Hit List

As I stood taking this photo of Bamburgh Castle a rather strange thought crossed my mind, I started to wonder how many iconic or very well known landscape photos have been taken within a short distance of a road or car park?

Bamburgh is a case in point.  If you look at this photo you'd think I had to walk miles to get this shot, but no the car park is to the right and behind me.

Obviously there are some locations that lend themselves to helping the photographer and Eilan Donan is one.  As a visitor attraction the car park over looks the castle and you could spend many hours there taking photos (The photo below was one of 6 taken in 5 minutes) and come away with a variety of shots.

Glencoe and Rannoch Moor is another location where you can turn up and take photos until your heart's content or the battery dies or memory card fills up.  I took the photo below on one of my first trips out with the 40d and again I didn't have to walk far.

As my thoughts go this was quite a good one and I have decided to do something with it.  On one side I am going to challenge myself to go to these locations and try to find a new and very different angle to shoot them.  But!  On the other hand I am also going to look at other well known locations where I will take the short walk to get the shoot so that I can impress you all.  At present there are two at the top of my list.

First up is the Storr on the Isle of Skye as a few factors put me off the long (well 750m)walk up a hill.  The weather being the prime factor and I am hoping this July when I head there the weather will be a lot better.

Second is a rather large location of Sutherland where I want to shoot Stac Pollaidh, Assynt, Duncansby Head etc.  I don't have any photos of this area yet so you can search on Flickr and google for examples.

Any way thanks for reading :)

Revisiting Old Locations

Yesterday I took a little trip over to Loch Lomond and decided to stop off at The Falls of Falloch.    I took the camera and tripod as I was hoping to try out a new adjustable ND filter.

I have taken a photo of the falls previously, probably two years ago in the summer time and to be honest I was happy with the shot.

However, yesterday I took several shots using a different lens and my new filter.

                                                  

As you can see there is a difference in the finished shots and some of this is down to time of day, year, light direction and so on.  I am now far happier with the shots from yesterday.

So where am I going with this you ask?

Whilst sitting in front of the I Mac and Lightroom 4 (blatant name dropping and product placement there) editing the photos last night I started thinking about why I and other people return to locations where they have taken shots they are happy with?  If you look at Joe Cornish's site you will find many photos of Roseberry Topping in North Yorkshire for  example.

If you could look at my hard drives you would find a variety of shots from Scotland and the North of England, however you will find two locations that crop up again and again.  Skye and Glencoe.

Skye (including Lochalsh) and Glencoe are easy to explain as they are in my opinion the most photogenic areas in Scotland and there is an excellent chance that the conditions you have one day will not be the same the next day or in six months

This shot of Eilan Donan has been included because it is a nice shot.  I have about 8 other shots of the castle but this is my favourite.

I took the photo of Elgol below in July 2009 and it featured in my 2010 Calendar.  It is a nice shot but given the time of day and year I was not going to get a stunning shot (in my opinion) and I've always wanted to go back.

    

On a trip up in February I took the chance to head over to Elgol and I got the shot below which I REALLY like.

Now to highlight how different the conditions can be, the photo below was taken about 5 minutes after the photo above and whilst the composition is almost the same the light conditions have changed dramatically.

As I have said Glencoe is exceptionally photogenic and since I first went there in 2001 I have always wanted to go back. The photo below was taken with a Fuji 2MP camera in 2004 and there is something about it I like.

When I decided to become serious about photography I took a trip up to Glencoe in November 2008 with my shiny new 40d, tripod etc.  One of the shots I took was this photo of Buchaille Etive Mor. Not knowing any better I stuck to shooting with Jpegs instead of RAW.  The resulting effort has an almost painted quality to it.

This photo was taken from the road by the bridge over the River Etive late one September evening in 2009.

I have also revisited locations around Edinburgh like the locations below.

The Forth Bridges

 2009

2012

 2012

North Berwick

 2009

 2011

Why do I revisit locations then?

I revisit a location because I like it (which is always good), I have a new idea for a shot there or as in most cases I rightly or wrongly believe I can take a better shot of it.

Auld Reekie Roller Girls

Last week I checked in to Facebook as you do and I was greeted by the words, "you have been mentioned..."  Anyway, I'm not one to be put off and I clicked on the mention to see a friend had mentioned me to someone from the Auld Reekie Roller Girls.

The Auld Reekie Roller Girls has three local teams ( The Cherry Bombers, Leithal Weapons and The Skatefast Club) and two teams (The Twisted thistles and Canon Belles) who compete around the UK.

So anyway, The mention relates to the bout that occurred yesterday and my friend was supposed to be going along to take photos.  She had a better offer of a trip to Cannes and Monaco.  I offered to go along and take some photos and they agreed.

Saturday came along and I decided to go in light.  Camera, speedlite and 24-105mm L series lens should do it (I did think at one point that maybe my 50mm prime lens with polarising lens may have been some use).   I arrived at 1pm and was shown in to find a few other people with cameras there, everyone has different setups and then i noticed  the light.

This (failed) photo without flash shows the ambient light in the arena and I was slightly concerned as there is very little I could do with this light.  The only thing I could do was put the trusty speedlite (ex430 II) and give it a go.

After taking the above photo I relaxed a little as I knew I could get a fairly decent shot and I experimented through the warm up.

A couple of minutes before the first half I took a gamble and went to the "safe" zone in the centre of the rink and I stayed there for the majority of the first half getting some good photos including this one of the Skatefast Club's jammers during the intro.

Once the bout got under way I got to grips with shooting a fast moving sport with very fast moving and close referees.  Several times one of them nearly took me out.  Still you need to take risks to get decent photo (so I've been told).

Anybody expecting Whip-It style slams would have been disappointed, but the pace and skill shown by the ladies was excellent and challenged me to catch action that looked real.

As the half wore on I decided to make a break for the outside of the rink (during a time out).  Here I found the opportunity for shots to be greater.

As you can see the above photo is black and white and there is a very good reason for this.  Firstly, my flash was not recycling as fast as it should (take spare batteries!) and this shot resulted in a photo with varying shades of orange as the colour.  The only thing for it was to open up lightroom 4 and see what I could do.  After lots of slider sliding I decided that a black and white image would be the best way to present the action in this shot.

The afternoon wore on and I racked up a pretty impressive 324 photos, excluding the ones I  tried out first and deleted.  I managed to catch some good action shots including the one above.

At roughly 4pm the bout finished and the victors were the Skatefast Club (in yellow), whilst the Cherry Bombers (in Red) were very valiant losers.  To be honest I lost track of the scoring but I was busy shooting and enjoying the spectacle.

Last night was spent editing the photos and I am glad to say that I actually got far more hits than misses in what I shot.

If you are in Edinburgh I would recommend a nice inexpensive way to spend a saturday afternoon is with the Auld Reekie Roller Girls.

Well....

So I did my first post yesterday and a few people read it.  Dammit, I now need to think of something else to say.

I suppose I could explain why I like taking photos and endeavouring to make a living from it.

*

Yes, that is a green chicken!.

A long time ago etc etc I was a little kid and my dad had lots of hens.  One day at nursery  we were singing old MacDonald, it got to the part where the teacher said chicken and I said I had a green chicken.   We all know what happened next.  The teacher thinking I'm more than a little crazy starts taking me round the room with the obligatory what colour is this etc?  She would then ask me what colour chickens were and my reply was always the same, yellow.  But I have a green one.

After the best part of an afternoon doing this my mum finally arrives, the teacher at this point is seriously thinking about my sanity, so she says to my mum (expecting to hear the correct reply) "Jamie thinks he has a green chicken."

 My mum says in reply, "He does."

Needless to say the next day the chicken came to nursery.

*Disclaimer, although this was the 80's no animals were hurt in the process of breeding a green chicken.  I do think that it may have ended up as dinner when it grew up though.  Sorry to any veggies reading.

What does this have to do with who I am etc?

Firstly, this photo in its simplicity is genius as everything is natural (even my dodgy haircut which was not the worst one my mum gave me).

Second, I'm holding a green chicken!  Once you know a green chicken exists anything else is possible.

Thirdly, the photo gives me an insight in to a time I have very few memories of for various reasons and it makes me want to capture special moments and scenes for everyone.

Because of this photo I always want to ensure what I do is done to the best of my abilities even if it means revisiting a photo 2-3 years later as is the case with the photo below.

Believe it or not I took this photo in 2009 and I did not think it was that good.  Another photo was edited instead and people liked it.

For some reason I was flicking through my hard drives as you do and found this photo.  After processing it I realised it was in my opinion a much stronger photo.

This made me realise that I should not be so quick to ignore a photo and to give it a chance in processing.  Now everything gets that chance in Lightroom 4.

I hope you now understand why I take photos.  If you want to see my other photos please visit www.jamiestoddart.com and you can also follow me on twitter @jamiestoddart 

Thanks for reading.

Post Number One

Well You have found my first post on this blog.  Thank you for taking the time to read this.

So where do I start?

Well as you can see I am Jamie Stoddart and I am a photographer from Edinburgh, Scotland.

What kind of photos do I take I hear you ask?

In 2008 I started off with the aim of becoming a well known landscape photographer, however by luck / accident I have also taken photos at weddings, sports events (track days, rallies like The Jim Clark Rally), pets and somehow I have found myself shooting models too.

Photography is one of those things that I enjoy and it is effortless.  This does not mean all my photos rival Colin Prior, Joe Cornish, Guy Edwardes, Adam Burton etc, but more that when I have my camera it is easy (most of the time) to find something I want to shoot.

I should also point out that when I do not have the camera I normally see 1000 scenes, animals or moments that I wish I could stop and shoot.

I've rambled enough and feel I should reward you with a couple of my landscape photos

The photo above was taken at Elgol on The Isle of Skye looking towards The Cuillins at the end of February this year.  I had chosen to go up when it was raining constantly (Yep, I have all the luck), however I was in Broadford and the sun came out.  I thought that if it was out there it would be out in Elgol.  School boy error number one, it was still raining when I arrived.  My luck then changed and the rain stopped allowing me to get this and three other photos which I am proud of.

.
In contrast to the landscape shot, this photo is of the AMAZING Dee La Beau who I had the honour of shooting with last weekend at Melville Castle (owned by a friend's family).  This was my first shoot without the safety net of another more experienced photographer to guide me.  As part of the shoot I shot Dee in a stunning dress designed by Catalyst Latex who then wanted several of my photos for their site.  RESULT!!!

At this point I must say I still have no idea how I have got in to shooting with models, but I  am enjoying the learning experience and hope to develop this along with my landscape photography

Oops, still rambling.  Ok, that's it I'm off to check twitter and facebook.