Behind the byline: Craig Stephen

Behind the byline is a BGAJ series that looks beyond the finished article, image or broadcast to the craft behind it. It gives members the chance to reflect on a piece of work they’re especially proud of — whether it was challenging to report, tricky to research or creatively demanding — and to share how it came about, how it was made, and what made it memorable. In this first instalment, we hear from a member who takes us behind one such piece of work and the decisions, experiences and relationships that shaped it.

Over the last eight years, I’ve photographed extensively in Scotland’s aquaculture sector, and I think this might be my favourite frame, captured in one of the most beautiful parts of the country AND it was sunny!

Taken for one of my salmon clients just off the beautiful Summer Isles in Wester Ross, this was an image that had been on my wish list for some time. I had recently upgraded to a flagship camera capable of shooting 30 frames per second, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to put it to the test. With amazing weather, great-looking fish, and a can-do attitude from the farm team, we were able to capture the shot relatively quickly. A small number of fish were removed from the pen and sedated, as is standard practice during a fish health check. Once under anaesthetic, they were lifted quickly from a tub of water, held for a second or two, and then returned safely to the pen.

The process was repeated with a handful of fish, filling a 240GB card in a matter of minutes. What amazed me was that even at such an incredibly high capture rate – 30 full-resolution images every second – almost every frame was entirely unique. Images like this come with plenty of challenges: a fast-moving subject, shallow depth of field, unpredictable positioning of subject / water droplets, and, most importantly from a welfare perspective, the fish must be out of the water for no more than 10-15 seconds.

Adding additional light in the form of flash would be impossible in this situation, so I placed the sun behind the subject – which helped lighting the water droplets and bounced the light back into the subject with a small reflector to light the fish, but not too much as they are pretty shiny and thus easy to overexpose. Lots of variables to manage and a bit of luck required, but incredibly rewarding when reviewing the images and finding a frame as strong as this one.

A few years back, the Irish Farmers Journal published a Scottish edition and, under editor John Sleigh, I was commissioned to produce a weekly cover image alongside regular feature photography.

This frame comes from a particularly enjoyable afternoon photographing shearer Dougie Steel at work on a farm near Kippen in Stirlingshire. It was a very warm, bright day and I had free rein to move around the team – two shearers and the farmer taking care of wool handling. Never one to make life easy for myself, I chose to shoot on shallow depth prime lenses and added a touch of on-camera flash to add a bit of punch to the images. On super bright days I like to bring the ambient exposure down a bit where possible – though not often an issue in Scotland! It slowed things down slightly—mainly due to recycling times—but gave the images a real sense of pop and helped pull out the incredible detail that was present. Left to get on with it (as long as I stayed out of the way), I spent a good few hours documenting the process and came away with a really diverse set of images. I don’t recall this one making it in to the paper, I think a more conventional shot was used but I really like this one – though to be fair he was pretty quick on his feet and not the easiest to keep up with, but I think you can almost feel the pace… and maybe even smell the lanolin and hard work in the air in this picture.

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If you’d like to share a piece of work for a future Behind the byline feature, we’d love to hear from you. Full details on how to submit, along with guidance on what to include, can be found on the Behind the byline post.

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