Sometimes we are a little too close to our hobby to see the details. Sometimes our clients and audience are not close enough. On a sunny Easter weekend, I set off to try and capture some of those details for prosperity and publicity. We had our challenges, but we also had a lot of success. This article describes the process and the results. Maybe it can inspire some of our fellow re-enactors to do the same?  At the end of the article are my tips for your next photo shoot.

Take a step back and look closer ...

Hard Life

Viking life was as vicious and hard as all other cultures of the time. We aim to recreate a slice of life from 790 AD to 1066 AD, but concentrating mainly on the 10^th Century. So we need to show the aggression, the warring and the harsh side of the Vikings, and their contemporaries (Celts, Saxons, and Normans) but we also need to portray the art, trading and civilisation brought to these shores by those groups. The period is known as the Dark Ages because at one point, we knew little about it – but our understanding is growing. The hobby we share with the audience helps expand that understanding.

The Challenge

Being the type of society we are, The Vikings tend to attract a crowd wherever we set up. The almost full-contact but controlled fighting system means bright plastic tape safety barriers and crowd lines are always present. The backgrounds to displays   are normally great castles, or modern attractions.  In the living history encampments the public are encouraged to get close. This is all well and good, until you look for a good photograph for art, products, or publicity materials – then you are faced with cropping or air brushing. So how do you get yourself some clean shots, devoid of everything modern?

How do you get the static medium of photography to convey the action and the flow of your displays?  We were going to try and put the viewers closer to the action than they would normally get – a distant view of warriors holding weapons up was not going to do us justice. If you are reading this as a time-served re-enactor you are used to some special access to the detail. Our task was to share that with the viewer. The photo “Boarsnout” does that I hope.

To start with, we decided many of the warriors looked too clean to be fighters so some subtle make-up was used to make them look battle-scarred.  Some even had old scars simulated (thankfully we have a fully trained theatrical make up artist or two to hand) ... nothing gory though.

The Setting

Excluding the modern world is just one aspect of the location challenge, another is to find an environment that looks right for the period and setting you are trying to portray. This photo shoot was to try to show the details that can’t be captured at our public displays. So how to set the scene for Dark Age exploration, trade, settlement, and conflict?

Well, one of our members is the proud owner of two Viking boats and he just happened to know of a beautiful ‘flash’ (local talk for lake) in Winsford, just beyond Stoke-on-Trent. The site provides three generous panoramas devoid of modernity. It also has a long thin spit of land separating river from flash . You can see from the pictures that we had great views of open water, a small river and native-looking backgrounds (I am no botanist, but it looked right to me - feel free to laugh and point if you know better).

Skills

Treat yourself this summer, stand back and watch a re-enactment display with fresh eyes. Hopefully you will rediscover the skills involved and appreciate how far our hobby has come in the last 25+ years. I have seen dozens of different period displays and the common ground now seems to be the effort put into making everything look right rather than ‘Hollywood’  (we still snigger at how back in the ‘70s our members used to look like Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas, resplendent in furry legs and leather jacks!).  This evolution in our hobby, together with the developments in digital photography were very evident when I looked over our old stock of photos.

We desperately needed some photos reflecting the new us.

So with safety marshals, life belts and lines, we set some of our warriors afloat. In the photo “Loading the Boat” you can see we have quite a large support group for a small boat crew. The marshals were briefed in standard water safety techniques as used in the RYA (Royal Yachting Assoc.) Competent Crew training, and the boat crew are given a safety briefing by the skipper.  Whenever we meet up, first aid is always available. Runners are also needed – moving this, fetching that, holding lenses, etc.

With two boats, we are still training warriors on a rolling list basis to emulate their forefathers and become proficient sailors ... watching clumsy beginners trying to “storm” ashore is quite amusing until they get a few hours practice. They were soon competent though.

It was different when it came to the battle and LHE. I have seen prissy photographers placing people just here, just there, a little higher, a little further back ... The big advantage I have as a time-served warrior myself is that I know how to give a command, and they know how to respond. Of course in LHE it’s always a polite request. Trusting in people you have trained with is very rewarding. Try it for yourself and you will get some great shots.

A trick we learned from hosting multiple societies at the larger Hastings events, is the use of the pea-whistle ... a blow on a whistle is great for stopping action, grabbing attention, giving a cue, and for raising an alarm.

Cameras and Post-production

For the techies amongst you, we were using a Canon 40D EOS with a Canon 400mm Zoom, a Nikon D300 with a Nikon 35-70AF, and a Canon 400D EOS with a Sigma 300mm Zoom. There were other cameras around too of course. One specialist camera was an MSc student using an ultra low-resolution camera developing photos using the salt process for a particular dissertation (as most societies, we get lots of enquiries about providing models and opportunities for photographers, and we like to help where we can).

Anyone taking action shots and close-ups is probably happy with the camera’s own processing of colour and shades – but when you get to portrait and arty stuff, we all like to mess around a little, don’t we? The use of black and white or sepia tones (or indeed other washes) can give the photo some pleasing effects. One I tried to emulate was the Wild West family portrait. Seldom do we actually place our re-enactors in stuffy poses, but I think you will see in “Pioneers” that it gives a certain look of early exploration. Not sure how much use it is yet, but at least I have a couple of them now. A little enhancement helps the clouds become a feature on the shot “Exploring”.

Many of the shots were helped by the bright conditions, and the very special glow of a clear sky at sunset. Yellows and mid-tones positively glow at about 7pm in April.

We took about 7,000 photos over the weekend, the new digital technology is a God-send for those of us who like to take ten and choose one. We have a few weeks’ work to do yet, classifying and tweaking (and throwing away the snatch shots that are out of focus).

Tips Learned

• Sunset is the supreme ally to colourful costumes and skin tones.
• Bright sunshine tends to make skin tones look clean, a 21^st Century weekend warrior syndrome.  Filling flash guns can do the same. Consider dulling down.
• Remember the environment – does it look right for the period?
• Rather than photograph the subject from where your audience would see them anyway, get amongst the action. High shots can be as dramatic as the cliché low shot.
• If more than twenty people are involved, have more than one photographer – people get bored watching others being photographed, so set up different groups and parallel process.
• Have the support of the appropriate officers – they will keep the troops busy when you are doing cameos.
• Think about the main drive in the lives of the period – exploration, trading, conquest, domesticity?
• Shoot over the shoulder of others, foreground interest will change the aspect of the shot making the viewer feel part of it.
• Before you click the shutter, do a sweep of the framing – anything newer than your period in view? (Be aware of tyre tracks – they really don’t look like cart tracks).
• Write down the shots you want – before you get there. Always start with the shots you can’t get anywhere else, if the weather compromises the shoot, at least you’ll have got the precious ones.
• If available, put a second photographer in a different position to record the same shots from a different angle.
• Do not put all your shots onto one memory, change cards and back-up regularly. Do not reformat the cards until you have duplicated the photos in two places and ideally burning them to discs.
• Book a beer tent. As always, it became the melting pot of ideas and a convenient muster point.

So, take a look at your own stocks and see if a photo shoot would do your society good, if it is as pleasing as ours, it will be worth the efforts. Happy shooting.

Mark Talbot

Publicity Thegn, The Vikings.

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