Shane Young In Focus

Gloucester photographer Shane Young has already been a regular contributor to SoGlos.com’s monthly reader galleries. We find out more about his inspirations, best locations and tricks of the trade – as well as revealing his top 10 shots.

Tell us a bit about yourself

Well, my name’s Shane Young and I’m 43 years-old, born in Gloucester. I work as a music practitioner, which mainly involves being a drum teacher but I also occasionally do projects in schools – writing songs with children for example.

Until recently I co-owned and ran a recording studio in the city – but I’m now looking at doing photography full-time so any job offers gratefully received!

How did you first get into photography?

I think I got into it originally because my dad had a taste for sketching, for which I didn’t quite have enough patience to do well, but he also liked talking about visual aesthetics. He wanted me to see the beauty in everything around me. It was a kind of religious thing for him.

When I grew into a bored teenager, I don’t remember how I afforded it but I got a Praktica, and a mate of mine got a Zenit. We used to go off wasting film we couldn’t afford, and mostly getting dreadful results. But I really caught the bug back then. Later on I got into using the school darkroom to do black and white printing. Great fun but again I was rubbish at it. It just felt good to be doing something that produced a result you could show people. A creative outlet was vital to my peace of mind – I was a jumpy lad.

What equipment do you use these days?

I have a Canon 20D with a fairly poor standard 18-55mm zoom, a gorgeous Canon 70-200mm f4 L, a Canon 10-22mm super-wide angle zoom which is also fantastic, and a Slik 700 DX Pro tripod which is very good indeed. I use a wireless remote shutter release and occasionally a polarising filter and that’s pretty much it.

High on my shopping list is a good flashgun and a photo storage drive, but these things all cost money, and musicians are rarely loaded!

Gallery of pictures from Shane Young

Out of the 10 photos you picked for the gallery (see above), which is your favourite and why?

I really like doing high dynamic range photography and going for that kind of super-real effect, so I like the slightly over-dramatic sky in the shot of the cricketers leaving the pitch, but really I can’t pick a favourite. I suppose it’s up to others to say what they like or dislike about them. I like bits of all of them but there’s usually something in every shot I would do differently the next time. That must be why the experience is so addictive. Basically I’m never totally happy with my results.

Actually, having said all that, I am pretty pleased with the black and white shot of the droplets on the leaves in the graveyard, because I think it has the feel of the time and the place just about right. It was very cold, foggy, and still, but loaded with atmosphere. It makes me feel calm to look at this shot. Yes, I’ll pick that one. Tomorrow it’ll be a different one though.

Do you use any image editing software?

Yes, Photoshop and Photomatix for processing HDR stuff.

Are you a film or digital advocate?

Digital, for the simple reason that I don’t feel restricted by the costs of film and processing, and can snap away forever – or until the card fills up. I did use to love slide photography, and have some cracking shots from Kenya on slides. There is definitely a quality to them that is hard to reproduce digitally – but I almost never look at them because it’s a rigmarole setting up a projector. I really should get a slide scanner…

The other thing I love about digital is that I can go home from a shoot and start working on my images immediately. I am impatient at times so having to wait for film to be processed just isn’t me!

Do you have any formal training? How did you develop your skills?

No formal training. Pure trial and error, mixed with a little stubborn determination. At least with digital you can take hundreds of shots and have a fighting chance of one or two coming out right. Then you slowly figure out what it was that made it work and you take that into account on the next shoot, and so on.

If you could snap anyone, who would it be?

That’s such a hard question. I have some big heroes in the music world, like Lou Reed, John Cale, M Ward, Vinnie Colaiuta, Bob Dylan – oh, the list is a really big one. I’d love to photograph Lauren Laverne because she has the most incredible eyes and is a cool person with a great wit.

I’ll tell you what, I’ll go for Adam and Joe – Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish of XFM – just because I would love to spend time with them. I think they are genuinely funny guys and it would be a blast.

And what’s your favourite Gloucestershire location?

The cathedral is an obvious magnet for people like me. There is such a richness of amazing detail and it’s hard not to have your mind totally boggled by the scale of the work that has gone on there.

Apart from that I like being out in fields enjoying the peace and quiet. Frampton and the area around it is lovely. The Forest of Dean has so much glorious scenery. Again, I don’t have one favourite. You have to keep moving on to get new and interesting pictures.

Last but not least, any top tips for budding snappers out there?

I’m not sure I’m qualified, but from what I’ve discovered of myself a good tip is to practice looking properly. Sounds silly, but it’s easy to look at something in a kind of cursory way and overlook things. Using a tripod has proven to be a great way of slowing down, spending longer checking that everything looks right rather than just firing off left, right and centre. I’ve often uploaded shots onto my computer and thought to myself, ‘How did I not see that at the time? It would have been so much better if this or that had been done differently.’ Slowing down makes you think that way before you take the shot and can avoid a lot of disappointment later.

Maybe get to grips with some image editing software, so that you learn to see the potential in a scene. If you know what the possibilities are in terms of post-processing, it expands your creative vision.

The only other piece of advice I would have is try to take pictures often. Like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get.

You can see more of Shane Young’s photos on his Flickr profile, flickr.com/wondertubs.

SoGlos.com
11 July 2008