Fly Like Frankie

To the races last Saturday, for Frankie Dettori’s swansong appearance on UK soil at Btish Champions Day at Ascot. A PR job for Great British Racing, where members of the public could re-enact his trademark flying dismount (with varying degrees of success!), though some people opted for a more sedate pose. This job had lots of potential banana skins; from high voltage flash, off camera, in the rain (more about that below), inebriated race goers (no, for the third time,  you can’t sit on the horse!), plus we had to get ‘jump at your own risk’ waivers and  emailed out over 170 pics to the participants, all with no hitches. About the only thing that went wrong was me breaking down on the way to Ascot - still made it on time. Phew!    Here are some of my favourites from the day.

The Great British Public were a really fun bunch to work with on the day, and a surprising diversity of racegoers. 

We’d already done a version  of this PR activation on the Southbank, the previous week, where Dettori gave interviews and of course showed us how it’s done (photo on my homepage)

Both times, I used a studio style setup of off-camera flash using umbrellas, really helps help the pictures pop. You can’t rely on the the sun to make an appearance in the UK at any time of year, let alone October, and even then, I had limited control over orientation of the setup, and even then then, the Sun as a light source is not very controllable, so lighting it with flash was the only way to go. Predictably, we had rain both at the Southbank and at Ascot, from a fine drizzle, to passing but more than just light showers. Supermarket food roasting bags my go to for protecting the flash heads (and anyone touching them!) from the wet - heatproof, lightweight, colour neutral and cheap! With a belt and braces buggy parasol that I waterproofed for further protection over the main light. The light stands were then cable tied to the perimeter guard rail, which made this  a safe and secure solution to off camera lighting in a public space. Free standing lighting, however well weighted  and marked with hazard tape would have made me very nervous for the health& safety implications, and simply wasn’t an option, regardless of, add to that, the fact that as expected, there was more than a few boisterous groups well into their 3rd of 4th pint/bottle of champagne. In events photography, it’s par for the course that alcohol enters the mix for both business and private parties work, but people don’t imbibe they way some do when they’re off out out for a day at the races. Add to this they’d be jumping on a trampoline… There’s an approach you can take to ground the inebriated in what sobriety they can find within which I had to employ a few times, and it worked well enough that we didn’t have to turn anyone away, even if they ended up posing with the horse instead of flying through the air.

Very happy with how these images turned out, and after several weeks of planning, zoom calls and thinking through set up, workflow and problem solving, to finally say, farewell Frankie.