Liverpool Daily Post - Image Conscious

Up town, top Rankin: Celebrity photographer in Liverpool

2009-08-01T14:59:33Z

If you have Sky TV, you've probably seen ads for the new Sky Arts series which starts soon featuring the celebrity photographer Rankin (he only uses one name, like Madonna or Cher ... or Kojak).
The idea is that members of the grimy-faced proletariat can have their portraits taken by the master, just as if they were Madonna, or Cher .... or Kojak).

]]> One of the shoots was in Liverpool, and the Post and Echo's absolutely-not-grimy-faced-in-any-way-whatsoever fashionista Emma Johnson was invited to go along for a sitting - well, it was more of a standing, actually, as you can see:

I'm fairly certain the heating was on, so there was no danger of Emma catching cold, if any of you were worried.
Our photographer James Maloney was intrigued to discover that Rankin has an assistant to adjust the aperture on his camera, as well as another one to shield his eyes from the glare of the flash. It is a worry for photographers, I have to admit.

The Rankin show is available to watch online at Sky's website from August 4 and on TV in September. See TV guides for details. Terms and conditions apply. Other satellite-based arts channels may be available. The value of a Rankin portrait may go down as well as up.

Crown Princess, biggest cruise liner ever to sail into Liverpool

2009-06-29T16:40:54Z

SIZE really does matter, it turns out - at least in the cruise liner business.

The Crown Princess is the biggest liner ever to berth in the Mersey - at 113,000 tonnes and 951ft in length she's a very big girl indeed.

]]> It's tremendous to see ships of this size back in the Mersey - no-one needs reminding of the city's maritime heritage and since the new cruise liner terminal opened there's been a steady stream of these giants of the seas.

We knew there would be massive interest in the Crown Princess's visit, so had photographers covering every angle - Andrew Teebay on board, James Maloney on the quay side and Paul Heaps in the air!

The pictures speak for themselves, but my favourite is Andy's picture of the woman diving into the pool, above, with the Liver Birds watching in the background - it's almost like a Hockney painting.

Wallace and Gromit star Peter Sallis at Prescot Methodist Centre

2009-06-25T11:15:06Z

It's not every day that the star of Oscar-winning films - and the longest-running sitcom in history - turns up at the local Methodist church hall.
But that's what happened when Peter Sallis - alias Wallace, of Wallace and Gromit fame, and Clegg, of Last of the Summer Wine - turned up to present his show 'An Evening With ...' at the Prescot Festival.

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Our photographer Andrew Teebay took these pictures of people queueing to see the show, and then Peter giving a memorable performance.
He's in his 80s, and walks with a stick now, but the years rolled back when he began to tell his stories of a fascinating career on stage and screen.
I like these pictures - Peter, or at least his voice, is famous all over the world, but here he is entertaining his fans at a local arts festival. Cracking.

I want to believe!

2009-06-02T21:05:44Z

If it wasn't for my washing line, I wouldn't now be slightly famous in Vietnam.

Let me explain .... the above picture made page 3 of the Echo, the front page of Merseymart, somewhere or other in the Daily Telegraph (whatever that is) and any amount of websites from here to Portugal, India and ... you guessed ... Vietnam.

The more discerning of you will have grasped immediately that this is an excellent picture of a UFO, proving their existence once for all.
Unless it's a Chinese lantern, of course, in which case I'm afraid it still looks like we're very much alone Out There.

]]> UFO, lantern or just a weird light in the sky, it's a good example of how a technically awful picture can actually turn out to be a good news picture.

Here's the facts - it was late on a Sunday night, I'd been to a barbecue and a drink or two may have been taken, I have to admit. I saw the light out of the window and thought it was the police helicopter with a new searchlight.

I had my (t)rusty Nikon D2H near to hand (it's not much use as a camera since the D3 came out but I'd been using it to knock some nails into the wall) and went out in the garden with it to see if it was worth a picture,

The light was definitely not the helicopter and, as it was moving very slowly, I ruled out one of the planets.
It was a large, round orange light and didn't look like any other kind of aircraft I could think of either.

I realised it was going to need a long exposure to get anything at all.
But a long exposure leaves you at the mercy of camera shake, especially if you've had a glass of shandy.

A photographer who was in any way prepared would have whipped out his tripod, so to speak. But I'm more ingenious than that.

Quicker than you can say 'The Truth Is Out There' I stepped up to the washing line and rested the camera on it, like a sling. I took two pics (1.1sec at f2.8, if you're interested - it would have been better to expose for longer on a smaller aperture but I wasn't convinced my washing line was up to professional standard), one of which you can see here.

There's still some motion blur, but at least you can see it's a single point of light, and not a star or meteor.

As I said, it's an awful picture. And it probably was just one of those big Chinese lanterns .

But when I got to work the next day, there had been sightings across Merseyside and we decided to use my pic with the story. The next day it was all across the web, especially on UFO spotters' sites .

The lesson? Well, keep an open mind, don't apologise for those pictures of Gillian Anderson on your computer, and always remember that the quality of a picture scarcely matters at all if the subject is interesting enough.

Nanu-nanu!

Right place, right time, part 2

2009-05-17T20:22:40Z

Speed is of the essence for press photographers.

If the job is breaking news, you need to get there quickly for obvious reasons. And then, of course, you need to get the image back to base as quick as possible, too.

]]> Not so long ago, the clock that ticked the loudest for photographers was the one counting down the minutes until the presses rolled for the next edition. So, in the morning, there was always an Echo deadline looming while, in the evening, the Daily Post back bench eagerly awaited your pictures.

Those deadlines still apply but now photographers - or image journalists as we like to call them nowadays - have also got our online service to think about.

If the web editors demand it, an image will go up online immediately because being first is everything. Some things never change.

And some images, like this, will attract online viewers from around the world.

It's not a Merseyside scene, as you can clearly see from the Forth Bridge looming in the background. But it illustrates perfectly the theme of timing again: this car, which overshot the end of a jetty on the Firth of Forth, was inevitably going to sink, or drift off, sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, one of the lifeboat crew who took the occupants to safety had his camera with him and recorded this striking image.

We can forgive him that it's a little out of focus - sometimes it's more important to press the button and get the picture.

There's only two Jason Roberts .....

2009-05-17T20:22:40Z

I used to joke with Steve Shakeshaft - one of my extremely distinguished predecessors - that with an average exposure of 1/125 of a second for each shot he took, he'd probably only actually worked for a couple of hours during his entire career.

I think he took it as a joke, anyway - although I've never had a Christmas card from him.

]]> As Steve would patiently point out to me, the crucial thing is WHICH 1/125 of a second you photograph. One of my favourite photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson, called it the decisive moment.

This picture by Jason Roberts, from the Daily Post and Echo's coverage of this year's Grand National meeting, shows exactly what Steve - and Cartier-Bresson - meant.

You have to have a certain knack, an instinctive talent for your art to take a picture like this. As the horse fell, Jason already had his exposure and focus sorted - all he had left himself to do was catch the decisive moment, the most dramatic part of the animal's headlong plunge over the fence. But that's the hardest part of all.

Jason's a great football photographer as well - he particularly enjoys covering Blackburn Rovers games when, occasionally, the crowd have been known to sing 'There's only one Jason Roberts'.

But it's an apt comparison, the football photographer and the striker. Without that knack for being in the right place at the right time, the striker won't shoot on target - and neither will the photographer.