Weaving Magic

Roger in action on the pedal-powered loom.

How to photograph some artisan weavers in a shed at night? I found out when I visited Andrea and Roger who founded Skye Weavers up in Glendale.

As ever with this sort of thing, I went with an idea of the key shot I wanted, and ended up with a much bigger variety of compositions that I expected. Always keep an open mind!

Having had the pleasure of visiting several times in the past, mainly to buy some of their excellent blankets, I had a decent understanding of what I’d be faced with. Some wooden sheds and an old stone byre, with lighting definitely not suited for photography. This necessitated breaking out the lighting gear - numerous flashes, light stands, umbrellas, radio triggers and a mini softbox.

Lighting gear for photographing in a shed at night.

On arrival I was greeted with a cup of hot tea while we chatted through the Skye At Night project, and what the plan was for the evening’s shoot.

I had already thought of the main shot I wanted to achieve. It’s always dangerous to go into a session with preconceived ideas, so I was also on the lookout for alternatives as well. But I wanted to nail the “money shot” first. Essentially, it’s the picture at the top of this blog post. Roger on the amazing pedal-powered loom, with a slow shutter speed to emphasise the pedalling aspect which is so unusual.

I decided to do the whole thing with my Leica Q3. It’s ideal for this type of photography, where you need really high quality output, intuitive controls, and a small form factor that doesn’t dominate proceedings. I ended up with 1/8th sec f/2.8 ISO 50 for this initial image. Poor Roger had to disconnect a bunch of weird loom-related things so he wouldn’t mess up the fabric that was already on it, and had to stop & start pedalling many times.

I do like the resulting picture. It’s exactly as I envisaged it, with rich colours, plenty of contrast and the main subject nicely executed with the blurry pedalling action I wanted and Roger’s head nice and still.

With that one in the bag, I started to experiment. When shooting in a building at night, it’s always a good plan to go outside and see if there’s an interesting shot through the window. So….

Shooting through a window into the weaving shed.

The above shot gives some more context for the whole situation, which is always useful. It shows their cottage on the left with the kitchen light on, a blue hour skye with some nice clouds, and Roger in the shed doing something complicated on the loom. Roger and Andrea had some excellent stories to tell, including the fact that the shed windows are from their old Commer camper van. 1/120th, f/2.0 (to get some depth by blurring the foreground window frame) and ISO 2000 (ISO was in auto mode).

Cue much more exploration. In the stone byre next to the loom shed, Andrea was running the warping wheel. They had made this massive machine from a couple of wheels from a farming grass rake, and a load of old floorboards. Superb stuff. Although Andrea explained what it does, I was too engrosssed in figuring out how to photograph it all. This is one of the best aspects of photography for me - puzzling out how to create a compelling image from an otherwise chaotic scene.

Andrea working the warping wheel.

For this one I used my mini softbox with a flash inside, triggered by an old-school Pocket Wizard radio trigger receiver. The Leica Q3 had the transmitter on, with the flash set up in manual mode to simply pop at a given strength when it got the signal from the Q3.

For this sort of thing it’s essential to have the camera in manual mode to have full control over everything. I wanted to have the warping wheel blurred to show motion, so I selected a shutter speed of just 1/8th. The Q3 has optical image stabilisation which I had set to “auto” and it’s amazingly good. I wanted most of the scene in focus, so an aperture of f/8, and that dictated ISO 100 to get an exposure that kept the ambient light slightly underexposed. I set the flash to 1/8th power to highlight Andrea. The flash was pretty close to Andrea to keep the light nice and soft.

I really liked this warping thing. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was fascinated by how Andrea was manipulating the threads of wool coming off the many spindles in the background. I decided to create an image that got across the feeling of the wool and the atmosphere in that stone byre. Here it is.

Andrea keeping the tension on the threads going onto the warping wheel.

This is another flash-lit image to focus attention on Andrea’s hands and the threads. All manual again. 1/100th, f/2 to get shallow depth of field, IS0 100. Love this pic. So do they.

I rounded off the evening in Glendale with a rapid download of all the shots onto my laptop, and I then showed the whole lot to Roger and Andrea. We picked a few choice frames and I did a couple of quick edits to give them an idea of what the finished pictures would look like. I really don’t like editing very much so get it done briskly and efficiently. Of course I’ve given them the photographs for their own use, and overall we’re all well chuffed with the end results.