I’ve met some amazing people through photography. Lovely, kind, interesting, exciting people. Some have been billionaires and some homeless and living in a hole in the ground by a railway station. Rich and poor alike, they’ve enriched life for Jayne and I in one way or another. And it’s disturbing to think that if we didn’t do photography and film making we wouldn’t have met them.

I’m realising how this ‘network’ can expand almost exponentially when photography is combined with the web. Last night I was sitting in my office, tired to the bone after working two fifteen hour days in a row, worrying about all sorts of things and feeling sorry for myself, when the phone rang. A soft spoken guy introduced himself as Terry and hoped he wasn’t interrupting.

Terry is a photographer and web designer and he just called to say he’d discovered it was possible to access our downloadable photography courses then download them without paying! He talked me through the process so I could see for myself, told me how to fix it (I do all our web stuff and believe me – I’m no expert!), then this morning he emailed me a bunch of good stuff to help me with the site! What a lovely guy.

Thank you Terry (www.RedTed.co.uk)

PS: And thank you to all of you lovely people out there who’ve taken the trouble to send in an email to say hi or a testimonial about our photography courses (check out Digital Photography Exposed there’s loads)

Best wishes to all…

Mike

Last Friday I was commissioned to photograph a pre-wedding Polo match. (‘Pre-wedding’ functions are becoming very popular by the way. They’re a  great for getting all the guests to meet so they’re not strangers on the day and get on with mingling properly right from the word go!) As a mainly documentary photographer who’d never even been to a Polo match before, I was looking forward to it immensely.

The event was very much a social do with over a hundred guests drinking beer and Pimms and enjoying nibbles. Twenty of them would be playing and the rest spectating, so not only would I have to shoot the action, I’d have to be on the look out for candid shots of people having fun as well.

Now because I only do shoots in nice weather, it was hot and sunny. But this presented a few problems. The sun was to the west and the Polo field was lit end to end from the side. If the players charged off to my left they were facing straight towards the sun, and to the right they were facing away from it. Polo players wear white trousers - some wear white shirts as well, the horses were predominately dark as was the backdrop of trees, so all in all we had all the ingredients for the biggest bowl of ‘super high contrast’ you ever did see!

Normally at a social function I’d control contrast by shooting into the light so my subjects would be backlit or by using fill in flash, but shooting with a 300mm lens meant the players were too far away for fill in flash to work. If I hung around the spectators to catch the people pictures - the players would be horribly side lit, and if I went to the end of the field to back light the players - the spectators would be too far away for me to capture anything interesting.

After a few minutes shooting the players and getting loads of rubbish shots with masses of burnt out highlights, I thought to myself, “OK time out! Calm down and think for a moment.” A few deep breaths, some objective thought and it became obvious what I had to do. Nothing photographic - it was simply a case of planning.

burnt out highlights as players ride towards the sun

By moving to my right (away from the sun) and going just beyond the eastern end of the stands I could back light everyone and still catch the action. Let me explain. When the players were to my left (the western end of the field) I could shoot the Polo action without ‘burn out’ because I could shoot into the sun and the players were backlit. When the players passed to my right (so the sun was behind me) and into the direct sunlight, I shifted my concentration onto what was going on in the spectators area. Players to my left – photograph them; players to my right – photograph the spectators.

Even when we’ve been doing it for years and years, all of us photographers are learning more all the time - from each other, by going on courses, reading books etc. But it’s getting out there and practicing that increases our experience and makes us better photographers.

In our photography courses the exercises are there for this very reason. In ‘Digital Photography Exposed’ Jayne and I ask you to stick bits of tape to broom handles in the ‘Camera Shake’ exercise, and suggest you get on the ground with a wide angle lens in the ‘Lie In A Ditch!’ exercise! And here’s why. It’s all very well reading about techniques, but putting them into practice is where the ‘gold’ of experience is found.

It’s the same for me too. Next time I have to shoot a social Polo match I’ll know exactly where to begin because I’ve had the experience. So do yourselves a favour and get into action with the exercise sections of our photography courses. If you don’t have any exercise sections and are wondering what on earth the ‘Lie In A Ditch’ exercise is – go to our photography courses site and get yourself a copy of Digital Photography Exposed. And don’t worry – you don’t have to actually get in the ditch unless you really want to!!

Happy shooting till next time…

Mike Browne

As we said yesterday, this is our new blog, and we’re going to be putting some of the hints and tips that are on the main site into the blog instead, so look out for those. The other good thing about a blog is it can be interactive. So if any of you want to start posting comments about the courses you’ve bought, or commenting on our postings, this is the place to do it. We’d love to grow a forum of really useful information, and this is probably the starting point.

We’ve been asking for some of your photos too - what you’ve been achieving after having followed the course. We still need to investigate it, but we think you may be able to post them directly here when you make a comment, so that would be great.

More to find out about this blogging lark obviously, but we’ll let you know. By the way, the way to write a post is to click on the thing below which I think says ‘no comment’s’ at the moment.

looking forward to hearing from some of you,

Bye for now,

Jayne and Mike

Hello everyone. If you were following our old blog, you will have noticed we’ve changed! Unfortunately the whole site got overtaken by viagra ads and the like, so we decided to take it down rather than end up being swamped by whoever looks for such things. Anyway, we’re back online and this may or may not be our final layout. We’re just doing a bit of experimenting with design to make this blog easy to use (for us and you!)

So whilst we’re figuring out the blog, we’re also busy writing the next course which is ‘Wedding Photography Exposed’, which we’re hoping will be out early summer, so keep an eye out for that.

If you’re in the uk (or maybe fancy a holiday here) Mike is also now running ‘one to one’ training days in the New Forest, which are proving to be very popular, cos you get a professional photographer entirely at your disposal for the whole day to explore whatever you need to. Email us at mike@picture-this.tv to find out more.

That’s it for today, still trying to work our way around this - how to upload images and videos for starters!  Er actually just worked that out …..

Cheers, Jayne and Mike