[LeMieux Badminton Grassroots Photos]
For the last few years at least I have been booked to cover the Badminton Grassroots competition by 1st Class Images, the Warwickshire-based event photographers who cover most of the biggest equestrian competitions in the UK and Ireland.
This year, however, I was approached to cover it for Horse & Hound.
I have been covering the big 5* eventing competitions for Horse & Hound for many years now, alongside their resident pro, Peter Nixon. We decide how we are going both cover the cross country track and then set off in different directions so that Pippa and her editorial team at Horse & Hound get a variety of images from around the course which they can use throughout the year.
The Grassroots competition, sponsored this year again by LeMieux, is normally something which they feel Peter can cover on his own, but this year, because of other commitments to Badminton, he could not.
I picked up the baton.
When you cover a cross country track alone there is always a chance that a competitor will not get to you, so I decided to mitigate that risk by starting at fence 2 and working my way around the course shooting a few people at each fence.
The brief was simple: something of everybody and lots of post-fence smiles and patting.
Dividing the number of competitors by the number of fences I reckoned I could cover three BE100 runners over each obstacle. For the BE90 which followed it was four.
There are times when you get to a fence and the shot you imagined isn’t there, or isn’t as good as you’d planned. There may be Fence Judges where you planned to be, or in your background, anything which means you decide to move on sooner.
Similarly there may be some fences you get to and think it looks particularly good and stay a little longer, that’s the trade off.
With 60-odd competitors in the BE100 section I managed to get to the second last. For the BE90 I covered the course and photographed a few people finishing to add to the celebration vibe.
All went well for the first few fences but when I arrived at the much anticipated LeMieux Saddles fence, in front of the house, I found to my horror that the BE90 side of the fence obscured the BE100 side to the extent that I could either capture the rider cleanly over the fence or get the house in the background, not both. Move on.
Equine photographers are always looking for a spot where we can get more than one obstacle without moving, if possible, and the water on this course was such a fence. I could crouch by the fence judges car and get the first fence into the water, turn left and get the second element, then get a nice sequence of riders galloping away from the fence with the house in the background.
The next fence was completely different in that it was a single obstacle, as in the featured image here, but from the right angle it had a nice view of Badminton House in the background, as well as a good view of the riders as they moved on, smiling or otherwise.
Fences with lots of options are not out best friend. We have all lined up what we think is a lovely shot of a route through a fence, only to find that another route is more popular and doesn’t offer the same angle for the photographer. The LeMieux Arrowheads at 9AB were typical of this and it took me three or four riders too establish the best place for me to be, to allow for the variations.
I think any photographer will admit that sometimes a fence doesn’t live up to expectations, so some were barely visited and I spent longer at others. The LeMieux Hollow (rail, ditch rail) was causing a lot of trouble and previous experience tells me that Horse & Hound like to talk about influential fences, even if they don’t photograph particularly well, so a few riders were covered here regardless.
At the other end of the scale, the Pheasant Log, three from home, provided a great photo which made the fence look like one from a much higher level. I decided to finish the section here.
Organisers generously gave us more than half an hour between sections so I had plenty of time to walk back to the start and join Henry from 1st Class Images at Fence 2 & 3.
This time round the LeMieux Saddles were much better, with the smaller side of the fence closer to camera and an angle allowing a properly timed jumping shot over the fence without obscuring the magnificent house view. I had timed my arrival there to coincide with the leader after showjumping and that plan worked well, providing a lovely shot of the eventual winner.
There was no angle for a house shot at the Willis Brothers Flyer, as there had been previously, swings and roundabouts, so I moved on steadily doing 5/6 riders at each fence and finished my afternoon at the finish recording some celebrations as competitors jumped the last.
Photography days are roughly split between those where I have to sit down in a media centre and backup, caption and edit as soon as possible, and those where time is not so critical and I actually benefit from going home and completing the edit on more powerful hardware. This was one of the latter: horrendous trip home thanks to a closure on the M5, offload onto various drives and code replacement captioning ready to start the edit the following morning.