Beer-Trip Photography
One of the compromises you have to make on beery holidays is the time you can spend with the camera – you can’t hold up your mates indefinitely whilst you wait for the right light, so you have to be pretty instinctive and reactive with your photography.
I had such a weekend in Jersey where I shot about 400 shots of random stuff in 4 days, mainly in boozers or walking between them. Getting anything that’s meaningful from that is more of a challenge than any dedicated weekend in the lakes with your kit bag and 20 hours a day. All I had was a 5D, 24-105, 3stop ND Grad and a lensbaby with the pinhole adaptor fitted (by accident, thought it had the normal optic in – arse!).
I think you need to try to tell a story where possible, avoid posing everone, look for moments to arise naturally rather than force them into action and gradually people will just accept that you’re taking shots and act naturally. Avoid flashes too, just attracts attention and blinds people, may even set off a fit if you’re not careful.
So I got the shots back and just cropped and used some actions that I happened up on once – one grainy mono, one Grunge Rock – no more, not much point in doing too much processing as I was story telling, not trying to get an award in some photo magazine or anything…
Here’s a few I quite like anyway


































I’m sure your mate with the bald patch is just going to love you for taking that shot ;o)