Steam!!

Salisbury Carnival is one of my biggest photo tasks of the year - and this picture of a traction engine might seem an odd choice to represent it.

Working for the City Council, who organise this annual event, now in its third year, I really do have to be on top form both physically and equipment wise. I really must look like a bit of a poser, with the full-frame Nikon D700 on one shoulder and the DX D7000 on the other. I joke that it's for lumbar spread!

It may surprise that I have the wider lens (Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8) on the DX D7000 and the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 on the FX D700. But between the two, I get an almost seamless focal length spread of (equivalent) 25-200mm, all at f2.8. Sigma's flagship flashgun is for the wider angles, on the D7000.

This also means that the better picture quality at very high iso's of the D700 (the D7000 has the same figures but has slightly higher, more granular 'grain') is where I need it at the limit. One of the reasons why I chose this image, rather than any multitude of (frankly) rather commercial huge great, lit floats that are trucks and trailers, or the community groups - I try and get shots of every entry, all moving, often within a few feet of me - is because it really pushes at the boundaries of camera technology, in a realistic and practical environment.

Shooting handheld, plus 2/3 stop, with such a big lens at 1/100, without any vibration reduction, still required iso of 5,000, lens wide open. So, for those who wonder what their camera's images look like at such settings, then this could be it. I still had to lighten it in shadows/highlights and for this blip, I cloned out someone in a light coat in the foreground. I tried removing the lampost but it didn't look right. I didn't add any post sharpness as that would have broken up the image even more. An increase in contrast to the sky area brought out the steam better. I then did a conversion to b&w, the yellow slider having a huge effect on the overall lighting.

The steam is backlit by tractors and truck's headlights, as they wait in convoy. The crowd waiting, in silhouette is an essential part, compositionally. I did wonder if I should crop the top 1/4 out but it looked too squat - I like the height of the image, here - accentuating the freedom that the big puff of steam generates.

You can make out a slight grid-like pattern that becomes more evident from this iso upward - at the D700's maximum 25,600 iso it is quite prominent - but gets you a picture, from almost nothing.

I did some similar shots last year and they found favour with many - us Brits have a huge and strange fascination with anything old and 'steam' and my images went on to being shown at lectures and AV shows at Steam clubs. So, I'm always thinking laterally, at the time, too! The big edit of the other hundreds of shots will take many days, but being freelance really does allow one to do your own slant, too and can make a real difference to one's portfolio.