Photo Special: Opportunities

Why it matters, and how you can improve

This feature is not going to cover the basics of photography such as lenses, or the relationships between shutter and aperture and ISO. For the basics, there are a million tutorials available online and (especially) on Youtube. This is going to be about archery-specific photography, which you can get involved with yourself.

James Folkard, a former editor of Bow, had this to say about the very first issue of this magazine, in 1995: “The cover featured Barry Farndon and Sue Mcgrath. It was inspiring to me (as cover stars should be) and shortly afterwards I moved to be coached by Barry and his wife June.” A close-to-home view of how photography can change the course of lives. Everyone’s life has been upended by a photograph and, in the age of social media and smartphones, photography has moved from a learned practice – whether hobby or professional – to an everyday part of people’s lives around the world.

According to an estimate, an astounding 1.43 trillion photos were taken worldwide in 2020, with around 93% of those taken on a mobile or tablet. Of course, an enormous proportion of those are of ourselves (and our pets). The cameras in modern smartphones have specs that now come close to, or surpass, ‘real’ digital cameras of not long ago and are capable of taking some genuinely extraordinary images. You’ve probably taken, with your phone, a few you’re rightly proud of yourself.

ARCHERY PHOTOGRAPHY: THE GOOD

Bow stands out from archery publications around the world for the extremely high quality of its images, and maintains a high resolution archive of shots for illustrating articles.

Many of these photos have been taken by Dean Alberga, who has been the official photographer for World Archery since 2006, and has taken more than half a million images. Dean comes from a newspaper background in the Netherlands, with a disciplined, story-based approach to getting the shots.

Bow has long recognised how important high-quality imagery is to producing exciting content that moves people. The real power of photography for a niche subject like archery is to inspire. We’ve all been excited about seeing a pic of our favourite archer or someone using brand-new gear. In the age of the image, you often don’t even register the work that may have gone into bringing you that image.

ARCHERY PHOTOGRAPHY: THE BAD

If you're holding a copy of Bow, you’ve seen the best of archery photography. But here’s the issue. We've all seen a million bad archery photographs. Don’t add to the pile. They crop up everywhere: on club websites, on governing bodies – national, regional and local – on Facebook pages, in newsletters, in local newspapers, advertising archery businesses... Everywhere. You have the power to change this! One of the most important things we can all do to promote our sport is to improve its optics, as the current buzzword has it. Archery design and imagery across the board, generally speaking, often lags behind the times a little. Younger people especially have higher expectations when it comes to imagery, and anything you can do to make things look sharp and up to date has more power than you can imagine. It lifts the spirits to have a great-looking club website – or even just a great looking Instagram page.

For the rest of your natural life, most likely, you will have a camera in your pocket capable of making images that can dazzle and fascinate. It’s at least worth learning a little about how the magic is made.