The Mammoth returns

The editing desk, how much time do I spend sitting here?

I thought I’d cracked all the mammoth editing jobs for this year after the World Cup, but Euro Cup ’18 saw me shoot another 12 bouts back-to-back over three days. As for Woolly Mammoths, they may well make a come-back, either through scientific meddling, or climate change, depending on how it goes.

So I thought I’d put together a post about what it takes to get the photos from track-side to a computer/phone screen near you.

First, it takes a fair amount of abusing friend’s hospitality. Mark, I doubt you read this rubbish, but that Goan Vindaloo was great and I’m sorry about drinking all your beer, wine and whisky (not really). And thanks to Liz and Lily for the lifts, it was appreciated, and gave me more time to drink Mark’s beer, wine and whisky.

So I thought the easiest way to illustrate what goes on behind the scenes was to show you my editing desk and explain all the important elements. One can spend just as much time glued to the screen as one does track-side.

The most important thing in the image is the mug (right). It’s filled with coffee. Not the best, but then again I’m not too fussy. Hot drinks keep you going during the long nights trying to get the images out as soon as possible and without it I get very grumpy. First thing in the morning is not pretty.

The second most important item in the image is probably the computer. After all I need it to process all the images and without it I may as well sit somewhere comfier to drink my coffee. Please note all the external hard-drives. I am lax at deleting all the blurry, crap images, so I just buy another drive and hope I never have to sort through them in the future.

Next up in importance is the speaker, one can’t edit without music and it helps to set the tone for the images, I may edit more aggressively listening to a bit of Ozzy and images may be more muted processed to Katie Melua. I have an eclectic taste in music. Most of it bad.

The fourth useful piece of equipment are the printers and day-light lamp. I like to run out some proofs to check the print quality. I shoot for print rather than web so any images that will not print to at least A3 in size and still look good get binned. I really should delete all those files, I could reduce all those external drives down to one.

Finally, the Skull (top centre). It’s a reminder of one’s own mortality. It reminds me that life is too short to sit indoors all day on the computer, go and live life. Go, shoot some Roller Derby. It’s a vicious circle.

www.roller-derby-on-film.co.uk