Picture the scene, you are at a location, camera in hand, ready to capture some epic shots of a landscape that looks the same as it has thousands of years ago! You, however are not alone, you are in the company of other photographers who feel that a challenge is in order and not any old challenge, an only 400mm challenge.

As the idea was being discussed my first thoughts were thankfully I had my sigma 150-600 with me instead of just my canon 70-200L, otherwise this challenge would have been “out of my reach”, and not long after this the sheer gravity of this challenge started to materialize in my thoughts and imagination.

The Players

The other photographers that I was with weren’t your everyday photographers, they were each World Class Pros at the top of their game! Nigel Danson, Mads Peter Iversen and Michael Shainblum had come to visit, and the location of choice was the incredible Dingle Peninsula, in Kerry, situated right at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Now with me being the local, and when I say local I only mean Irish, it meant that apparently I would have the upper hand, this logic, albeit plausible, didn’t hold much weight in reality when I was going to be up against these heavy weights of the industry for this challenge. I had faith in my own ability of course, however I would be foolish if I didn’t consider the caliber of my opponents!

Not ideal conditions

To have a challenge like this, ordinarily would be a great idea, this landscape is full of many compositions which work well with the rolling waves, moody skies and fleeting light, however on this particular day we had a blazing sun, little to no clouds to add contrast and to top it all off we had a wind that would knock you over repeatedly! Nonetheless, off we went, cameras in hand and full of hope, fear and excitement of what lay ahead!

Local knowledge

As previously noted, I was the “local” so immediately it became clear to the others that I had home advantage as I set off to find my shots! We had picked an area that is quite barren and rugged, Clogher Head, and this terrain would be a challenge in itself even without the blazing sun and relentless wind! I had photographed from here many times before for sure but never had I been restricted to just using 400mm and this would put my knowledge not only of the area but also the tools, to the test! Now as the sun would be directly behind me it was clear that if I was going to shoot into it I would have a hard time controlling the light, and as I watched my fellow competitors head up and over the headland I elected to head over to the opposite side and shoot with the sun behind me, allowing it to light up the fantastic array of subjects that I knew from local knowledge that lined themselves up before me. At 400mm it also meant that I didn’t really need to move and I could find myself a rock to perch on, have my back to the wind and sun and fire off shots from more or less the one spot!

Subjects

Lining up below me were a set of subjects to die for, you have Clogher beach, a pristine sandy cove with turquoise blue waters, a number of coastal outcrops follow on from that which lined themselves up perfectly for the incoming crashing waves, beyond that you have the iconic 3 sisters, a sequence of 3 peaks that line a cliff which falls off 100m to the sea on the other side and finally I had Ceann Sibeal ( Sibeal Head) with its dramatic cliff face and textures! This specific location was in fact used to film one of the Star Wars movies and found itself being a temporary home for Luke Skywalker and even had a visit from the Millenium Falcon, which was built right at the peak of the headland! Plus to add to all this I had some great waves crashing against the rocks below me, all visible from my elevated perch!

Sigma 150-600 handheld

My weapon of choice for this was my Sigma 150-600, which has on many occasions previously been a work horse in the landscape ! I had originally purchased it to photograph the annual Red Deer rut, however I’ve found that it has been an ideal for me on many other occasions other than its original intention! Having the flexibility of going from 150 to a massive 600 gives me the ability to get a totally different perspective for landscape shots, if you’ve not tried this before I would highly recommend it ! Now given that the light was very bright and direct I figured I would be doing some fast shutter speeds so opted to only attempt this challenge handheld, I also figured I would need to be fluid and the tripod would have gotten in the way! This approach in restrospect was a good one. However it did restrict the types of shots I could get (i.e) no longer exposures and every frame would be slightly different! Nonetheless I found the ability to be reactive quickly worked well overall and this lens performed well as always.

Time limit

As if this challenge wasn’t already hard enough we also had a strict time limit of one hour to get our shots. This would prove difficult to say the least as normally to get the killer shots you need time to scope out a location plus allow for the light to change. This approach made us all have to think quick and not get comfortable in any spot during it. For me however as mentioned I was pretty comfortable due to my friendly rock, while the others would spend their time frantically running around looking for compositions to photograph.

The Shots

I ended up taking quite a number of shots during this challenge which in itself was a good thing as it forced me to be alert and aware of what was happening below me. Given that I had such an array of subjects to shoot I ended up looking for what Nick Page would call “moments”. The moment a wave crashed against the headland, the moment sea spray would float up and over a distant headland, the moment an incoming wave would be topped off by the prevailing wind or even the moment the light would catch the spray off a wave and present me with a brief rainbow. Each shot was different for sure however one thing I did battle with was ensuring they were sharp. My shutter speeds varied from 1/800 second up to 1/1250 of a second, fast in the bigger scheme of things however when the wind was not only moving me but also catching the larger than normal real-estate of my lens it was negating any image stabilisation the lens had.

Vlogging

Now as if this challenge wasn’t full of enough complexities already, we also added another dimension to it by each of us attempting to vlog the adventure. This added some additional struggles as concentrating on finding shots and formulating sentences to the camera to explain our approach in these hard conditions and a fixed 400mm focal length could have proved a step too far. Michael is generally a calm and considered photographer so this combination would make him feel like a duck out of water. Mads on the other hand seemed to relish the opportunity, that is until he had to take his signature shot of himself in the landscape to show scale, difficult normally but at 400mm it was even harder. Nigel was the fortunate one as he had his highly talented videography Rick with him, so the balance would shift in his favour with regards to recording video. Finally, my battle was due to being handheld I wouldn’t be able to set up a shot other than using my trusty DJI pocket to document my trials and tribulations as I went. It was a run-and-gun approach, making it all the more difficult for us all to have any usable audio due to the powerful and ever-present wind.

As we all reconvened after the hour to reflect on the challenge it was clear that the very nature of it was going to put us out of our comfort zone, push our abilities and help us grow as photographers more than anything. This is why I feel challenging not only yourself but also others in photography is a very good thing to do, regardless of the rules of the competition. You don’t need to make it as hard as we did, it could be as simple as only shooting at 50mm, only taking ten photos, shooting only in jpeg to ensure you nail your settings, going handheld only or even as simple as aiming to get only long exposure shots. Regardless you are going to learn and improve and if you are doing it with others create a friendship from being in the face of adversity together.

Challenge yourself, it’s how you grow and learn. It is also where you will make mistakes of course however if you didn’t make mistakes then you wouldn’t be learning. Practice makes perfect after all and at the very least you may learn something about yourself!

Watch the videos below and cast your vote

400mm Challenge: Who Wins, YOU decide.