photography- ignore the pain, get the shot.
Sometimes when you’re chasing a shot, it's gonna hurt.
We photographers love to talk about gear don’t we? We wax lyrical about cameras, f-stops, sensors, tripods or gear bags and all manner of cool gadgets, as soon as you find out about some obscure piece of kit you also find a myriad of blogs harping on about the pros and cons of this and that brand, even about what clothes you should wear for what ever type of shoot. We get so caught up in the gear that we can tend to forget about the machinery we use to actually use this gear- are you confused? I’m talking about ourselves.
Without generalising too much here, photographers can be on the heavier side of the scales. Face it, having a long lens and a big gut isn’t rare and I’m ashamed to say it but I was heading down this path rapidly. There are lots of reasons it happens. Too much photoshop work, too much sitting around airports drinking, too much taking advantage of the snacks in a press conference, travel that lasts weeks- the opportunities of consumption can outweigh the opportunities of sweating.
I’m only mentioning this because recently it became all too apparent at a shoot. I had been assigned to shoot pro football team The Northern Pride; I’m talking Rugby League here and for those who don’t know the code, it's fast, violent and involves a ball that isn't round. These guys are really big and built to plough into anything that happens to get in their way with a savagery usually reserved for theaters of war. Even though it was only a training session the guys train with the same intensity as a regular game. With good reason, most photography is done with long lenses far away, preferably close to a bar.
The session couldn’t have been better designed for the shoot. I'd discussed with the various coaches what the feel of the shoot would entail and got them on board with a "mother of all training sessions". I'd have a nice safe "nest" out of the way in the dunes while the team was training in and out of the water, with various quantities of torn clothing dangling off massive muscle bound guys tearing up and down the beach like errant steam rollers stopping only briefly now and again to vomit.
The guys are really cool, top blokes. The type of guys who will happily buy you a cold beer while you try to pry out the camera that’s embedded into your face when you accidentally got in the way . I knew they weren't all that happy with what I had the coaches agree to, but hey, It was an entire training session just for the shoot, I wanted amazing shots and anyway I wasn't going to be anywhere near the action.
Packing for the shoot was important. The guys would be taking up a lot of a large beach which meant that i’d be lugging my gear over sand dunes so weight was going to be an issue, and as the shoot was nearly an hours drive away there would be no running back to base camp. Into my bag goes the fast focusing man size 70-200mm 2.8, which would be the workhorse and the 24-70mm 2.8 which would cover the intimate moments, I'll be leaving the bulky but brilliant 1 kg 14-24 ultra wide at home- imagine working with that thing- suicide! I considered grabbing the old 70-300mm VR but, I was feeling lazy and didn't want to lug the diminutive 300 gram plastic workhorse; I was going to use the man-size man-lens 70-200 2.8 and anyway 200mm was far enough away, and as I explained to my wife, I wanted a style that differed from the usual tele football shots -famous last words, I still recall my wife telling me that I’d regret not taking the 300mm. I quickly scanned my bag, zipped it and ran out the door.
When I got there I noticed to my horror what I thought was my 24-70 was in fact the 14-24mm. Bugger. How I managed to stuff up that- I remember taking out the 14-24, putting the 24-70 in my bag, taking out the 70-300, mansplaining to my wife, putting the 14-24 in, taking… oh damn. That meant the close up shots were pretty much out the window as the 14-24 is a very wide lens and getting any size of a subject means you have to be literally a couple of feet away - not a couple of dozen feet. No sweat, I'll just do long shots. I go through the startup procedure for the shoot and- POP, the autofocus on the 70-200mm fails. Nothing, Nada. As my eye sight is quite terrible there was simply no way of getting the shot with manual focus, and as there was simply no way of getting out of this shoot it meant I was going get nice and cosy with the 14-24mm. Really cloooose, in the action. Right beside guys who knew I had signed off on their training session to be the "mother" of all training sessions.
We have a saying about guys this big, “Built like brick Sh*thouses”, or “fridges with eyes”, these guys run faster uphill in sand than I can run downhill on concrete with roller-skates and a back-breeze. The Northern Pride were enjoying an impressive winning streak and the intensity of the training session is a testament to their success. I took over 1600 photos. Most of them are pictures of my feet as I’m desperately running away from impending doom. Just how I managed to keep in one piece and end up free of sand and water is beyond me. I can say that at the end of the shoot I staggered from the beach and wondered if I’d ever stop feeling pain. My legs were a burning knot of fire, my arms could barely hold the camera and I was sure I was missing a lung. My original idea of capturing “intimate moments” of the players showering and changing at the beach was scrapped in favor of laying under a coconut tree trying to catch my breath and waving down any passing ambulances.
Ironically I think that the shoot succeeded despite the tele fail. Without that hic-cup the shots would have been tamed and basically the same as every other shoot of man beasts. My biggest problem was traversing the landscape & dodging the human bulldozers, and that’s where keeping in shape comes into its own. There are lots of activities out there, strap on your camera and take care of yourself, otherwise you’ll just be a sad sak photog lamenting the shot that got away. Till next time- stay in focus! 