On Assignment - 23/10/14 (Work in Progress)
This Thursday we have been set the assignment to shoot the Horse Fair at Stow-On-The-Wold. I have began researching what other people have shot at the event before and I am building up an idea of what to expect. The fair is well known for the extravagant gypsies that attend and put on a show. I am thinking they will be my primary focal point as their colours and attitudes will come across easily. As the weather is set to be wet I will be taking my wellingtons and coat, my camera gear should be okay as it is all weather sealed. In comparison to the Tewkesbury assigment I think it might be harder as I will have to hunt around more for stories. Although the light at Tewkesbury was quite low there was a lot of colourful ambient light which surrounded people faces evenley. This was easy to work with and manipulate, but it will be harsher daylight at Stow. I am almost hoping the weather is quite poor as the clouds will naturally diffuse the light making the images and especially portraits look more natural and even.
When shooting I want to speak to people to find out more about the travelling communtiy, this will hopefully make them feel more comfortable with me taking photo's around them. I would like to be able to add small captions to a few of my images, making them stronger and giving a backstory to the circumstances they were taken in. When talking to them I will take notes and create quotes I can use. I plan to use the 50mm mainly to separate the foreground and background, but I will also be carrying the 17-40L (for the GV possibly) and the 70-200L for the tighter shots and details.
Below are some of the images I have been looking at and getting idea's from...
The Shoot
When I arrived at the fair I instantly realised how much work I was going to have to put in to achieve any useable images. The light was hard to work with and constantly changing. I began shooting people, separating the subject from the background using a shallow depth of field. Throughout my time at the fair I was building up confidence and asking people for portraits. This year there was a lot less people visiting and it was a lot harder to take candid images. You really had to think out of the box and make the most out of the natural light around the stalls. I began shooting with the 50mm but at midday I changed to my 70-200 as I found getting close with the 50 was too intrusive and I was missing images from people being off put. With the 70-200 I could take a step back and still get a compressed background picking off people in the crowd. Whilst shooting I was thinking about what changes I would make in post, this affected how and what I shot, knowing what would work and what wouldn't. I always try to think of possible images I could create before the shoot so I have an idea of what to aim for. Although I found shooting hard this kept me thinking and I never ran out of drive to create interest in my work.
We were unfortunate with the amount of people that attended the event, in comparison to past years some people thought there was half as many people there. This substantially changed the traveller to photographer ratio, making it a lot harder to blend in and capture candid images. When you have more people, it makes you as a photographer stand out and others are more conscious that you are there. After a few hours I realised no more people were going to come so I began asking people if I could take their photo. I was quite surprised by the responses I got with most being happy for me to take a few shots. I found some of the younger kids quite amusing as they seemed to think we were the paparazzi following them around.
Below is a set of images I shot on that day...
(update) four of my images have since been used in the Standard news paper, covering Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. http://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/11563780.Pictures__Traditonal_Stow_Horse_Fair_welcomes_huge_crowd/?ref=mr
