Photo Special: Malcolm Rees

A familiar sight at tournaments, he explains how to do it

How did you start in archery photography?

I was quite involved in my university archery club, and when I graduated and was no longer eligible to compete at the university championships, I came along to do running repairs, keep an eye on our novice archers and generally help my club out. I also took a few photographs of my clubmates so they would have some.

The following year, I also took photos of archers from clubs in our local university archery league (SWWU – South Wales & West Universities). By the year after, I was getting people from other universities asking if I could take their photo as well. It wasn’t long until I was there only to take photos of people.

Which events do you try to go to every year?

The events that I prioritise every year are the University Archery Championships – usually two to three indoor qualifying events and indoor and outdoor finals – and the British University Team Championships (BUCS), one of the loudest and most energetic shoots going. Including times when I’ve attended as a university archer, I have attended nearly 50 BUCS events over the past 23 years, and it’s always fun to go to another host university and visit another city. I’ve been to events as far north as Aberdeen, as far south as Crawley, as east as Norwich and as west as Cardiff for university archery.

Then there are the National Tour events – there had been eight on the 2020 calendar – and the associated finals at the end of the year. There are also a bunch of national shoots, such as the County Team Tournament, the All British Field Championships, the Youth Festival, the Disability Championships and the Combined Indoors (junior, senior and Back2back), plus any extra shoots that might ask if I can come along. It can get quite busy sometimes. Occasionally I even get to shoot.

What camera and lenses do you use and why?

My camera is an Olympus E-M10 II, which is a nice small-bodied Micro Four Thirds camera. I have a full range of lenses for it that I’ve built up over the years, including a wide-angle 9-18mm, 12-50mm, 40-150mm (my most used lens) and a 75-300mm. My main reason for choosing this camera was I had borrowed a camera from my folks – an E-M1 – and so I could borrow lenses as I built up my collection.

Now I have a confession to make. I am not a photographer. I mean sure, I take photos, and I take enough of them that there are some good ones in there, but I always feel a little bit of a fraud when someone asks me my opinion about some camera they’re looking at. I’m sure that the latest camera from Canon or Nikon is good, but I couldn’t tell you any pros or cons about them.

I did a photo course run by Dean Alberga with a number of other archers who were interested in archery photography. The first thing Dean said was, “I’m going to assume you’re all shooting RAW and use some sort of programme like Photoshop or Lightbox to process them?” and everyone around me nodded, whereas I sat quietly thinking about the fact that I shoot in JPEG and had put a trial version of Photoshop on my laptop especially for that course, as I usually do no editing.

Like I said, I’m an archer who takes photos, but I’m not really a photographer!

How has your photography evolved since you started?

I’ve done a lot of archery photography and there is a definite difference between my early photography and more recent pictures. Most of my early photos were of three-quarter rear views of archers at full draw from a standing position. But something I had always enjoyed doing was looking at the photos from various World Cups taken by Dean and then trying to copy the ones I liked.

This has led to more photos being taken with a slight angle – making the archer shooting slightly up looks better than slightly down – as opposed to square and level. Or dropping down to one knee to look up at the archer. Or remembering there is more to archery than ‘full draw’. Archers setting up a shot, drawing their bow or their post-shot reaction can all make great photos.

One of the things I’ve always struggled with, and is something I think comes from being a person who takes photos as opposed to being a photographer, are the non-shooting-line photos. People warming up, coaches talking to archers, archers relaxing between ends. It’s something for me to work on.

I also find it very difficult to cut a lot of photos out of the selection. If I have two good photos of someone, I want to put them both up. But what if I have three good photos? Or four? I have spent many hours just flicking through albums, not only admiring some of the fantastic photos but also trying to remember some of the variations. What the archer is doing, where the photographer is standing in relation to the archer, the height of the camera from the ground. I try to work out what makes that photo better than one I might take.

What gives you the most satisfaction about making images?

Something I have always wished I had was the patience to get good enough to draw or paint the pictures I can see in my imagination. Failing that, photography is the next best thing. Though that comes with its own set of problems as, unlike with drawing, in photography you are hampered by real life: a telegraph pole poking out the top of someone’s head, a longrod sticking out of their mouth, the sun in the wrong position, someone blocking your view. But sometimes everything falls just right, and you get that picture exactly how you thought it should be.