Snap Shots: Different shots made easy

by Harry Flashman

This week I want to show that you can take your photographs in different ways other than standing still with the camera at eye level. A different camera position can produce very different photographs.
This different camera position really came home the other day when I was taking a photograph of a lady outside a shop. Looking at some way of taking the shot away from the humdrum, I sat on the ground and angled the shot upwards. In this way I could exaggerate the perspective of the shop columns, get all the shop front in and get the lady as well. One of the partners in the business was so taken with me sitting on the ground that he ended up taking photographs of me shooting his shop! “I’ve never seen anyone do that before,” he said. That reminded me just why so many people take the same old boring pictures!
So this week let us look at some different camera view points you can use, with any camera, to get different pictures. The first we have mentioned already. Getting down low, sitting on the ground and shooting upwards will give you a different shot immediately. If you have a wide angle lens or a “landscape” setting (as opposed to “portrait”) you will heighten this effect even further. Buildings will lean in on both sides and even three storey shop-houses will look like towering skyscrapers. Even people can be shot from this viewpoint. The effect may not be flattering, but it will be dramatic.
Shooting from an elevated viewpoint will also give you a different photograph. Stand on a wall or on the top of a ladder and take a picture of a group of friends looking up at you. The resulting photograph will appear to “say” something. Think about how many times you will have seen a picture of a Pop Group done this way – just to give a greater visual effect.
Now let’s look at the “running” position and I am going to give you one of my best secrets on how to take moving subjects. The super pro trick is to be moving yourself while taking the shot of your moving subject. This is the trick used to use to take cover shots of autos for motoring magazines.
Take, for example, the shot of someone on a bicycle. Sit in the passenger seat of a car with the window wound down. Select 1/30th of a second shutter speed (if you have manual control on your camera, if not do not worry) and get your driver to maintain the same speed as the cyclist. A wide angle lens is best because you do not have to be too far away from your subject and just compose and shoot. You will get a great shot of a sharp cyclist with a totally blurred “speed” background.
Taking a car is just the same, but another good position is to sit in a pick-up and shoot the car as it runs behind you. This shot gives you a sharp image of the car and a moving blurred ribbon of road underneath it. A real “action” shot. You can even do this with someone running behind you.
Would it surprise you that to take “action” shots I will often set the shutter speed at 1/30th or even 1/15th of a second? Certainly this allows “blur” to happen, but this does impart the “concept” of speed.
Another of the “pro” tricks is to use flash and a slow shutter speed at the same time. Have a look at the photo with this week’s article. I wanted to show that the flaming pole was being twirled around by the fire dancer. Setting the shutter speed at 15th of a second and setting the flash and the camera aperture at f5.6, I shot off three or four shots. The flash burst “freezes” the movement of the dancer, but the flaming ends of the pole show movement during the 15th of a second that the shutter was left open. Of the shots taken, this one showed the best fire “trails” and thus the best action.
Action photography made simple! Try it this weekend.

Dear Hillary,
(Dear reader, please note that 12 months ago I received this letter) My wife thinks I’m mad, but this is really bugging me. We have visited Pattaya twice in the last 12 months, Spring being the latest, and tonight a friend who has not been to Thailand for at least five years asked us how much a small bottle of Singha beer costs in the beer bars these days. Top of my head I answered, about 70 baht give or take a few baht. Straight off he ridiculed me saying that it should be about 35 baht. My wife, who normally holds the purse strings on our visits, she being arguably the sensible one, agreed with me. Adding that she had seen it in the smaller shops at 30 baht. Now, the two chaps who where sitting opposite us at the time, are frequent visitors to Pattaya, three or so times a year, so I asked them to back me up. Imaging my surprise when they agreed with him saying that they would normally pay 35 baht a bottle in the majority of beer bars. Hillary, I don’t for one instant entertain the thought that you frequent beer bars at the drop of a hat, but if you can’t trust a journalist to point you in the direction of a good watering hole and know the meaning of value for money, then just what in life can you trust? Can we ask you to intercede in this matter as it will be 2006 before my wife and I will be able to return “home” and it will pray on my mind until I find out the truth. If we are proved wrong then I promise that on our next visit we will consume vulgar quantities of the amber nectar (instead of vast amounts), if in the right then I assure you that a bottle of bubbly and some chocs will find it’s way to you on our next visit (will my personal favourites Demi Sec and hand made Belgium suffice?) actually right or wrong you can have the goodies, not only because you are a good read, but also in the vague hope that it might spur the scoundralous Mistersingha into action. As a Scot who is residing in the Channel Islands may I sign off as,
The Gordon Islander
(My reply was) Dear Gordon Islander,
Of course you can get a small bottle of beer for 35 baht in every beer bar, provided you go back in time to around 1985! The average price is now around 50-70 baht, with go-go bars around 120 baht. My authority tells me that if you go to some small beer bars up sois where nobody else would go, you can get the 35 baht bottles still, but you probably wouldn’t want to drink there. It is also definitely not the ‘majority’ of beer bars as your friend is claiming, either. So my Gordon Islander Petal, I look forward to your bottle of bubbles and the hand made choccies in 2006. I can taste their sweetness already and the bubbles foaming around my teeth!
(Then this week I received the following note, attached to chocolates and champagne) Have a nice weekend. Slante.
The Gordon Islander
Dear Gordon Islander,
You are certainly a man of your word. Today the messenger delivered a bottle of French champagne and the Belgian chocolates, complete with a note from you and your wife. Petals! What can I say, other than the fact that it is people like you who give me the faith to carry on. The choccies and the bubbly have gone to a good home, I can assure you. Thanks again, Ms. Hillary!
Dear Hillary,
I am sure I read your column some time back and you said there were books that could be read by newcomers to this country. My son is coming over next month, and I know he won’t listen to anything his father might tell him (he never has), but perhaps he might believe something written in a book. Any suggestions on suitable reading for him, Hillary?
Mike’s Father
Dear Mike’s Father,
Aren’t you a good father! Looking after your son’s interests, even though personally spurned. Or is it just you don’t want grandchildren yet? It is nice that you still want to read your boy a bed time story! There are many books available on the subject of relationships, long and short, between foreigners and local girls. I passed your query on to the book reviewer Lang Reid who suggests that you get Stephen Leather’s book called Private Dancer for your son (and maybe even for yourself).
Dear Hillary,
I am a single young man, so I do spend time in the bars around town. One of the girls I met recently rang me at work and wanted me to come over and see her. I did remember her but was embarrassed as I could be overheard by my workmates when I was talking to her, so I just kind of fobbed her off. How can I tell her it isn’t a good idea to ring me at work in a crowded office? Any suggestions?
Jimbo
Dear Jimbo (or is it Dumbo?)
It’s quite simple, if you don’t want a girl to ring you at work, then don’t give her your phone number!

Beyond the Beach:The Art of Artists

Caspian Pike
There’s nowhere quite like Thailand. Nowhere quite like Pattaya.
For those of us who live here, over a period of time it’s easy to forget what it was like in our countries of origin. The reasons we departed the lands of our birth dim and it is sometimes difficult not to swathe our memories in nostalgia. Here in Pattaya, it is tempting to take everything for granted as the initial sensations of arriving in a new city and new country begin to fade. In adopting a local, regional and global focus, one of the things that “Beyond the Beach” (BYB) has done is illustrate these sentiments through a kind of kaleidoscopic eye, coloured with intelligence, humour, panache, verve and variety.

Andrew takes a look at the street artists of Pattaya in this week’s show

In coming back to Pattaya this week, the programme reinvigorates my sense of excitement for all that Pattaya has to offer and replenishes my well of enthusiasm. I am encouraged to open my eyes again and look around me because otherwise, I might just miss something.
BYB does all this in quite a simple way.
Andrew Watson is walking along Second Street with a view to taking advantage of one of those special things that Pattaya has to offer; copy Art. I’m sure we’ve all stopped, entranced, to look in one of the many Art stores around the city bedecked with fantastic replicas of famous paintings and renditions of people’s favourite monochrome photographs. The quality is incredible. Think about it. The artists in these ‘studios’ work with such dexterity, such precision, that it’s remarkable. Yet perhaps typically, Watson wants to try something different.
Citing his background as a painter (he exhibited in London for ten years) Watson describes how he has composed a picture using a combination of collage and the latest in computer technology. There’s a rather touching reason for wanting to make the picture; it’s his father’s seventieth birthday. The whole concept is as Watson points out, quite ‘renaissance’, a period when Masters from Leonardo to Michelangelo would conceive an idea and then direct a team of artists and apprentices towards its production. If they were alive today, Watson conjectures, they’d be making the fullest use of modern technology, using computers as sketchbooks in addition to their musings on paper.
The bottom line is that somebody has to put the paint on the canvas and as we see the first marks being made, freehand, the level of technical skill of the artist becomes obvious. Equally, both the price and the speed of production seem almost unfeasible. Within a few days, the painting will be finished.
Once again, it’s a really enjoyable show. The hand-held aspect adds a little bit of reality to proceedings. You really feel as if you are the one doing the business, asking the questions. It also illustrates once more, that the PMTV production team are artists themselves; clearly committed to the principal that the subject matter dictates the medium. Technical expertise as ever, is a given.
Catch Andrew Watson’s “Beyond the Beach; The Art of Artists” on Sunday, at the following times:
Sophon at 8:00am - Midday - 4:00pm - 8:00pm and Midnight.
Chonburi at 9:40am - 2:00pm - 8:40pm and 40 minutes after midnight.
Jomtien at 9:00am - 12:30pm - and 9:00pm
Sattahip at 8:00am - 1:30pm - 5:00pm - 8:00pm and 11:00pm