The Ducks Photo Blog

I don’t normally post much about the product stuff I do. Basically its not that interesting looking at images that the only aim is to take a clear, well lit shot. Sometimes however I do get the opportunity to get creative. I am working with a new cosmetic company called Thea Skincare (http://www.theaskincare.com/) and here are a couple of test shots that I have been working on. Apparently the labeling will change when I come to shot the final images. Product photography doesn’t always need to be boring!

I’m a sucker for panned shots I just love them. So when a few weeks ago now a fellow photographer Ross Ianson (you really ought to check out his work on www.speedhunters.com as its very good indeed. Particularly his British Drift Championship stuff) posted a shot of his on Facebook where he was trying, and very nearly succeeded to achieve a 1 second panning shot.

So the challenge was set just how long could you go to achieve a usable panning shot?

Shot one
ISO at 160
Focal Length 70mm
Apeture  f/29
Shutter Speed 1/40 second

Which gives a sharp usable image, very nice. But I still feel I can go slower. However I have one problem which I am up against. I am shooting in the middle of the day on a pretty sunny day. But never the less lets see how far we can go.

Shot Two
ISO at 100
Focal Length 81mm
Apeture  f/25
Shutter Speed 1/30 second

Now there’s not much difference here as the ISO and aperture changes has balanced out the shot its the shutter speed that is really starting to make a huge difference as now we are fairly and squarely in tripod territory. I’m not sure I like it as its neither here nor there in my opinion. But I still wanted to see how much slower I could go.

Shot Three
ISO at 100
Focal Length 91mm
Apeture  f/32
Shutter Speed, 1/6 second

Now this one has an altogether different feel, almost a dreamy other worldly look to it, yes its all blurry but you really get the feeling hes moving fast and that’s what its all about. These settings were basically as slow as my kit would allow me to go given the environment. The only way I could have gone slower would be to use ND filters or welders glass. One bit of advice when you start going this slow forget looking through the camera instead practice holding the camera in front of you it will a lot steadier.

So there’s the challenge guys if you take pictures why not give it a go and see just how slow you can go I’d be interested to see what people can do.

Yesterday saw the Gumball 3000 Rally set off from London headed for Paris on the first stage of a 3,000 mile trip. Finishing in Istanbul in a week. The display of super and hyper cars taking part was quite breath taking. So enough of my ramblings here’s a selection of pictures.

One of the first cars past us was this Bentley in the outside lane and completely missing the slip road to the Euro Tunnel, he wasn’t the only one!

The guys in the Orange BMW M3 GTS were the first to hit Paris. Well done guys.

The ever awesome Bughatti Veyron, even winding down it still sounded as if it was going to devour anything around it!

A truly stunning Ferrari 599 GTO finished in chrome. Yes you read right CHROME!!!!!!!

The guys from Team Galag (http://teamgalag.com/) all the way from Saudi

This has cause a fair amount of discussion. I think its based on a Renault V6 chassis and engine. In a classic Renault 4 shell wow!

A Gumball honeymoon! congratulations and good luck guys

Awesome paint job (if you can call it a paint job!) on this Bently Continental

Don’t forget to check out my other images at www.rubberduckdoes.com/Gumball3000 . Also all the info on the rally on the offical website www.gumball3000.com. Also the best unofficial site www.gumball-3000.com which is full of everything Gumball.

Thought I do a quick review on my new Think Tank setup. I own and still use my fantastic and much loved I hasten to add Kata reporters bag. However, I find myself getting more assignments that require me to be mobile and still need to carry a fair amount of equipment and get fast access to it.

After some initial research, two brands offerings quickly presented themselves as possible solutions. Lowepro’s new S&F range and Think Tanks component systems. Both systems offering pretty much the same belts and harnesses and pouches as the other. However availability and cost were obvious factors in any decision. My choice was made for me as Lowepro in their infinite wisdom have decided not to make their range available online that and nearly everything is pretty much twice the price as the equivalent Think Tank item. Also nowhere seemed to have any stock.

So Think Tank it was to be. Now all I needed to do was to decide what components! (all these decisions were starting to get to me) I normally take a couple of bodies with a lens on each body plus another or one body and a couple of lens. I nearly always like to have a strobe close to hand as well as numerous widgets that I use in the course of working e.g. notebook, lens cloth, spare batteries and cards somewhere to put some money and my phone as well as somewhere safe for my car keys!

So  I made a list of Think Tank components that comprised of the following:

• Lens Changer 75 pop down
• Large Lens Drop in
• The Chimp Cage
• All The Other Stuff
• Skin Strobe

And to hang it all off:

• Steroid Speed Belt V2
• Pixel Racing Harness V2

BUT WAIT! ALL THIS STUFF WILL BE NOT ONLY EXPENSIVE BUT HEAVY!

OK so a slight rethink. On reflection I must be able to carry one lens, one strobe and some junk. My 100 – 400mm is pretty much the same size as my 70-200mm and everything else is smaller so why not use just the Changer 75 pop down which will hold any glass I own? Pair that with the Skin Strobe and everything else goes in the All The Other Stuff that’s the bags sorted.

Now at this point I wasn’t sure about the harness so I decided to put that on the back burner for the time being.

OK so that was decided. So how did it perform? Which let face it is the most important thing.

The first weekend of proper use for the new setup was on the Saturday to cover The Trailblazer 10km run at Bedgebury Pinetum organised by Rat Race Adventure Sports. The on the Sunday a world record endurance attempt by the Red Wheelies at Fowlmead Country park in the morning then high tail it over to Lydden Hill race Circuit to cover a SEMSEC race meet.

So on Saturday I must have covered what felt like in excess of 10km fully loaded up with 2 cameras the setup held up well and from this the thing learnt is that I don’t need to lug 2 bodies around with this setup as it’s all right there at hand. Oh and make sure your t-shirt is tucked in as even with the very padded Steroid Speed Belt a middle aged photographers saddle bags can rub and chaff like mad!

Sunday saw me shooting in two places so I decided to only go with one body this worked much better. One of the things I like about the Think Tank system is that you can opt to have elements ‘slide’ on the belt. Basically without seeing one it difficult to explain but it’s like having the bags on a rail that you can bring simply slide forward to use then push away once done.

So off to Fowlmead I went where the Red Wheelies were finishing off their 24 hour mobility scooter endurance challenge. Again having a pouch to stash the strobe when not in use rather than a pocket is just bliss as you know is its safe. Also I found here that actually running with the setup is easily doable and fairly comfortable.

I must just pass on my congratulations to the new World Record that the ladies set for the farthest distance covered in 24 hours a staggering 154 miles! verified by the Guiness Book of Records!

Then a quick dash to my second home, Lydden Race Circuit. I must admit I was most interested in how the setup would be while covering motorsport. Again pass with flying colours I walked a full lap round the outside of the circuit as well as clambering and dodging gravel splashes on the island and it all felt part of my body exactly what I wanted from it.

So conclusions are that for me there’s no looking back from a belt based modular system. Only getting the 75 Pop Down has seemed a good idea as I have used it as a drop in pouch and it fits all my lens including the larger ones with hoods one! I may well add to the setup and I think the harness might be on the way pretty soon.  The 100-400mm is pretty heavy if it’s in the pouch and spreading the load over your shoulders should minimise that. That and having something to attach a media vest to without having to wrestle myself into knots would be a bonus!

The only thing I found uncomfortable was when I had to use 2 bodies on straps no matter what strap I used, I used both my Optec straps and Sunsnipers ones and a mixture. However one solution that does interest me is the option for a SpiderPro (http://www.spiderholster.com) attachment but at time of writing its over £100 in the UK! So that’s a luxury buy (come on guys does it really cost that much?) If I can wrangle a test run I may be persuaded otherwise.

I’d like to hear peoples thoughts on this so if you have a Lowepro setup and think its better or you have a different Think Tank combination I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Now I haven’t blogged about any of the motorsport work I am doing as I want this blog to reflect the variation in the work that I do. However motorsport is becoming a sizable chunk of what I am doing so I have had a little rethink.

So as the official photographer of the Lydden Hill Race Circuit here in Kent I thought it about time I wrote a little something about what I get upto.

I don’t want this to become another in depth dissection of Rally Cross, there are other sites around that can offer you that, albeit you have to subscribe to their services!  Instead I want to portray what it’s like to shoot a variety of motorsport from bikes to cars.

Of course the first motorsport blog could not come with much more pedigree than a FIA European Rally Cross event! a full on spectacular.

15,000 spectators flocked to Lydden to watch the weekends racing

The Easter weekend of 2011 saw 68 competitors from all around Europe including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, England, Scotland and Ireland. And over 15,000 spectators converge on the Lydden Hill Circuit to watch this year’s highly anticipated opener to the European campaign.

Americas Tanner Foust was also back for a second year to pit his skills against some of the very best in Rally Cross.

Tanner Foust very fast in practice on day one

If you have never seen or even heard of rally cross here’s a very quick rundown thanks to Wikipedia

But all this apart it’s very fast some race meetings can have over 20 races in a day! Add to the mix that the super cars are as fast as F1 cars from 0 to 60! And you have an explosive mix and an entertaining spectator sport that features loads of action. The guys at Codemasters also think so as they have included Rally Cross in the new Dirt 3 Playstation and X-Box game.

So there’s all the background now onto how I spent my Easter!

My first thoughts were just of the variety of amazing cars in the paddock;  Ford Fiestas and Focuses, Skodas , VW Golf’s,  Volvo C30’s, a Renault Twingo, an insane Mitsubishi Colt a bio fuel powered Saab and not forgetting the awesome Citroen C4’s.

Toomas Heikkinen from Finland in his bio fueled SAAB 93

Bert Theunisse in his Toyota Yaris

I spent 2 days in dust shooting load spitting simply insane cars race. I had a plan of writing a blow by blow account of the weekend but you know what I’m just going to show you some images!

The British hopes for a victory in the super cars were with local sensation Liam Doran. Unfortunately his weekend was marred by engine troubles. He eventually finished a very respectible 4th

Kents own Liam Doran although dogged by engine troubles finished 4th

Norways Gunnar Hunsbedt pushing his much anticipated Volvo C30 to its limits

Kent's Pat Doran in his Ford Focus kept fans on the edge of their seats

Norway's Sverre Isachse picked up where he left off last season dominating the weekend

Norways Andreas Bakkeru on his way to an emphatic win in the Super 1600 class

Sussex based Julian Godfrey was the best placed Brit finishing a well deserved 2nd in the Super 1600 class

Lars Oivind Enerberg winning the Touring cars gave Norway a clean sweep for the weekend

Ireland's Derek Tohill the defending touring car champion could only mange 6th place in his eye catching Ford Fiesta

Many more images from the weekend can be seen at http://lyddenhill.rubberduckdoes.com.

An image from the first round of the British Rally Cross Championships 2011

If you follow my ramblings here you will know that I like to take the road less traveled when I come up with an idea. Well when I decided to shoot something simply entitled ‘Spring’ the cog in my head started to turn, very slowly!

I wanted to create something that purposefully looked false. My initial thought was to do a number of different shoots and then comp them all together in Photoshop. However tru to form I really wanted to get as much right in camera, that and I had the urge to build a set.

I have found this great local space that I can use (http://www.dadonline.eu/content/studio-space-0 for larger studio shoots, its massive, heated and has 24 hour access) This would be perfect.

Don’t ask me how or what gave me the idea but I wanted to bury a model in soil upto her neck and make it look like she was ‘growing’ out of the ground!

A quick call to the very talented, and extremly busy Emily Rose about the make-up (http://www.emilyrosemakeupartist.co.uk/) I had this mad idea to make our models eyelashes look like shoots, the quick response from Emily was  ‘sure no problem’ so that was decided then.

Obviously we wouldn’t be able to bury a model alive so I had to think of a way to make it look like it. I concocted a set that comprised of a tabletop with a hole cut out of the middle. We could then position the model and fill the soil around her.

Once I hit on the idea of the saw tables the only other thing to think about was the lighting. I wanted the final image to have a sunrise glowy feeling. This would mean that I needed a huge amount of ambient light that I could control. After a phone around I still didn’t have enough light (thanks to Alan over at Dover Design Photography for the loan of some studio heads).

This was going to need some lateral thinking. I was actually on another shoot using my Lasolite Hilite when it occured to me that I could use that as one huge diffused light source. I would then use a gelled and gridded strobe off to one side and low which I could dial up or down to give me less or more fake sunrise. I also opted to use a beauty dish directly above the model as my key.

The shot above shows the final set-up before we added our model. the boom stand on the left isn’t extended here the platform was to allow me to get above the table enough to give you a sense of standing over the ground.

This shot shows the setup with our model inplace and the beauty dish overhead as well.

I must say that Emily and her assistant Katie Searle did a truly outstanding job on the makeup.

Our model the beautiful Christina Timson also deserves a gigantic thanks not only for her patience but also for allowing me to pack soil and dead leaves around her and make to to sit still for nearly an hour until small creatures were spotted amongst the leaves!

My assistant for the day was the talented Gwen Mortimore, she also shot the BTS images above.

This shoot was always going to be a little different from my other shoots as there was just one image that I was aiming for, normally I like to have a few images that I want to get. So heres what actually came out of the camera. It was so close but didn’t have that fantasy look I was wanting

So after a little Photoshop work which included:

• the usual levels and selective colour tweaks
• light airbrushing to take out some stray soil on Christina’s face
• some skin smoothing
• hair colouring and tinting
• eye colouring along with a ‘star burst’ iris

The final image looked like this:

Apologies for not posting anything for a while but I have kind of had my hands full, namely the arrival of our 2nd daughter nearly 3 weeks early. May I just take this opportunity to introduce you to Priya Joy Bristow. She seems to be comfy in front of the camera already and doesn’t even mind the strobes!

Normal service will be resumed next week. I will be working on a behind the scenes blog from when I buried a model in soil!

For ages now I have been wanting to do a water based shoot. A fairly easy plan, except for one thing where to actually shoot it.

I did a fashion shoot for a magazine towards the end of last year at a local hotel, I got to know the manager fairly well and I just asked him if I could take over their spa sometime to do some shots. ‘Yeah sure’ was the response it was that easy. A real lesson in ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get’. So I had my location sorted at Wallett’s Court Spa and Hotel (www.wallettscourthotelspa.com). Its a very nice boutique type hotel if your ever in White cliff country in Kent not far from Dover. I highly recommend it.

I wanted to split the shoot into two parts

• A part submerged shot which should in theory get a keeper in the bag without much trouble, I always like to have a ‘if all else fails’ shot
• A splash part which would be a much harder one to control.

I wanted to try out a new MUA as well in the guise of Gemma Parnell (www.makeupbygem.co.uk) who didn’t even make that wide eye gesture followed by the word ‘you want to what’  She immediately came up with a plan for water proof make-up.

The submerged part I decided I was going to use snoots and grids to keep the light tight and focused as I wanted to get as much right in camera as possible and I also wanted the impression that the model was a dark liquid.

I must admit most of my pre-shoot preparation went on the second splash part. I wanted to create a kind of water sculpture and use some gells to colour the splashes. I quickly decided that cross lighting was the best way to achieve what I was looking for.

The lighting diagram here show the simple setup I decided on the water was to be thrown from the same side as the gelled strobe and the beauty dish should just pick out the models features and any splashes that went forward of the model.

Even so I didn’t want to leave anything to chance so I managed to persuade my 4 year old daughter to ‘suit up’ in her wet weather gear and stand still for a little while in the garden so I could test the theory. Apart from her flinching when I actually threw the water as you can see it worked all that I changed from this test shot was to dial up the gelled flash to camera left and added the beauty dish to the right hand one

The first part of the shoot I decided to shoot in the jacuzzi here are a couple of my favorites. The first one is shot using just one strobe but its gridded and high above the camera

This second one is has been snooted and brought down to thew same height as the models head

There are a few other examples of all the shoot on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/RubberDuckDoesPhotography).

Next up was the water splash part of the shoot which meant a complete reset for the lights and model so using the setup I had previously planned this is what we had

To the left Gemma the MUA and my assistant Zoe are armed with beakers of water which they then unceremoniously hurl at Amy our model. OK its a little bit more directed than that. One was aiming at her head the other her waist. I did join in for a bit but to be honest i kind of messed things up! here are a couple of the results.

Finally this shot was if I am honest was what I was planning on getting over anything else. I shot it during the last burst, after I had chimped the burst and saw this one I called time

During the evening I ran a camera doing time lapse which I wanted to use for promotional purposes. I must say a huge thanks to my mate Rowland Deem aka Roland the Bastard as I sent out a panic message to him for a sound track, I sent him a very rough version and he sent me back something which basically fitted my edit nearly exactly, dude you are truly talented!

And finally I want to thank the team again Gemma Parnell for some truly awesome (and very waterproof) makeup, Amy Roberts for allowing me to hurl water at her! (Model Mayhem ID #1394768), Zoe Nash my intern/assistant who even when given shi awful jobs did them with enthusiasm and unquestionably and lastly for Wallett’s Court Hotel for allowing me to take over their lovely spa for the evening.

Its always nice to hear feedback and peoples opinions until next time dear reader when hopefully I will have something even more unusual to tell you about.