Every year the Bristol Comedy Garden pitches its massive tent in Queen’s Square and I’m always lucky enough to be there working for the great team that run the event.
This year was the best yet. Here are a few of my photographs from the 5 nights of fantastic comedy. You’ll recognise some of the acts from TV and the ones you don’t, you soon will!
Thank you and good night!
I seem to have a thing for barns in Peterborough! As part of the Hot Rod & American Custom Car show, Hayley was hanging out in an empty barn with a 50’s pinup outfit and matching Corvette.
This was taken with a Canon 24-70mm lens with my back to the open door of the barn. Diffused afternoon sun was being bounced in but in general the barn was pretty gloomy – a great chance to pop up some lights.
There are two lights in this scene. An Elinchrom Quadra in a 28″ Westcott Apollo softbox and a bare hot shoe flash behind Hayley to separate her from the background to give the hint of the sun possibly setting out of frame behind her.
1. The lovely Hayley Sams
2. A classic Corvette
3. An Elinchrom Quadra head in a Westcott Apollo 28″ softbox
4. The Quadra pack on a very low power setting
5. Canon 580EXII speedlight with a slight warming gel atop a Manfrotto Nano stand and trigger with a Skyport.
6. Shoes, models own
7. Bloke with the camera
Big thanks to Darren Skidmore for the BTS shot.
Don’t get hung up on the gear though, this could have easily been shot with a couple of used speedlights and a cheap shoot through umbrella.
I positioned myself so the kicker light was hidden behind Hayley’s head to give her a rim light. If I moved too far, the light crept into shot making the backlit effect over the top.
But with the right framing and some final tweaks in Lightroom (including bumping the saturation up a little and warming the image overall to add to the sunset illusion) it looked like this:
Looking back at the shot a few weeks later, I noticed the overly bright windscreen and the shadow cast by the rear view mirror. It looked too contrived. I could live with the slight reflection of the softbox at the bottom left of the windscreen but the light blasting in from behind bugged me. So into Photoshop I went.
Luckily, at one point I took a shot where I’d set the rear flash not to fire. Using Photoshop’s fantastic panorama tool I was able to very quickly align the two photos and just mask in the naturally lit glass. You can see the frame with the unlit windscreen aligned over the image I want to use.
The layer mask is very simple – the upper layer is hidden except for the windscreen.
Here is the final result. As always any feedback or questions are welcome in the comments below.
Once again this year I have the pleasure of working with the team at Bristol Comedy Garden. The event got off to a great start last night with this lot. I plan to post a few images each day of the festival so keep an eye one this post as it grows.
Bristol Comedy Garden, Day 1 line up
Bristol Comedy Garden – Ed Gamble
Bristol Comedy Garden – Josh Widdicombe
Bristol Comedy Garden – Henning Wehn
Bristol Comedy Garden – David O’Doherty
Here’s your second dose of Bristol Comedy Garden photos – Day 2 was even better than the opening night!
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Thursday’s bill
Bristol Comedy Garden – John Robins
Bristol Comedy Garden – Sara Pascoe
Bristol Comedy Garden – Rob Beckett
Bristol Comedy Garden – Rich Hall
Day 3
Another fantastic night at the Bristol Comedy Garden
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Day 3 line up
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Mark Olver
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Carl Donnelly
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Shappi Khorsandi
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Milton Jones
Another amazing night in Queens Square, Bristol
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Day 4 line up
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Craig Campbell
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Nina Conti
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Stewart Francis
Bristol Comedy Garden 2014 – Ardal O’Hanlon
That’s it for another year, but what a way to finish off with Andrew Maxwell, Stephen K Amos, Terry Alderton and Al Murray.
Bristol Comedy Garden – Andrew Maxwell
Bristol Comedy Garden – Stephen K Amos
Bristol Comedy Garden – Terry Alderton
Bristol Comedy Garden – Al Murray
If you are going to absorb a piece of photography advice from someone you could do a lot worse than Ansel Adams’ often quoted “You don’t take a photograph, you make it”. With that in mind I teamed up with good friend and talented photographer Darren Skidmore to fake a desert drag race… in Peterborough!
From the outset we knew the photograph itself was never going to the the final product so care needed to be taken to light it correctly. As the final composite was going to be set in the desert sun, we needed to fill in the shadows with some flash.
This was the set up:
There is an Elinchrom Quadra pack about 10 feet behind each car at half power pumping light into the shadows to give that high noon look, resulting in this image. The double shadows are something that need to be addressed in post production.
When shooting at a car show held on an agricultural showground you are never going to have a clean background to work with. Cutting the straight edges of the cars out in Photoshop wouldn’t pose much of a problem so we concentrated on timing the shots so there we no people intersecting with Hayley.
With that, it’s over to Photoshop. Admittedly there are a few layers here but they can be easy broken down into 4 groups covering the road and background, the cars, the shadows and the tyre smoke. Most are just masked layers to drop in elements from various source photographs with a few curves adjustment layers to balance colours.
Big thanks go to Darren for taking the shot, Hayley for getting our idea, Performance Direct for their support and hospitality all weekend and of course Pip Hitchcock and Lee Freeman for building such awesome cars.
Enough talk, here’s the final image. We’d love to hear what you think.
Back in May I was proud once again to be part of the 3rd Caring with Cars event supporting the Children’s Hospice South West at Charlton Farm, Bristol. It’s a fantastic event where Pistonheads members come from far and wide to do their bit for charity. If you’d like to donate take a look at the official CWC Just Giving page. Every car is part of the show which makes for quite a car park! Even my 86 got some attention amongst the Jag’s, Astons, Porsches and Ferraris.
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