Working as a Yorkshire event photographer means I have to be able to adapt and accept last minute bookngs and today was one of those occasions. Pivot PR contacted me at around 3pm to see if I could attend a Yorkshire Air Ambulance fund raising event at Geoff Boycott’s house over at Boston Spa at 5.30pm! So, with just an hour or so to prepare and also rearrange another job I had scheduled later that evening, I readied the camera gear. I doubled the pressure on myself by going to shoot the event with my new Nikon D5 DSLR which I had just taken delivery of the previous day and had not fired it in anger as yet. I’ve used the Nikon D3 and D4 cameras for many years and to be fair, the D5 is pretty much identical on the outside but with different internals; a higher megapixel sensor, faster AF and greater ISO range all mean the camera has differnt nuances to my trusty D4 which I’ve recently had stolen!
I turned up at the house before the rich and the great were due to arrive for the event so that I could scoutr the venue and work out where I would be creating the images. The champagne reception was due to take place on the small kitchen terrace and patio and, with the rest of the garden taken up by a huge marquee, I knew things would be tight. I managed to set up a Profot B1 in a 70cm Octa thinking I might create some formal portraits but, in the end, things were so cramped and nusy, I just ended up taking shots on the run as it were. I did manage to get Julian Norton, Channel 5s Yorkshire Vet to pose for a portrait and I liked the set-up I had envisaged. It was a shame I didn;t manage to get a few of the other famous faces into the same location but really, the brief was just to capture the guests enjoying the event in a way that would appeal to the press and magazines such as Yorkshire Life.
The Nikon D5 performed flawlessly as was to be expected, and I managed plenty of shots of the guests and have included a few of the more easily recogised guests here, including Kevin Conolley of Dead Ringers fame. His impressions of Geoff Boycott and William Hauge are legendary!
