Around and about Brisbane

Some miscellaneous photos over the weekend about Brisbane. Still playing around with 10-20mm. Dropped it though! It bounced back from a 4" drop from the bag, still works! :D




William Jolly Bridge


Riverside



Woot! Hand-held on a ferry down to 1/13th! Don't look too closely though!

A Wall, a girl, an umbrella lightstand of goodness

A Wall

Amy subjugated herself to more photos on behalf of developing my skills. This time I was trying not to focus on just the subject but to throw more illumination on the interesting background without loosing the subject.


A girl

Thanks again Ames!

A Gimp

Ack! New lens and I have no idea how to use it! Sigma 10-20mm EX DC HSM f4-5.6

Right, so tax time came and the ATO left me some change... Me thinks it be time for an early birthday present so I got me a Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide angle lens for my collection. First thing I found was I had no idea how to compose with it. So a quick consult with my Dad who owns the same lens and to Ben J for some composition advice left me still feeling a little flustered about this whole ultrawide angle thing.




Claire, Kat and myself went to the Glasshouse mountains for a bit of a hiking adventure, complete with roast chicken picnic and laughter till Kat's pants fell off. I look at the pictures I took and feel composition wise, some thing is still lacking. I guess only practice will tell whether me and this lens are a match.



Awww work it! Some other person who claims they were a photographer (Whatever it takes to get away from her friend who was reciting poetry to her I guess) took these and got snap happy with my D200 coz it made a nice "clicking" noise. Hey it's only 100,000 cycles MTBF! I'm charging you for those 10 frames! Speaking of which I'm fast approaching 15,000 shutter activations.

Mel's Belles!

YaY! Puppies!!! oh and Mel too! This photographing is tough work, had to get up before the crack of dawn just to drive 40mins to Shorncliffe Jetty. Some other photographer was there trying to do landscapes in the pre-dawn. Thought he'd snap one or two but then he proceeded to spend 10 or more minutes flaffing about with his tripod in the sand, so I thought "stuff you if you are going to waste the pre-dawn light" and started taking photos of Mel whilst in his frame. ;-7 Bit rude really... oh well.



I never realised how quick the sun rises! It's worse than working against the tide. I think we had about 20 mins pre-dawn and about 1/2 hour once the sun had cracked the horizon and it was like working against an atomic bomb.




Amy was all about where to position the lights relative to the subject. Mel was more about positioning the camera relative to the lights and the subject. I didn't feel it at all simple especially adjusting the exposure every time to compensate for the rising sun and rapid increase in light levels.



Things I need to be aware of in future... Since I was concentrating so hard on getting the exposure right, and the rush against time, my frame composition went out to window, paws cropped off, tails off frame etc... must work harder. I rely on Nikon's Creative Lighting System too much and need to start using the flashes in manual mode combined with full manual mode in the camera rather than relying on the camera's meter to get the exposures I would like. Some things like having the sun in frame whilst using a couple of off camera strobes isn't quite what the exposure programmers had in mind when they were creating the D200.



Thanks Mel for braving the cold and bringing the pups! I had an awesome time! You ROCK! And a BIG thanks to Claire for also braving the cold, being dog handler extraordinaire, uber photo roadie and my strobe biznatch coz I'm too cheap to get a second light stand! Some photos of the various setups and dog shenanigans.

Amy Jane

Amy of blogging goodness was the first volunteer for my attempt to practise my lighting skills. She was infinitely patient and wasn't at all condecending of the more feeble attempts.



Thanks Amy! You rock!