I managed to get a break for a couple of weeks between TV shoots, so disappeared off to the Peak and Lake District to get outside and enjoy the hills that both these lovely areas have to offer. There was an intention in mind however, and this was to meet up with Joanna Shimwell.
Joanna is an outdoor enthusiast. She works on her family farm, and is also an avid outdoor swimmer, so much so that she is also part of The Outdoor Swimming Society’s swim champs for 2020. She is quite a lover of cold water swimming and is quite frank and open about what reactions and feelings she gets from swimming in the outdoors. She was introduced to me by a mutual friend, and we have been in contact for a few months about trying to get an outdoor swim shoot up and running, and so this 2 week break was a great to time head out with her and her partner Nick, and shoot what she loves doing.
We were at the back end of summer, and managed to squeeze in a couple of shoots with some sunny weather, one of which was glorious in a quarry that had beautiful clear waters. I didn’t even think such waters existed in the Peak District! The other spots were a reservoir that many other swimmers visit and a nearby meandering river. These were local spots that she knew of and swims regularly at, and so I took her lead when it came to swim locations.
There were certainly some risks and challenges involved when it comes to trying to shoot someone swimming. Trying to keep kit dry is essential whilst trying to shoot. It means getting close to the water in order to be able the lovely low angle shots that you simply can’t get when shooting from higher up, yet not get so close that the kit ends up in the water. It’s a fine balance, and a tricky one at that when your camera does not have a flip at screen like so many new cameras have these days. It means getting extremely lows to the ground and the waters edge, or being in the water itself.
The latter is something that I was able to do, being either in a drysuit or a wetsuit. I own and used my Outex underwater housing for this situation as it meant I could get closer and even submerging my camera without fearing about my equipment. It’s a great piece of kits that’s extremely versatile (this is something that I bought and am not affiliated with), as it can be used on many different cameras. It also packs down really small, in my camera bag in to a little pouch that I keep it all in. I also recently bought a new dome port as I thought it’d be a good investment, which is essentially a glass dome that fits over the lens to be able to give split level shots. By this I mean shots that are half in and half out of water, with the water line giving a visible split between the two. I’ve never tried these shots before, so it was somewhat a bit of an experiment for me.
The Outex kit however, isn’t without some difficulties. It takes time to put on and seal around the camera, compared to other camera housing systems that you can literally place the camera in to, close the lid and head off within a few minutes. It’s also a little cumbersome to use as there are no external features to press. All the buttons you need to use, have to be used through the rubber skin of the Outex system. But as with anything, there and pros and cons that need to be balanced up. So for me, this system works well.
If there’s one type of shot I enjoy trying to achieve, it’s the action shot. This means lots of constant moving, sometimes at high speeds, to get that energy that can be perceived through a photo. This entails fairly high shutter speeds and high focus accuracy. Thankfully, there are systems on the camera that can help with this such as the auto focus system, as trying to focus manually is not impossible, but highly improbable, so to help take something out of the equation so I can focus on framing is definitely useful.
I feel as though there are some shots that I took, that I really love. It did mean taking a lot of photos, but it was definitely worth the edit time or sorting and sifting, to see one shot that for me, really stands out. I must admit, there are times like that, where there’s been so much energy put in to planning and actually doing the shoot, to see one photo, and I mean sometimes just 1, that I’m really happy with. It was definitely the case for Joanna’s shoot.
