Blog

Sydney

2011-12-21T21:34:00.003+11:00

Last weekend i visited Sydney for the weekend for a few reasons. One was to relax (duh!), another was to take photos (double duh!) but the third was to catch the carols in the Domain. I'm a sucker for Christmas carols and have been listening to them non stop since the weekend. I'm like a little kid at this time of year. I love getting together with my family, i love Christmas carols and i love the fact that everyone seems a little happier at this time of year.

I spent a good deal of time walking around Sydney and just taking it in. I've spent far more time in Melbourne than Sydney mainly because I'm a Aussie Rules tragic so i like to get into the AFL culture that Melbourne has in spades. Last weekend was a great chance for me to spend some quality time getting to know Sydney. I got to stay in a brilliant and luxurious hotel (thanks Heidi!) as a bit of an early birthday present and then just cruise on around Sydney seeing places I've never been before and taking photos.

The above shot is taken on the harbor bridge looking back towards the CBD and the Opera House. It was a beautiful day with amazing clouds, although they didn't seem to stop me getting burnt! I managed to get some other great shots, like the one below that i had to take. This guy was sitting calmly on the park bench as dozens of seagulls tried their best to get any scrap of food he had left over from his lunch. He was nice enough to share, but that only made them more ferocious. The best part was that one gull decided the best place to pic up the choice pieces of his lunch was right on his head. It was just an awesome moment and one the guy didn't seem to mind.

Of course the main event for me was the carols by candlelight at the Domain later that night. Like around 80,000 other people i spent a good amount of time sitting in the park waiting for it to start, but that just meant more time to go through my photos and then to just sit back and enjoy the gorgeous day. When it started it went all too quickly for my liking. It was perfect weather, a fantastic crowd, brilliant music and surprisingly good food. I spent three hours belting out carol after carol and then on the final song they let of the fireworks and i grabbed my camera.

I'm not sure I'll get another blog post in before Christmas, so if i don't I'll wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I hope people will bring out their cameras when they can and make sure they have some beautiful shots to remember 2011 by. Have a wonderful time and see you all soon!

Lunar Spectacular

2011-12-12T23:01:00.003+11:00

I have to confess that the lunar eclipse photo above is not actually from the one that occurred last Saturday. I was actually at a Christmas party, and while i did pop outside to see it every half hour or so, i didn't actually take any photos. That's about as rare as the eclipse itself! The shot above is from a few years ago. I didn't know anything about it until a few minutes before it was set to begin so i rushed around and got my gear ready and took that photo.

It did make me think about how hard it can actually be to get a good photo of something like this though. There are big challenges like the huge contrast in light and dark areas. The moon itself can be extremely bright compared to the black of the night sky. And you want to try and get a few of those glorious stars in the photo as well.

So there's the correct exposure problem, which you can get around by either trying to bracket the shot or shooting in RAW and attempting to recover some of the detail in post. Just remember if you do it that way to not clip the highlights because it's much harder to recover the whites than it is the blacks! You can easily end up with the moon looking like a big white disc in the sky with no detail at all so be careful.

The next issue is the noise if you shoot high ISO. Because it's super dark and you want to get nice shots, the best thing to do is to get your camera on a tripod and get yourself a shutter release cable. A trick here if you don't have one. Use the timer on your camera, set it to a few seconds, hit the shutter and step back from the camera and tripod. Any movement with a long shutter speed will ruin the photo so having the tripod and camera as still as possible is crucial.

The last issue is not so much a technical issue, but more of a creative one. You want to get something a little bit different than what i have above. I love the shot i got, but for me i concentrated so much on getting the nice shot that i forgot about everything else. Luckily in the shot here, when i print it nice and big you see great detail in the red moon and some awesome stars so it looks pretty nice. But if you've seen one red moon then you've seen them all. The challenge is to get something funky in the foreground or to compose the shot a little differently than other eclipse shots. That's my goal for 2014 when it comes around again. I'm determined to get something that's truly different!

Did you get a shot from Saturday night?

Break the rules

2011-12-11T23:34:00.001+11:00

I was listening to a photographer the other day who told me that after being a pro photographer for the last 30 years he feels like he's lost a certain amount of creativity. He finds that when he shoots a portrait session, or goes out to shoot some personal shots, he's so used to getting the same shots that he struggles to find the creativity anymore. When i heard him say all this i was shocked. He's an amazing photographer and I love almost all of his work. He continues to amaze me every time i see any of his new stuff. His thought though, is that he gets consistant results now, but he doesn't get the 'new' shots he used to.

I can kind of understand what he was saying but i still look at his work and am amazed by how gorgeous some of it is. We got talking about the subject while we were talking about the most common and most used rule in photography, the rule of thirds. This is something i try and get every new photographer to do straight away. If there's something most new photographers can do to make their work more compelling, or just any regular shooter that wants to take better photos, it's to use the rule of thirds.

I'm not going to go through it in my blog. Google the rule of thirds and there's dozens of pages with loads more information than i can write here. What i love about this rule, is that in 95% of shots it improves them out of sight when used. What my long winded story was about though, is that other 5%. I think a lot of photographers can get used to shooting in a certain way. I think it's easy sometimes to shoot and use what you know will work nicely most of the time. What i hope more people will do is to break those rules.

The photo above breaks the rules. I shot directly into the sun and i didn't use the rule of thirds like i usually do. Saying that though, i love this photo. When i was editing this series of shots i had two photos of this lighthouse. One used the rule of thirds and then there was this one. It doesn't always work, but in this case the photo that broke the rules ended up so much nicer.

I kind of wonder if the photographer i was talking about to start this post is like that. I wonder if he's used to what gets him his amazing shots and he's forgotten how to break the rules.

That's my aim this week. I'm going to go out and try and take shots that break the rules of photography. You should do it too. Go out and see what you get, you might be surprised.

80th Birthday

2011-12-04T20:11:00.001+11:00

Ok so it wasn't my 80th of course, but it was my Nan's! I spent the day back in Bathurst where i did most of my high school and had a lovely day with most of my family to celebrate my nan's 80th birthday. I think the highlight was when we gave her an iPad 2 for her birthday and my younger brother called her on Skype. You can tell by the photo above that she thought it was hilarious. I'm not sure how she'll go using it over time, but she seemed to like it. It's a big learning curve for someone that's never even used a computer before other than to play Solitaire once. Needless to say she quickly requested we install Solitaire on it.

I got a chance to take a few photos during the day as well. I spent some time out in the backyard crawling around on the ground snapping away as our two dogs ran about fighting with each other and trying to get attention from me all at the same time. There's definitely a few tricks to getting nice shots of pets as they run about madly!

The last thing i took photos of during the day was of my younger brother. He's a phenomenal drummer and all round musician and I'm determined to get some shots of him at some stage. I didn't get anything in particular this time, just some shots of him playing his bass guitar, but it was a good chance to check out some shots and get an idea of what i might want to do when i get some more time to take some proper shots.

All in all it was a fun day and i was pretty happy i got to spend my time with the people i love and also fitting in some photography in there as well.

Travel goodness

2011-12-03T22:02:00.001+11:00

This year I've had a really good chance to travel to some really incredible places. The photo above was from a brief trip to Thailand where i spent some time helping to teach a photography class before traveling around and getting some nice shots. Half the fun of taking photos in another country is trying to get good shots of people. The one above wasn't so hard, but i did spend a few minutes just to check it was ok that i take this photo and that i wasn't going to get shot. I know there's some places you just don't want to risk it, but it turns out this wasn't one of them. After my short little chat where i think i completely confused him, i got in position and took some photos. It took me a few minutes to get the shot because i wanted to get the right angle and i had to move the guard in front of his guard house. He initially was to the side and when i checked back it didn't look quite right. It's amazing what a little courtesy and someone thinking they're part of something cool can do!

He agreed, i took the shot, showed him the back of my camera and i was away. It was stinking hot at that point and i couldn't understand how he was dealing with it so well. I was in shorts and a tshirt and i was a wreck. I guess that's what Canberra weather does to you!

I didn't get to see much of Thailand, mainly just Bangkok, but it was incredible. One of my next major trips will be to go through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand for a few months. I'm fascinated by this area of the world. There's so many places that are so different in such a small space.

The other place i want to take a big trip around is the US. It's fairly similar to Australia so I've put off big trips there, but after seeing a friends photos I'm inspired to go see certain places. New Orleans and New York are my top two, but i know as soon as i start planning my list will fill up pretty quickly.

I'm hoping to get those two trips and one other to New Zealand done all in the next 12 months or so, so i can see it being a big year in 2012. I realised going through this list of places i wanted to travel to, that I'd been neglecting my own backyard. Having lived in Australia all my life i kept making excuses about why i shouldn't go somewhere or I'd plan a bigger trip overseas. After listening to some American friends talk about what they were going to do in a few months i got the inspiration to stop putting it off.

I decided then and there to do a trip from Canberra to the coast, down to Melbourne and across the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide and then back through the country to Canberra again. Not a bad trip and it'd cover a bunch of places I'd really wanted to focus more on.

The Great Ocean Road sat on top of that list. It was one of the places I'd never gotten around to seeing when i was down in Melbourne and i couldn't wait. That trip is enough to fill up way more than just this post so I'll get to that later, but the photo here is a bit of a teaser. I found some pretty incredible places that i had no idea was on the way that i can't wait to share as well.

Happy travelling!

Best Point & Shoot Camera Ever

2011-11-27T09:33:00.001+11:00

The picture above probably gives it away a little, but i get asked a lot what cameras do i think are the best. In the DSLR market there are the two big players in Nikon and Canon, and to be honest i can't split them. I have shot with both and i honestly think at the moment there's not a great deal that separates either. It's one of those things that if you invest in a lot of lenses with one brand you are probably going to stick with that for a long long time.

The point and shoot market is a completely different beast. It starts with what you want from a camera and your budget. If you just want a $50-$100 camera that you can take out to parties and not worry about having something spilt on it or dropped then take your pick. I wouldn't do a great deal of research. I'd just go out and buy one. You're not going to get fantastic quality.

If you're wanting to spend a little more, like in the $100-$250 range then there's a thousand different options and here's where you should do a little research. I don't fall into this category. I either want something i can take to a party and hand around for anyone to use and not worry about, or i want the best point and shoot available.

That's what this post is all about. The out and out star in this market as far as I'm concerned is the Canon S90. Now I'm sure there are a bunch of people that will go on to tell me that since Canon released this camera a few years ago, they've gone on to update it with a S95 and now the S100. I know that and i can tell you that i haven't even bothered to go look at them. That's how good the S90 is/was. If you're looking right now at what to buy then it's an absolute no brainer to me. Go get the S100 and have your mind blown at how amazing it is.

Once i run my S90 into the ground a little more I'll end up buying the newer version, but until then the S90 does everything i really want it to do and does it brilliantly. I won't go into a huge review of every single feature here. The internet is a lovely place and a quick google search of 'S90 review' will get you a host of pages (obviously at this point at in S100 whenever i mention my S90 if you're looking to buy right now). The biggest differences over the S90 and S100 are the bigger zoom range, GPS and better video. There's a few cosmetic changes like the rear dial being upgraded that i think would help me, but it's not worth buying a totally new unit just yet.

So what is it about the S90 that has me claiming it as the best P&S ever? There's two main things and the first is obviously what I'm looking for initially and that's image quality. This thing rocks. It takes phenomenal photos. Honestly, you could set it on auto and just shoot away all day and night and get gorgeous shots consistantly. It has a nice big display that i can see all my shots on as i shoot and it can take some really nice video despite it not being HD. It has a really fast f/2.0 lens which to me is just awesome, especially in low light.

That's all well and good but the really amazing part of this camera and the second of the two main things i mentioned above is full manual control. If you're really serious about wanting to take better photos and learning more about photography then this is a killer feature for a P&S. Most have manual to some extent but the S90 lets you manually control the aperture, shutter speed and ISO AND let's you assign the control rings to do what you want them to do.

This thing is small, has full manual and the images that come out of it are stunning.

The only real drawback I've had so far is that i have scuffed up my display a little, but that's because I'm not careful at all with it. I chuck it in my bag or pocket and let it rattle around with my keys. I don't take care of it one bit, but it just rocks. You can see from the photo below that i don't clean it much and i don't take good care of it. I probably should but I've had it for years now and taken thousands of photos with it and it's just kept on going and going. It's a beast.

Honestly, if you want the best point and shoot on the market then this, to me, is the easy choice. It's not the cheapest of course, but it's brilliant. You're looking at paying around the $500-$550 mark as RRP but if you look around you can get it cheaper.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T20:39:00.001+11:00

While I'm Australian through and through, the time I've spent working at the US Embassy in Canberra has obviously meant spending a lot of time with Americans. Last night we had a Thanksgiving dinner at my place (although i had no input in cooking other than holding an umbrella over Scott as he cooked veggies on the BBQ) and the night was a whole lot of fun. Of course i had the camera out and took a time lapse from the entire night. It's the first time I've actually taken the time to do a time lapse and i enjoy it. It's fairly easy and a lot less difficult than i thought. I don't think I'll do one at every event i go to but it's kind of fun to watch an entire nights entertainment in 30 seconds. If you look closely at the 23 second mark you can see the chin up contest that i lost miserably.

The following morning we had a breakfast and one couple brought their cute little baby. Despite my slight (cough cough) hangover, i had to take a few photos. The light was really nice with the sun coming through a big window to the right of him which acted like a big softbox. It helped that he was fascinated by the camera. 2 minutes later i had some really nice shots of him that I'll send around to his parents. No setup and it looks brilliant. My kind of shooting!

236th Marine Corp Ball

2011-11-25T13:15:00.001+11:00

Last Saturday night was the 236th Marine Corp Ball celebrations and i spent the night taking photos. I set up some lights outside of the hall and as people turned up i got some happy snaps in front of some flags. The real fun happens later on in the night when people have loosened up and are having more fun.

I worked with another photographer, Randal Haines from www.randalphotography.com.au. Working with him was a breeze and he's a great photographer. One of the tricky parts of shooting with a second photographer can be where you position yourself in relation to them to get the best shots. Without having to discuss much at all with him he managed to get in all the right places and get some fantastic shots that complimented what i took. The perfect scenario!

Having just spent the week in Darwin i woke up on Saturday pretty exhausted so i knew i needed to be on my game for the Marine Ball that night. Having spent the night before cleaning and charging all my gear i knew i was all set. A few days before i left for the NT i made sure i tested all my lights and checked softboxes, stands etc. I knew i was all set to go.

The night was a lot of fun. Not only was i taking the photos of people with the big lights, i went inside the hall in between and got some shots of them dancing and just generally having a great time. I love nights like this.

I spent an hour or so before it all started to make sure the lights were in the proper spot and set appropriately. It took a bit of time to get things nice but i was happy once we started. The one thing i did that i haven't done before, was to bring along a large ring light i have. I don't usually bring it to things like this so it was a bit of an experiment. I got some cool shots though, like the one below:

People were happy to give it a go and it's something a little different so it was nice to mix things up a little. I think next time I'll bring a white or black background to really play around some more.

The night was a great success and i think we got some cool shots. Looking forward to the next one!

ObamaRama

2011-11-22T19:58:00.001+11:00

Having just spent the last week in Darwin taking photos of President Obama i got to thinking about a bunch of different things. I spent a lot of time preparing for the trip and when i was there i spent a lot of time talking with other photographers. There were two main points i got from the trip. The first was how much pre production that the White House put into a trip like this, even one that lasted only 28 hours. The second was that to get a good shot, sometimes you have to be uncomfortable. More on that in a minute though.

First off i spent an entire week there with White House folk going over the roughly 2 hours the President was going to spend in Darwin. They were meticulous. Nothing was left to the last minute and nothing was done without checking and double checking again and again. It may seem like a lot of effort for only a few hours in one of the most humid places I've ever been to, but the results are what spoke volumes to me. The visual impact of all their impact was amazing. The footage shown on TV and in print made the 2 hours look mesmerizing. There was of course a lot of work put into security but for my role i was just concerned about where i could go, when and what i could take photos of.

I ended up getting some photos that i just adore and will be getting them printed nice and big for the house, but the experience as a whole is what I'll take away. I got to work with some incredible people and people i just know I'll keep in touch with for a long time, but the other side is that i learned so much during that week and probably just as much in the two hours Barack Obama was in Darwin. Photography is my absolute passion but i know that i need to constantly learn and this trip was about as much pressure as I'm ever going to get. I learned more in this week than i have in years. I knew I only had one shot at this so i spent a lot of time preparing and making sure i knew exactly what i wanted to get out of it.

Earlier this year in February i spent a week in Bangkok to help train a group of State Department employees in photography and one of the things we spent a lot of time on is pre production. I'm a massive advocate of doing as much as you can but even I am guilty of not doing enough when i should. I'll admit i can get lazy sometimes when the job sounds easy or I've done something similar before. Most of the time it works out just fine, but last week really cemented how much you need to do sometimes. I guess something like this brings some things into focus that you don't get to concentrate on at times. I can't emphasize how big a part pre production had on my photos. I wish I'd had even more time now but i got what i was after so I'm happy.

There was probably two smaller things that i thought about sitting on the plane coming back to Canberra. The first was a pair of photographers i got some time to talk to before the President walked into the hanger in Darwin. One was as passionate about photography as i was, but the other saw it as just a job. I admit they both took great photos but to me i can tell the difference between the passionate one and the one that just wanted to finish for the day. What shocked me the most was that when i asked the latter where he'd be positioned and when he thinks he would move around the hanger he said that he wasn't going to move. He was going to stay in the one spot and get the shot he knew would end up in the paper. I spent two hours climbing stands, crawling on the ground and crouching in uncomfortable positions to get some really interesting photos, but not him. He stood on a press riser at the back of the hanger and shot maybe 150 shots in the two hours. Take what you will out of that little story but to me seeing someone with so little passion for what i do made me appreciate just what i like about this job. I love being the one in the dirt to get a shot or climbing a tree to get a better angle.

My point to all of this is do what you love and if you're doing what you love do it as best you can.