James Kay: Great Outdoors
You gotta have friends—or, at the very least, good acquaintances—if you want to take the kind of pictures James Kay takes. You can't just wander out to even the most appropriate of locations and wait for skiers, climbers, hikers or kayakers to happen by. The way to do it, Jim has told us, is "to look for the best people in the sport and work with them." In Jim's case, he started off knowing some of the best people because he was one of them.
Jim has been a skier since the age of five; for a time, he was a professional skier. He was also familiar with climbing, rafting and kayaking, so when he was ready to try photography, he knew not only the sports, but the people who participated in them.
But photography wasn't Jim's first career choice. It was his escape. "I got a degree in mechanical engineering," he says, "but I realized I didn't like sitting behind a drafting table all day." As a professional skier, he'd seen photographers at work, and what they did seemed a lot better than spending his days in an office. "I had to get out," he says, "and photography was a way to achieve that. I hoped I could sell images of what I liked to do and what my friends liked to do."
So in the early 1980s he started taking pictures. "I actually got the camera about a week after I started my engineering job." After a year of photographing his skiing friends, he put together packages of transparencies and sent them off. "There were three main skiing publications back then, and I sent the photographs to all three.
"I remember the call—I was sitting at my drafting table, and the phone rang, and it was one of the magazines. They wanted to use a photo. I think they paid 25 bucks. I was ecstatic."
Soon he was out from behind the drafting table and working where he wanted to be—in the great outdoors. He added photography of climbing, rafting, snowboarding, mountain biking and kayaking and, in addition to magazines, began shooting for the manufacturers of the clothing and equipment those sports required. Over the years Jim's photography has appeared in every major outdoor and adventure magazine, including National Geographic Adventure, Sierra and Outside and in ads for companies like American Airlines, Chase, Visa, L.L. Bean and IBM.
Of course, knowing the sport means more than just knowing who to photograph. It means knowing what kind of photographs will best showcase the activity. "You'll know the dramatic peak moments," Jim has said. "You'll know what to look for." It's vital, he says, to have an understanding of what's going to happen and why and to be familiar with the tendencies of the people you're photographing.
Jim says that of all the activities he photographs, river sports are the most difficult, the most extreme, for a photographer. "The person is all over the place—there's no predicting what's going to happen." Surprisingly, he says that rock climbing can be the easiest when it comes to photography. "For all its drama and great views," Jim has said, "it's static. The climbers are moving slowly, and I always know exactly where they're going." That's true whether he's photographing climbers hired for stock shoots or those on expeditions.
"I've worked both ways," Jim has said. "I can climb and shoot, taking what are essentially candid shots; other times, I'll set up and have the climbers go through the climb. Of course, I've got to climb with them."
For a set-up shoot, he'll go out ahead of time to scout locations for the best light. "A big part of what I do," Jim says, "has to do with looking for and finding the best light, that special light that's going to make every image stand out. I do a lot of location scouting to find out when the light's best, and then I bring in the people at that time."
Photographing skiers and snowboarders is a bit different. Jim will pick what he considers the ideal spot on the course or track, focus on it and fire when the skiers and 'boarders hit it. For snowboarders he says he can get two or three good frames for each jump using the camera's motor drive, "depending on how close they are. The closer they are, the shallower the depth-of-field. If they're really close—four to ten feet away—I'll get maybe two frames in focus. If they're ten to 20 feet, I'll get at least three frames sharp."
Obviously, for images like the ones you see here and in the Portfolio section, you've got to know your equipment. "When you get the right situation and the right light," Jim has said, "you can't be fumbling around with camera settings or changing lenses. You have to know what you need, know what the equipment will do and be ready."
Lately Jim has added landscapes to his repertoire, and today he sells many of his landscape images as fine art as well as for commercial purposes. After years of doing sports in the great outdoors, capturing the settings in all their beauty was a new and welcome challenge. Best of all, it was a challenge that had nothing at all to do with drafting tables.
In the Bag
Jim shoots with an F4 and an N90s, and there might be an F5 on the horizon. He recently did some shooting with "that little fun camera"—a COOLPIX 5400, and was so impressed by the quality of the images—he made 11 x 14 prints of several—that he frequently carries the COOLPIX along with him in the great outdoors.
He has a number of Nikkor lenses, but cites the 35-70mm f/2.8D AF Zoom-Nikkor and the 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor as particular favorites.
"I love that 105," he says. "I use it all the time for photographing climbers and skiers. It lets me get close, but not so close that I get run over." As a matter of fact, he suggests the 105 as the cornerstone of an outdoor-action and adventure shooting kit that would include a 24mm f/2.8D AF Nikkor and an 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF Zoom-Nikkor.
Although the lenses he carries are all autofocus, most of his work is done in manual mode. "I usually pick the spot, focus on it and shoot when the subject reaches it," Jim has said. "If it's something like kayaking, where there's a lot of moving back and forth across the waves, sometimes I'll use autofocus...when I'm shooting with a long lens...but I don't use AF with the short lenses. I can be a bit off with the shorter lenses; depth-of-field is more critical with the long lenses, and above 85mm I'll use autofocus."
