My First Published Article
Moody garage shot which didn’t make the cut in the magazines in favour of a shot with the owner. 1/100s F4.0 35mm ISO 1600.
I recently realised it has been two years since my first article was published in MG Enthusiast. Being subsequently published many more times across multi magazines (Classic Car Mart, BMW Car and Rolls Royce & Bentley Driver to name a few) and with everything else that’s going on, it felt much longer ago. In light of that I thought it would be fun to revisit what I did and see if my photography has changed since then.
As you can see it was a wet start to the day with the roof down. 1/30s F4.0 32mm ISO 64.
Each individual car magazine comes with a different focus. Something like Autocar which publishes articles on the very latest releases are much more technical, giving the stats and figures to prospective new buyers so they can make an informed decision on their latest salary swallowing PCP deal. Obviously for a magazine like MG enthusiast this isn’t an option, especially as most of the focus isn’t so much on the new ‘MGs’ produced in China but the classic stalwarts such as the MGB and the MG Midget. I’m sure no one who buys this magazine needs to read yet another road test of a car that they’ve owned four of over the last thirty years. Instead, these single marque magazines tend to focus on interesting and unique concepts, cars or owner stories, something original that you couldn’t just read about after a quick search online or on Wikipedia.
Don’t worry about the hard wearing interior of the MG Midget on a wet day. It was designed with this punishment in mind. 1/25s F8 24mm ISO 400.
With that in mind the writer, my good friend Aaron McKay, pitched the concept of driving an MG Midget with the roof down on the shortest day of the year to show that such a car didn’t need to be locked away during winter. So, there we were wrapped up warm and roof down on a miserable and wet day North Yorkshire day in the middle of December. It doesn’t come much more British than that. The car itself was lovely, at the time it had a small gearbox issue (which has now been fixed) but it had been well maintained with some tasteful and sympathetic upgrades over the years to make it more reliable. Though this time I didn’t get a chance to get behind the wheel myself, they are a lot of fun, with their low power and low weight allowing you to really push the car on public roads without the danger of losing either your licence or your life. You needn’t worry about being cold either as a quick opening of a flap deluges your legs in hot air straight from the engine.
The sun did eventually emerge later in the day as we were wrapping up the static photos. 1/50s F11 20mm ISO 64.
This individual car itself was pretty special as it has been owned by the same person since 1976, covering more than 200,000 miles as a once commuter car and has even towed a small boat to France for what must have been a very memorable holiday. The owner Stephen still enjoys driving it to this day and now the gearbox issue has been sorted, hopefully it will be a car I will see again in the future (though perhaps on a longer, sunnier day).
Where the magic happens, the Midget’s 1275cc A-Series engine producing 65bhp. Plenty when you consider the car weighs just 685kg. 1/25s F11 24mm ISO 1600.
Looking at the photos themselves I am still happy with them two years on. The main difference now is the addition of my 70-200mm F4.0 lens alongside the 24-70mm F2.8 lens I used for this article. Except for the interior shots, I much prefer the former for automotive photography due to its greater image compression and being able to zoom in so much closer on those all-important action shots. Speaking of action shots, I had a good laugh looking at some of the ones I delivered to the magazine. At the time I got feedback that some of them were too blurry to use but being new to the game I didn’t know where the limit was. Now I can see straight away that some of them are just plain unusable, and now I would simply have deleted them without a second thought.
Much to blurry to be considered usable, any shots like this I would simply delete straight away. 1/30s F5.6 52mm ISO 64.
Critically back then I was also much slower to get the shots, whereas before I could need several runs to get one or two good ones, I can easily get three or four or more on a single run now. A point often misunderstood by amateur photographers is that being a professional is not always about getting the best images but getting the work done in a consistent and timely manner.
Much better, with the car in sharp(ish) focus. Aaron did his best on the day to get the car to really lean around the corners. 1/50s F5.6 70mm ISO 64.
I also remember asking Aaron to do a staged shot of him opening the latch on the roof which seemed silly to him at the time, but it did make the final cut into the magazine, so I was happy I had him do it. Small details like that do help to tell the story of the car.
The Midget’s roof is about as simple to operate as you can imagine. Unclip a couple of latches, push back and you are done. Just don’t forget to karate chop the plastic rear window so it folds properly. 1/50s F5.6 20mm ISO 800.
If you had told me two years ago that I would in 2021 be working as a freelance photographer fulltime, then I would have been happy but more so surprised. Covid and the subsequent lockdowns have certainly brought damper on the work I have been able to do over the past twelve months but with positive signs going into spring and summer there should be a lot more to come later in the year. Including more MGs.
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