Amateur Photographer - UK (2020-07-18)

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk 29

Chris Gorman is a

photographer with more

than 30 years’ experience

in the UK, New Zealand

and Europe. His work has

appeared regularly in a

number of publications

across the globe. Visit

bigladder.co.uk to read

more about him.

and has been exhibited in the Press
Photography of The Year Exhibition
on London’s South Bank.
Another image published widely is
Stonehenge at the Summer Solstice.
‘The success of this image pretty
much convinced me that drone
photography was my future,’ says
Chris. ‘The idea came from my
experience as a picture editor.
Events such as this are attended by
probably about 20 Fleet Street
photographers who are all vying for
the same images – think silhouettes

of people around the stones and so

on. We tend to see the same images

every year, but crucially I knew it

had never been seen from the sky.

‘A 3am start paid o† quite

handsomely as the resulting image

appeared in every single national

newspaper the next day. The solstice

image consists of over seven

manually bracketed exposures from

four stops under to three stops over.

The resulting images were then

pulled together in Lightroom or

Photoshop using the Nik Efex

Plugins. This gives an image as the

eye saw it at the time, and is

something one exposure simply

couldn’t do.’

Chris is a fan of using his drone to

give a new angle – quite literally – to

old concepts. A great example of

this is a shot of sunbathers on

Bournemouth Beach. ‘I was tired of

the usual “Phew what a scorcher”

images seen in the papers on the

hottest day of the year and knew the

drone could give it a more classy

feel. The resulting image was

published on the front of The Daily

Telegraph and also appeared in The

Times, so clearly, their picture

editors also agreed.’

‘The success of this image pretty much convinced

me that drone photography was my future’

Chris uses his drone to give ‘new angles’ to ‘old concepts’ – this shot was taken at Bournemouth Beach

Capturing this shot was a stroke of luck – the cruise ship just happened to appear at exactly the right moment