It's not easy taking pictures of gates
When I did my first post here about my new 'project' of photographing gates, I suspect that many readers of this blog may have thought something like "Well that sounds pretty easy and rather boring—photographing gates."
Well it's not.
First of all there is the requirement of finding 'interesting' gates to photograph, and then there is the challenge of actually stopping and taking the required photographs. These two events rarely, if ever, happen at the same time. The way this generally works is that I spot an 'interesting' gate when I am in high-speed highway touring mode and said 'interesting gate' flashes past in a micro-second or two; so I make a mental note to come back sometime later and take some pictures of it. Quite often 'sometime later' may end up being months, or even years, later.
When I finally do actually make it back 'sometime later' to take said photographs I then have to deal with new challenges. Challenges like pulling off to the side of a 110 kph highway while causing minimum disruption to the traffic flow. Challenges like keeping an eye out for snakes in the grass as I tromp around the sides of the gate trying to find the most interesting angles, and also being careful not to fall down any holes and twist an ankle, or break a knee.
Then there is the light. You can't move a fence or a gate around, and it would be a bit hard to bring my own lighting along. So it all depends on the position of the sun and any trees surrounding the 'interesting gate'. Trees can be a real nuisance. Trees cast strong shadows and strong shadows can be downright annoying.
In Australia in the Spring and Summer there is the issue of flies. Hundreds of flies. They come out of nowhere the minute you get out of the car. And for whatever reason it sees that flies just love to fly around the front of cameras. I have taken so many pictures that have one or two or three black blobs in them which where flies whizzing past the front of the lens just at the picture was taken. So to try and counter for this I tend to take three pictures of everything, hoping that at least on of them is fly-by free.
You wouldn't think, looking at the following picture, that there were about 20 flies on my face as I took this series of three shots.
This picture is 1700 pixels wide. Click on it to see it larger on a suitable screen.
You can't brush the flies away until after you have taken the set pictures, and I am pretty sure that they know this and they take advantage of it.