First Takes: July/August 2008

Jim Richardson went on assignment for National Geographic to shoot his Celtic Realm project. The consummate location photographer, Richardson’s images bring home the story of a people determined not to lose their identity in a world that threatens to leave it by the wayside. When working on assignment, Richardson takes advantage of his ability to shoot a limitless number of pictures, and he’s also able to experiment in a way that would have been difficult with film. Slow-sync action like this remains trial and error, but he doesn’t have to wait until the next day to see what worked and what failed. He can adjust on the fly.