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kelly
37 days ago
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What Was Your Toughest Photo?
Was it the time you had to dodge a charging hippopotamus?
Or when you braved the beer-soaked mayhem of the World Moustache Championships?
And remember the time you wrapped a model in 10,000 meters of dental floss for the cover of Ukranian Vogue?
Well, what was your most difficult shot?
Show us a snapshot and tell us your tale! Post the hardest photo you ever took and tell us what you went through to get it.
(Derring-do, swashbuckling and hippo-dodging not mandatory.)
Whoever spins the most fabulous yarn by Wednesday, October 21st, wins an equally fabulous mystery prize!
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Willtastic
37 days ago
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My toughest photo isn't impressive at all,
First of all was getting that angle. I sat on my friend's shoulders and balanced with my camera while he held me up. Balancing alone was a little precarious since there was people moshing and dancing around us a little bit (but we were towards the back so it was just a mini-mosh pit), but holding a camera steady was just a pain.
Add to that the exposure readings on the stage were practically worthless. The lights were flashing and that huge screen was playing a rapidly changing video. I remember watching the readings bounce up and down a lot. To add to the horrible lighting it was a late show and the sun by then had completely set, I'm pretty sure 100% of my lighting was from the stage at that point. I just slapped some numbers into manual mode and prayed.
To make matters even worse I didn't have a DSLR, so ISO 1600 was about as high as I could go and even that (as you can see) was full of noise.
Anyway, I was definitely proud that I managed to hold it steady amongst the shifting crowd while balancing on someones shoulders and punching in the manual mode with a $200 bridge camera. Obviously I still failed a bit since the stage itself is wayy overexposed, but I'm proud of that shot based on the shooting circumstances alone.
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tcaru
37 days ago
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Maybe this. So close and speedy.
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rodia
37 days ago
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My toughest photo? It may not look like much either.
But it was three months in the making.
When I got on board a tall ship in July 2008 (apologies to anyone I've already bored to death with these stories) I thought going up the rigging would be a cinch, because it would mean such great photo opportunities. I love taking pictures and roughly 115 feet above the ground spells a killer vantage point to me!
Killer, yes, in all senses of the word. I wasn't so happy when I first started climbing. By the time I got to the fighting top, one third of the way up, my legs were shaking. And that was at the dock.
It took me weeks to gain the courage to go all the way up to the royal, as far as one can reasonably go without breaking the rules and straining common sense. The royal is the very top yard on a square rigger and it is scary, guys. Very scary for me- I'd never even made it to the top of the jungle gym when I was a kid. And here I was up in the air, clinging to a swaying mast with nothing below but rolling sea and a very very hard wooden deck. We wore climbing harnesses, so bulky they impeded movement even as they saved our lives, but the higher you go, the less use they are. They say that on the royal, you clip in to Jesus, because there's nothing else to grab on to.
The climb down is even worse- you have to trust your feet to find the footholds, and there aren't many of those. You have to time it right and let yourself slide down the mast, but mind the roll of the ship, because you could put yourself in a great deal of trouble, not being clipped in to anything at all. You don't want your harness catching on lines. You don't want your sandals stuck on the ratlines.
And you really don't want to make that climb while carrying a big, bulky, expensive DSLR and extra lenses. It's not worth it, I thought, I will either drop the thing for a whale snack, or I'll get tangled up in the lines and fall to my death. All for a photo? Not worth it at all. Stars above, my knuckles turn white every time I climb, and you can see the rig printed in tar on my shirt after I come down because of how tightly I've clung to it. I wouldn't have a spare hand up there anyway.
But one morning, after weeks and weeks of storms, rains, sleepless nights and yams rotting in the hold (don't even ask), we saw the Galapagos Islands.
Let me say that again: the Galapagos Islands.
I ran up that mast like a monkey, camera and all, my happy rainbow beanie blowing right off of my head because we'd just been across the Equator and King Neptune had us all shaved. I ran up with my pitiful semi-pro Canon 350D and an extra lens, and some extra batteries, and all of my memory cards, because, really, did I want to be caught up there with no juice left for photos?
Suddenly, the problem of holding on for dear life and taking pictures at the same time seemed less relevant. Suddenly, it didn't matter that the ship was rolling and the mast was swaying and there was seagull and frigate poop everywhere; it didn't even matter that some eager soul had left a slick layer of tallow on the rig while he had been up there greasing the mast. I was sailing into the Galapagos archipelago, on a three-masted square-rigged wooden tall ship, and I had a camera in my hand. All that was missing was some cello music.
Humming Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major and watching the islands come closer, I snapped several hundred shots. And do you know what? None of them turned out too well. I was still very nervous, the ship was constantly moving, we were sailing towards the sun, and I didn't have much time before the start of my next watch. In fact, my absolute best fore-royal shots had to wait another month until we reached the Panama Canal. I wish I could show you those, they're really much better.
But this story is about the toughest photo I ever took. So there you go. My first look at the Galapagos Islands, taken from the very top yard of the tall ship Bounty.
edited to add: what do you know, this was a year ago! The photo just showed up on my PJJ Time Capsule. 
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willbl
37 days ago
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Caiman Under Stars
by Will & Matthew Burrard-Lucas
Our Caiman Under Stars project took place over the course of three nights in the Pantanal, Brazil. It was shot in a swampy area where caimans were lying in channels waiting for fish to swim past. We wanted to try to photograph a caiman with star trails in the above.
It would have been easy to get the shot by first photographing the caiman and then compositing a second shot of the stars. However, we wanted to achieve the effect in a single exposure.
Composing the shot by the light of a headtorch was the first challenge. We were using a 16mm lens on a full-frame Canon 1Ds Mk III so the second challenge was getting close enough to the caiman!
We knew from experience that we could get a suitable star trail image using a shutter speed of 40 minutes, aperture of f/4.5 and ISO of 200. Based on these settings, we manually controlled the output of an off-camera speedlite flash to correctly expose the caiman in the foreground. This produced a single flash at the start of the exposure which froze the caiman’s initial position on the sensor. For the remainder of the exposure the caiman could thrash around chasing fish as much as it liked without ghosting the image (of course this only worked because the foreground was completely dark – if there had been a moon or stray torch beams then there would have been ghosting).
At f/4.5 it would have been impossible to have both the stars and the foreground in focus. To get over this we first focused on the head of the caiman, started the exposure, triggered the flash and then shifted the focus to infinity as quickly as possible!
Once we set the camera off we had to wait for 40 minutes with our flash-lights dimmed, swatting mosquitos and keeping an eye out for jaguars before we could move on to the next shot. We would take around 4 or 5 shots before midnight then flop into our beds with our alarms set for pre-sunrise so that we could enjoy the good morning light. Needless to say, we left the Pantanal exhausted!
This is an extract from my full blog post here: Behind the shot: Caiman Under Stars
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parkylondo
n
37 days ago
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This is the Liberation Tower in Kuwait City. I'd always wanted to go and see it and, having a morning free, decided to go there from my hotel. I walked. And walked. It was 40degC (~110F) and I had no hat. No water. No brain. I was crazy I know, but as I walked I thought there would HAVE to be a visitor centre or somewhere I can get a drink. After all, it's the highest building there - it's a tourist attraction.
No. It was a high-security compound with nothing around for blocks.
I had to walk all the way back and I was a mess by the time I got back to something resembling the 20th century..
I know I was stupid but it looked very nearby from my hotel. Note to self: Things that are very big look very near when you don't know just how big they are.
And that, my friends, is my most difficult photo. It almost killed me.
This however, is I think my most technically difficult photo.
It's a UK snowboarder doing a backflip in the dark (under floodlights) on a dry slope. And yes, he landed it sweeeetly on the Dendix. People don't do backflips on Dendix unless the conditions are perfect - landing on it is like hitting concrete. I had waited and waited for this. And I even got the grab.
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densitychi
ca
37 days ago
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So this doesn't look difficult from the finished version, but it definitely was HARD to pull off. I wanted a diptych of Mel's hair (which was quite long) and actually needed it to hang down, not just lay her on the ground and take the shot from above (no ladder at this location). So I had to hoist her up on a table that I had balanced on CHAIRS and had her lay with her head sticking out the end of the table over the back drop. I think she looks incredibly relaxed despite having to hold her head up (which 80lbs of hair) for a really long time.  She was such a good sport...Look below to see the other half of the diptych and the rest of her hair...
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kwilliam71
37 days ago
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Not only were the lighting and timing difficult, but I had to contant with water which is completely unpredictable. I didn't have a sound trigger, so I had to manually catch the peppers at just the right time... even then the water often wouldn;t participate, or the peppers just didn't land quite. Not to mention the glass base I used was home made with very varp edges... I managed to slice myself more than once thowing peppers in the dark. It was worth it though.
Oh well, looks like I can;t figure out how to post photos.
Edit: I fixed it for you. You had the correct url (the second one with .jpg), but forgot the tags [img]at the front of the url and[/img] at the end with no spaces. Tufteach
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bitrot
37 days ago
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This is mine. It really is a photo, taken straight from the camera with no processing:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitrot/2868861398/)
It's a little scene made of cardboard and tissue paper, laid on top of a sheet of translucent white plastic and lit from below with a flash on a wireless trigger. You can see this going on in the set-up shot:
Getting the right kind of plastic and experimenting with the flash settings took a little time. Drawing and cutting out all the shapes (from tissue paper that kept tearing) took even longer. But getting the yellow light in the window, the blur on the moon and the smoke from the chimney took the longest! Like I say, it's straight from camera with no messing about afterwards, just lots of careful preparation.
All in all, this is by far the longest time I've ever spent on a single photo but I think the result was worth it.
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badenton
37 days ago
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This photo technically isn't amazing, but it is 100% my real life.
It is the result of a strange and very exhausting ritual which happens at our house every November...I try to get 1 good picture for the family Christmas card. (and no, I’m not a professional photographer – this was before I even owned an SLR). What you don’t see in the picture is me fighting off the family feline who tangles herself between my legs in order to trip me while at the same time is inserting body parts randomly into the frame. Have you ever seen a cat be in 2 places at once? You don't see her in this pic because I had just relocated her by foot into the dining room. Nor do you see OR hear baby # 4 who isn’t in the picture because she is hysterically wailing...and totally NOT cooperating. I believe there was some "If you sit still and smile nice you can have a treat." style bribery going on too.
A typical day in chaos....I mean paradise.
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gordon
37 days ago
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I can't really think of a photo of mine that was incredibly difficult to make (but I'll be searching!), but I DO know one of the photographers you talked about in your description of the challenge!
Sheri Manson was one of the primary portrait photographers for the World Beard and Moustache Championships. She does amazing work and her surreal imagery is breathtaking. Everyone should check out her site: http://sherimanson.com.
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ameresa
37 days ago
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My dad had taken me out for a drive in the woods one Saturday. He had been wanting to show me this spring and pond for a while. It was pretty cold that morning. I wish I would have recorded how cold it was. I know there was frost on the ground, though. The spring and the pond are quite a way off the main road. The light was really nice that morning, and I was getting some good reflection shots of trees in the water of the pond. My dad was standing off to my left taking a few shots with his camera. I was standing in an awkward, body-twisted position, using my 70-300 mm lens without a tripod, and he was crouched down in a squatting position.
All of a sudden, there was a whoosh whoosh whoosh sound. Right in front of us, just across the pond, landed a blue heron. We both froze in place. The heron walked along the edge of the pond, tilting it's head, listening. I started taking shots, being careful not to fire too many off and scare it away.
It took it's sweet time meandering around the pond. After about fifteen minutes of crouching, I heard my dad drop down and crawl off. I waited another ten minutes, taking more photos, ignoring my cold fingers and shaking arms. The heron finally flew off to a smaller pond, and I was able to relax, stretch, and put my gloves on. I walked out to the road where my dad was waiting by the truck. He'd gotten a cramp in his leg from crouching and had to roll over and crawl out so he could stand up.
A lot of the shots I took were blurry. I'm sure if I had been using a tripod, they would have turned out better. But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
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rzouain
37 days ago
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I was watching this skater come and go for about an hour. She was really fast and we were getting past the sunset, so the light was really bad for shooting in such speed, especially considering I didn't have a DSLR. I stood still in the middle of a roller hockey game and almost got hit by a stick twice. I tried many times to get a picture with no luck, and when I was almost giving up I finally got this one. It ain't great, but it was so hard to get it that I became fond of it anyway.
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Joshua Bur
y
37 days ago
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbury/3874300109/
This was definitely one of my more difficult photos to capture. It consists of about 400x30 second exposures. Part of what made it difficult (aside from the usual focusing and framing problems when it's dark out) was that my camera won't run nearly that long on a single battery and this site was nowhere near a power source so I borrowed a generator and brought it up to this site to power the camera.
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Ryleyf
37 days ago
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Hi folks, first post here!
I was in Nicaragua last February doing some Tarpon fishing in the very remote northern end of Pearl Lagoon on the Caribbean side.
After fishing for two days, we had a four hour ride back from north Pearl Lagoon to Bluefields, and along the way we sped through many narrow mangrove-lined waterways.
To get this shot, I had to sit on the tip of the bow of the Panga, lock my right foot into the floorboards, and lean waaaaay out to the starboard side while going about 35 mph. :eek:
It took 3 frames to get level as I could not use the viewfinder. This photo ended up being published in Saltwater Sportsman Magazine/June 2009....I was stoked!
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Slightlyno
rth
37 days ago
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This is me and 364 prints of the photos I took every single day leading up to this one for a whole year. While it wasn't technically a hard shot to pull off (though, the wind was making things difficult) it was one of the hardest photo projects I have ever completed.
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MizzouMan_
2000
37 days ago
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Some of my most difficult shots come in the winter when I like to photograph bald eagles that arrive with the cold. My coldest photos ever came this past winter at the end of a cold snap that had overnight lows down to -20F and daytime highs around 0F. For Central Illinois, that's DARN cold! During this trip a buddy and I went to Starved Rock State Park near Utica, IL. We braved the cold (high temp was around 10F that day) for an opportunity to photograph these magnificent birds at a vantage point I don't often get. Here are a few photos from this trip.
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vwdriver_6
25
37 days ago
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I was doing some work around the yard a few weeks ago, when I had an unfortunate accident. I was removing a metal building from the property, and while I was pulling on what I thought was an unbolted piece of metal, I discovered that this particular piece was still attached by one bolt. As I pulled on it, the edge of the metal sliced through my glove and into my hand, severing the nerves and tendons in a couple of my fingers. Needless to say, an unscheduled trip to the hospital was going to be in order. As I was frantically running about trying to plan my best course of action, I was losing a lot of blood. I became very dizzy and faint, almost to the point of passing out. Knowing that I had a very narrow window of opportunity to make it to the hospital before I completely passed out, I did the only thing that I could think of.........grab my camera and rush to the hospital! (yes, I actually thought to grab my camera!) By the time I arrived, I was blacking in and out, partly due to the shock of it all, and partly due to the massive blood loss. I was immediately rushed into the ER, where they proceeded to sew my fingers back on. While they were stitching me up, I realized hey, this is a great photo op! So I asked the doctor who was stitching my fingers back on if he minded if I took a photo........you should have seen his expression! He agreed to allow me to take the photo, which proved to be a lot more difficult that I had originally imagined. I managed to get my camera in front of me, and with one hand, I somehow got the most difficult shot I have ever taken.
(the "series" is available if you have the stomach for it http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/lJ … directlink )
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Tindy
37 days ago
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Was just playing with my canon Power Shot SX10IS
it only took about 400 shots to get this one!!!!!!
it is nice though!!!
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