Wow, the weather this week has been scorching. I can't remember it being this hot for years. On the North West coast we've been simmering in the high 20's and low 30's with little sign of an onshore breeze. I can just hear my Aussie friends laughing at us 'Poms' and our inability to cope with even the slightest increase in temperature, but don't forget the Ashes starts next week ;-)
I daren't guess how hot my office has got over the past couple of days; with two Macs, three monitors and half a dozen external hard drives chugging away all week the temperature has easily gone into the high 30's. I have had the window blacked out too, so that I can work in subdued light (very important when working on photographs) so in addition to the heat, I've not been able to get any air circulating. Shorts and t-shirts have been the order of the day in there!!
I'm not sure if the weather will break by the weekend, but actually shooting in this kind of heat presents all sorts of problems for photographers. The biggest issue is dehydration. It is so easy to work for several hours at a stretch only to find that we haven't drunk enough water. This time of year, I ditch the 35mm and 24mm lenses in favour of the 16-35LII and use the spare slot in my bag for an extra bottle of water. It is so important to stay hydrated, as it affects concentration and fatigue levels. I consider myself to be pretty fit these days, but without water my stamina levels drop dramatically, and I can't think straight. On Saturday I'll be shooting for twelve hours and I expect to drink at least two 1.5 litre bottles of water, and several smaller bottles if it stays this warm. For me, it is important to stop shooting for a few minutes every hour just to take on board some fluids. Missing pictures isn't an issue, but my health is, and I know that there will be natural pauses during the day which are perfect for a quick break.
Other essentials in warm weather are; a small towel which fits in my bag, a larger towel that stays in the car, a can of
Magicool, and a spare shirt.
Sun screen is a must. For me it's factor 30, as a couple of hours taking images on a nice sunlit lawn will give me the look of a boiled lobster without it!! A couple of members of my family have had issues with skin cancer, so skin care in the sun is very important to me. It is so easy not to consider these things when we are caught up in the wedding.
One thing we don't have to worry too much about is equipment. Although I was once shooting with a Leica M6TTL and left the body with the lens facing the sun while it sat on top of my bag during a drinks reception. The sun shone through the lens and burned the cloth shutter blinds as the lens acted like a magnifying glass. Luckily I had a spare, so the wedding wasn't affected; my bank balance after the repair - now that was a different matter!!
The only major equipment issue when it is dry is dust creeping into the camera. Fortunately all of my Canon professional lenses come with a rubber seal around the lens mount which really helps. It is really important that when I'm shooting outside that I don't swap lenses too often, and I try to stay with just one lens on each body (I use two) just to keep dust contamination at bay. It also saves me hours 'spotting' images in Photoshop after the day!! It is also a good idea just to take a blower brush just to clean away any dust that has accumulated on the camera body during the day.
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I've been adding to my book collection over the past few weeks. I'm a big fan of documentary photography and I often think that if I couldn't shoot weddings, I would be off somewhere shooting a reportage for a book or magazine. My favourite books are all on the subject of social documentary, and a couple of them are now quite collectible; a Garry Winogrand book that I bought several years ago for £20 is now worth around £180, and a Magnum special edition book has doubled in price within eighteen months. I don't buy books for investment reasons though. In fact I've never gone down the whole 'investment' route with anything that I have bought; I still have a rare Leica M6TTL Titanium camera with brown hide leather, but like all my cameras it has major signs of use and abuse. A month ago I bought a Gretsch 6120 'Chet Atkins' guitar, which is simply gorgeous to look at, but I just want to play it and in a few years it will look like my old Fender Telecaster - well loved!!
Anyway back to the books. I've bought stuff by Alex Webb, Steve McCurry and Jonas Bendikson in the past month. They've all been fantastic to look through, but the McCurry book 'The Unguarded Moment' is simply stunning. It's a large volume showcasing some of McCurry's best work with one image to a page. The size and quality of the images used in the book really emphasises his use of colour and tone. It is quite mesmerizing to look at. It is not my favourite book of the month though; that goes to 'Humanity in War', a book of images tracing the humanitarian work that goes on, often unseen, by organisations such as the Red Cross. The images are often harrowing, but in a way that simply wants to make you understand the conditions that humanitarian aid workers often find themselves in. It is a powerful body of documentary work from many different photographers and decades, from all corners of the Earth. Highly recommended.
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We are now in July, and surprisingly I've spent very little money on equipment this year; mainly because I already have pretty much everything that I need. Equipment lust, the scourge of many a photographer, left me a few years ago, but when it comes to my computers though, this is a totally different matter!! When I first started shooting digitally, I could make a 500GB hard drive last all year, but now my 21 megapixel cameras are filling up my hard drives faster than ever. It's frightening how much storage I need! In an effort to stem the flow of external hard drives gracing my office shelves, this week I bit the bullet and splashed out on the 4TB version of the
LaCie 4big Quadra. This is in addition to my purchase of two new Eizo 22" Colour Edge monitors, I actually wanted 24's but they wouldn't fit on my desk :(
I can't get over how much money computer equipment consumes, but I'm totally obsessive about producing the absolute best images that I can, and I believe that by having the best computer equipment I am not compromising on anything at all. With the equipment and software that I have at my disposal, I really have no excuses when it comes to my images. The Eizo panels are amazing, and are a significant improvement on my old Apple Cinema displays.
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Last random thought for the day. Is it only me that thinks Real Madrid have completely lost the plot?
Have a great weekend.
