend at night shooting pictures (especially when both yourself and your assistant/fellow photographer, to whom you are married, are needed to be sat inside babysitting). On the rare occasion you can actually be at the seaside with some handy other DBS-checked family members to babysit, you end up getting stuck into other projects which need to be photographed instead as a higher priority, such as the Dalek Project…
At the tail end of this summer we managed to get to Wales, and the metaphorical (if not the actual) stars aligned for a chance to do a shoot; the weather was forecast to be good, Amy could do her star-scape shots, I could shoot this project finally. We had found the perfect beach (near a car park, pretty damned deserted) when we did the Dalek shoot, so we returned there, right at the end of August. The baove shot, from that last visit, shows the location.
And oh buggeration, the weather was awful on this visit in summer 2016, in spite of the forecast, and too rough and blustery to shoot the pictures. Attempt Two the next night found our ‘deserted’ spot from last year swarming with Local Youths enjoying a bit of alcoholic end-of-summer fun, so we wisely left, a little frustrated. Trying to explain to a teenager who has half a bottle of Jack inside them why you need them to stop pratting around in front of your camera is not an experience either of us intend to repeat after our experiences in Carlisle, so we beat a hasty and slightly vexed retreat.
So this half term looked like it would provide the opportunity for the long-planned shoot. I went back to the beach, another shot from the time of the Dalek shoot is shown above, as I didn't manage to get any shots on it this time (and Amy having seen the weather forecast, knew it would be overcast, and had wisely chosen a film and a bottle of red over standing in the cold photographing blow-up toys), and I discovered to my intense irritation that once again the weather forecast had missed out the bit about on-shore gales meaning it was too windy to photograph anything, and the end of the beach was once more swarming with Youths getting inebriated. I don’t know, back in my day that’s what The Kids used bus shelters and railway stations for. Tssk.
So I thought ‘while I’m here, I’ll have another crack at a different older project’ and went up to the small station, for a shoot from 2014’s “Project: Night Trains”, especialy given the station was mysteriously free from boozing youthery (see above). Essentially long exposure pics of trains in the dark, see above from Hirst Wood in Yorkshire, this project is something I haven’t touched for a while, but figured I could do a new shot. Here by the beach in Wales the station, with the line curving in along the coast, would give a good high angle for a shot off the road over bridge. However the vagaries of public transport out here on the raggedy edge of civilisation in the autumn mean the trains are both underfunded and sporadic. A quick check of the online timetable revealed that it would be a little while until the next train.
No bother, up to Harlech then; the drive would kill some time, and the floodlit castle would be a nice background. Arrival presented a worryingly quiet station even by the standards of West Wales, and indeed a telescreen cheerfully announcing a replacement bus; which of course, was not there and thus must have been itself replaced, possibly by a bicycle, clown car, Pegasus, or ‘if in emergency, use Portal Gun’ option (which might explain where the taxpayer subsidy goes, as it is clearly not on the scruffy trains) so not even an ironic photo could result. The next train would be quite some time away.
Feeling thoroughly bloody irritated now, it was up the coast to the new bridge at Penrhyndeudraeth where the road parallels the railway, on a curve, and which would give potentially a good shot. I used this location a while ago (actually a long damned while ago, thinking about it, as I was still in Uni) and it was a good spot.
Naturally I arrived and the Cliffside I intended to use was fenced off. It also started to rain. A greater metaphor for my mood there could not be, unless a passing plane accidentally dropped a grand piano or anvil on my head.
Feeling like I needed to photograph something, anything, out came the camera, and I shot some pics of the cars, probably to the annoyance of the speeding motorists who maybe thought I was some sneaky fuzz with a fancy night-vision speed gun. Oh the car crashes I could have caused if I’d had my high-viz in the camera bag too, and still been driving the old, white car.
But the train finally came, and the shot was… meh. Without a remote control (preparedness; nil, packing-in-a-hurry; 1) it was tricky to set the camera up properly, and it had to be braced in the breeze too. If reshooting, I would do a shorter exposure time to get some detail of the train, but with no other trains for three hours, I decided to go home and have a drink.
But what was this? An unexpected steam train on the Ffestiniog Railway on the way home! Thank goodness for that staple of the Desperate Tourist Industry Off-Season, The ‘Halloween Special’. Having passed the train near the caravan, it was a Top Gear-style race against the train back to Porthmadog (with less illegal speeding, jingoistic comments, or tight jeans), with an intention of Just Bloody Photographing Something. Arrival at Harbour Station immediately before the train allowed me to set up the tripod and the camera and shoot the arrival... just about.
As you can see, the loco (either "Linda" or "Blanche", both are pretty near identical, and it was too dark to see the nameplates) was bedecked with creepy glowing eyes for the occasion, which added a nice note of spookiness to the evening.
Mind you, I suspect the driver found the unexpected presence of a couple of cold, slightly wet midlanders standing in the dark with a camera equally disturbing. Even though the track is unfenced for most of its length, and the railings only extend to the end of the station limits, we made sure we stayed thoroughly the right side of the railings (I don't go in for trespass shots anyway, but I wanted to reassure the driver that I was safely on the right side of the fence)
Little bit fuzzy, but I was trying for the car on the road side of the Cob, just as an experiment.
So not the perfect evenings shoot by any means, but at least I’d photographed something. It did at least relieve the frustrations of the evening, with the bad weather, crap locations, and fate getting in the way of the shoot.
But did I manage the Inflate/Deflate shoot before the end of the holiday, with only two nights left in 2016 to shoot the pics at the seaside?
Dah-dah-daaaaaaaaahhhhm! (Drama, honestly this stuff just flows onto the page doesn’t it?)
Yes. Yes I did. A slightly less-rambling post about that next time...
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