CASE STUDY HORSES FOR COURSES
“Whether it be stallions, skiers flying off a cliff in the Alps or a tennis player sliding across a clay court, shooting in manual focus has always been king”
photographer at the Sunday Express , I was covering all the major sporting events with a manual focus 400mm f/2.8 lens, on film cameras. There was no room for focusing errors, no exposure latitude and no way of looking at the shot taken,” he says. “At the FA Cup Final, you had the first five minutes of the game to shoot the back page sports picture for the first edition, as the motorcycle despatch rider was waiting to rush it back to the darkroom. “It was the same at Wimbledon, the Ryder Cup or the rugby at Twickenham. It was unforgiving in an industry where your results are either great or unusable, with nothing much in between. You had to perform consistently to stay in the role.” Following that job, Spurdens spent a number of years shooting winter sports in the Alps and doing air-to-air photography for plane manufacturers’ advertising campaigns. Then with the advent of digital video, he felt it was time to transition to the moving image. Those manual-focusing skills turned out to be a great advantage. “Whether it be stallions, skiers flying off a cliff in the Alps or a tennis player sliding across a clay
they just feel like rolling in the mud, meaning the filming is instantly postponed to another day. The next day, they may do the same and all you can do is wait, when laughably, they may do it again! “They can’t be coerced into running. They are individually worth many millions, and looked after by teams of skilled people whose job is to prioritise their well-being. Upsetting one is not an option.” Spurdens is tasked with capturing the beautiful, slow-motion footage that Darley’s potential clients want to see. “You’d think that given their speed and prowess, this should be easy to film. Of course it would be if I were a horse whisperer. Then I could make them run a certain angle at a certain speed and do a little dance so my zooms, pans and focus pulls are perfect every time,” says Spurdens. “Instead, some mornings they run at full tilt, other times a leisurely gallop, sometimes not at all.” Capturing high-speed action has been a lifelong passion for 58-year-old Spurdens, who has spent his whole working life as a pro photographer, then filmmaker. “In those early days as chief sports
NO NIGHT-MARE Capturing such powerful beasts meant a combination of colourful
landscape shots plus slow-motion of the stallions in action. Choosing the right kit made the job much easier for Spurdens (far right), who used Red and Canon equipment
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PRO MOVIEMAKER
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