Sublime Point, Leura

Pano of the back side of the Three Sisters in Katoomba from Sublime Point on a foggy day

Three light greenhouse

After a fun time lapse sequence constructing the greenhouse, we thought we ought to nail some final product shots of the completed (but uninhabited) structure. Thanks to Nic and Jamos for being good sports. Fun stuff used, 10-20mm and 3 speedlights + gels.

Family Portrait II

I had completely forgot that friends Selina and Angus W had recently returned to OZ and were living in BrisVegas. Opportunely, Selina sent me an email the very first day I arrived. Selina W, being a photographer herself (see linky to left), bemoaned that she didn't have many photos of her and baby. So we sorted out some family portraits.

A wedding in BrisVegas

Fellow OCAU Photographer Steve T tied the knot to his beautiful Tina today. So glad I shared the BIG day of someone who continues to challenge and inspire me with his photos. True to form Steve snapped photos of his bride walking down the aisle.



Well done you two!

Overcoming an irrational fear of babies - The Walter Family's Photoshoot

Being currently childless and having only recently succumbed to holding a newborn (under the supervision and tutelage of Therese), I sometimes feel babies are one of the most unfathomable things in the universe, next to the Navier-Stokes equations, Fermi's paradox and why food always tastes better when mum cooks it.



People portraits are easy, adults can be engaged... but babies... They seem capable of mocking you by not looking into the lens or looking straight through you as though you were the most uninteresting person they had seen that day jumping up and down like a chimp and making monkey noises (I do that a lot around babies for no apparent reason other than some misguided attempt at failed communication).



I've steered clear of baby photography for just such reasons... however...



Some friends in The Can thankfully had the most chilled and friendly baby for me to do a session with (a particular thanks for the stick-in-mouth pose, that made my day).Without any further ado, I move into the realm of family photography. Tell your friends!



Acknowledgements: Thanks to Ged M for tips and guidance, and the Walters for assuaging my fear with such a great kid.

YeeaaHaaawwwrrr! - Bungendore Rodeo 2010

Very overcast day, tip the camera ever so skywards and you are instantly having to dial in +1.3EV. Again let down by my woefully slow focusing 80-200mm. Wishing I had a 300mm f2.8, but I am thinking a 70-300mm AF-S VR might be a good stop gap. Would have liked to have seen what the pros were pulling out of their big lenses. Had some dood in black pin striped suit jacket with John Lennon sunglasses (AT A RODEO fer CRYING OUT LOUD), motoring away at 11 fps with a D3 + 400mm (I think).



I reckon this is the face the Fonz would pull if he were into rodeos "Heeeeeyy.."

Out and about - Scott 24 hr

Went to see a friend race in the Scott 24 hr at Mt Stromlo. The light was getting nice and long. Should have used the bigger guns to kick out the background and perhaps drop the shutter speed for less freeze frame. Meh...no one was paying me to nail the photos. Used +2/3rds EV out on the course to get some detail in the shadows. Gotta love Canberra's late afternoon light in spring.

In this month's Gourmet Traveller...

I got published :D



It wasn't an article, it wasn't even a photo in an article. It was a small part of a one page advert about an Australian Tourism photocompetition. I didn't win, I wasn't even a finalist, but I did get my name and a picture on p67 of the July 2010 issue of Gourmet Traveller. Cue flag waving!



http://www.nothinglikeaustralia.com/flash.htm#/entries/17244/title

I was doing a job for a sports photography company (who may or may not want to be associated with this blog and thus will remain anonymous - however, if you have a sporting event, these guys know how to roll out good coverage - I can pass on a name) and the long and short of it is one of my frames caught the eye of someone who knew about the competition and I submitted on that basis.

To be honest, I thought I had accidentally taken something fantastic, beyond my known abilities, tapping into some innate artistic creature I hadn't found before. So I was quite underwhelmed when the photo in question was revealed to me. It was a test frame to check ambient backlight to dial in my exposure and flash fill for the event competitors. Hell there was even a building crane smack bang where the sunrise is!

So with some garish colour manipulation and quick and dirty heal brushing of the crane we end up with this...



Slap on a cheesy title (I had no coffee or pastry though I did pity the event competitors it was so cold) and email... it is that easy to get published people!

Revisiting Italy - Damn Jpeg

I was looking back over some photos from my 2006 trip to Italy, and thought I'd try my hand at sprucing some of them up with an extra three and a bit years of playing around with photos.



I shot everything in jpg (I didn't know any better early on) and hence am pretty limited in manipulation leeway, I only had my three primes a 90mm, 50mm and (bodgy) 28mm.



Everything was shot off hand without any real thought to composition (as far as I can remember) and I hadn't yet learned to use the in camera histogram to evaluate exposure.



In reflection, three years on, I've gotten far better at my camera handling and knowing what my D200 can and can't do. However, I think my composition is still fairly rigid and needs to be loosened up and made more adaptable. Despite fancy zooms and fast lenses, I'm still sticking to fairly mundane perspectives. That's not to say I don't deserve new gear though ;-)

Danger Zone - Jets - Temora, NSW

Mikey and I decided to wake up well before dawn and travel over 400km just to smell burnt aviation fuel... vintage aviation fuel!

Temora hosts an air museum which has bi-monthly flying days of its vintage aircraft. We went this particular weekend to catch three of their turbine powered flying machines.

It was a good opportunity to practice my panning skills again. To freezes these planes going low and slow I needed at least 1/800th, but was using 1/400th to see if I could induce some panning blur.

Unfortunately, 1) it's hard to see relative motion against a pure blue sky with no clouds, and 2) where there were clouds I just plain sucked at panning.

The longest lens I have a the moment is my 80-200mm with 200mm being insufficient to really fill the frame with a jet (OH&S meant they weren't allowed to go balls out right above us).

I had better luck with the static displays and busted out some subtle HDR.

Tulips - something from nothing

Tried some 3 flash lighting, 2x shoot-thru defuse front lights - 1 key, 1 fill and a gridded hairline off to the right from behind.



I don't know too many people who'd model for me so tulips from the markets just had to do. They weren't in the greatest shape, but hey when you have lemons...

Used a variety of lenses, 90mm to 80-200mm for kicks. Used aperture to control amount of light. Toyed with ND4 filter rather than fiddling with 3x flash power controls to open up the aperture a little (3x strobes in small white room = lots of light bounced around)

A little underwhelmed by my post processing. The vingetting is too cheesy in the preset I was using. I toned it back but still looks pretty dire.

Lesson learnt: Takes a lot of effort to make a photo from nothing.