One of my favourite exhibitions is back in town. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is now on at the Australian Museum and I highly recommend that you try to see it. Even if you don’t shoot nature photos yourself, I guarantee you will be amazed at the creatures and scenery that have been captured by photographers of all ages the world over. These are the very best from over 40,000 entries and 94 countries.
And just to spice it up there’s controversy this year as well. Yes, you heard correctly. Controversy. In a wildlife photography competition. The overall winner of the competition, José Luis Rodriguez, has been stripped of his £10,000 prize while a panel investigates whether his winning shot, The Storybook Wolf, involved a trained animal. If so then he has broken one of the conditions of entry and is a naughty, naughty boy. Here’s the photo – what do you reckon?
Time to rave about another app which improves the iPhone’s jurassic camera function beyond belief!
Introducing TiltShift Generator. TiltWho What you say? Ok, think of those really cool, fun shots of cities, stadiums and cars where they’ve been manipulated to look like miniatures, like in these examples:
This effect is called “shifting” and works by applying selective focus to a particular part of the image and throwing the rest of it into a blur causing an extremely shallow depth of field. In other words your eyes and brain overload and you think JetStar have dropped you off in Lilliput instead of Brisbane.
Well would you Adam and Eve it. There I was about to take the plunge and invest my future kids’ school fees into the Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM lens (as of course you would) and what happens? Canon go and launch the mk II version today, that’s what!
But you can’t deny it – this is a thing of beauty and a true object of desire.
I mean, just look at it!
But how frustrating! After weeks of exhaustively researching websites and magazines to establish which piece of glass would be my first purchase with which to adorn my beloved Canon 5D2, I knew the 70-200 was the lens I wanted and needed: amazingly fast, versatile and able to get up nice and tight for portraits and candids. And of course incredibly cool to be seen with!
Fashion and photography have always been inextricably linked, and no camera product range waves the fashion flag as much as Canon’s L series lenses. According to ancient legend, the “L” stands for Luxury which is easy to believe given that these are the most expensive lenses that Canon produce. Members of this exclusive club can be recognised instantly by their distinctive red ring, which means slinging one of these over your shoulder is the photographic equivalent of wearing Prada Sport.
First off – Happy New Year! I hope 2010 brings you much happiness and prosperity!
So it’s a new year and indeed a new decade. What we should call it I still don’t know. The “Teens”??
Whatever the name it will have a hard act to follow as the Noughties was particularly good to me. Highlights included turning 30, moving to Australia, starting my photography business, and launching Sparkography.
Well as they say you never stop learning and so my first foray into cerebral expansion this decade is my Project 365, which you can read about and follow on its own dedicated page.
I’m keeping this post short and sweet as I’m still recovering from New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour. I celebrated with some of my closest friends atop the Sydney Glass Island and witnessed the world famous firework display live for the first time. It was tempting to bring the 5D2 with me as I still haven’t taken proper fireworks shots with it yet and opportunities don’t come any better than this. But knowing how messy the night was likely to be (and indeed was!), I left the big boy at home and used my iPhone and Best Camera app to produce these mementos:
It’s another beautiful summer day in Bondi. The beach is full of sunburnt backpackers and the coastal walk is the busiest I’ve seen since Sculptures. But there’s one area that’s empty as it always is at this time of year – the boardwalk.
Yep, it’s been closed off to make way for the massive stage that will host the acts for Shore Thing, Bondi’s NYE party. The past few years have seen the likes of Fatboy Slim, Basement Jaxx, Bob Sinclar, Groove Armada and The Presets grace the beach. This year the Noughties will be played out by some of the biggest DJs from the last three decades – Carl Cox, Danny Tenaglia, and Roger Sanchez.
Security fences are also up along the length of Campbell Parade to ensure only the paid up ticket-holders get in (although expect quite a few backpackers to scale them/impale themselves on the night after having a few Stellas at the Bondi Hotel).
And tomorrow evening the beach will also be closed off as the sight of floating revellers the next morning is never a good way to start the year.
So about a week ago I arrived at Luna Park on a Friday evening to shoot the Xmas party for Mitchell Communications. I was really looking forward to it as Mitchell’s is the largest media buying agency in Australia, started by the famous Harold Mitchell back in the 70s, and so I was expecting a big night. However, I was also a bit nervous.
Not nervous because of the large scale of the event; not because of the range of shots required of the guests, entertainers, band and location; and not because it was a well paid job. No, I was nervous because I work for OMD, their main competitor! Both agencies are powerhouses in Australia and regularly slug it out over pitches and bragging rights for largest billing figures. This year both agencies billed over $1 billion, ranking 1st and 2nd out of all Australian agencies.
And there was no hiding my allegiance either as several OMDers had moved to Mitchell’s and would recognise me straight away. And sure enough as the coaches arrived and the guests made their way into the venue, I was greeted with a range of comments about whether I had left OMD, whether I had joined Mitchell’s, or whether I was just plain spying on them!
But it was all in good humour and I was quickly over that hurdle and into my stride. The party went really well and so did the shoot. The crowd were up for a big night and very comfortable in front of the 5D2. I filled a whole 8GB card with over 700 photos which were later distilled into a final cut of around 200. Here are just a few of them, starting with the venue:
There was also an outdoor area which provided a range of excellent backdrops throughout the evening and into the night, including fairground rides and The Harbour Bridge
And of course there was action on and around the dancefloor!
At the end of the night the coaches returned and took us to the after party. And that’s when the camera went back in the bag!
At the risk of sounding like a groupie, here’s another name-check to the great Chase Jarvis.
Many of you will know of Chase and his famous philosophy that the best camera is the one that’s with you. And you’ll probably also know that while Chase is a world famous advertising photographer, he LOVES his iPhone and uses it every day to capture hundreds of shots of virtually everything he sees!
What you might not have realised though is that he recently launched his own iPhone App “Best Camera“. This brilliant app allows you to apply, stack and create a “recipe” of effects to any iPhone pic including high/low saturation, contrast, mono, retro, cropping and framing etc. The resulting pic can then be uploaded to the Best Camera website – a real time photo wall of iPhone photos as they are created and uploaded from Best Camera apps all over the world. Or you can upload your shots to any of your social networks such as Twitter and facebook.
I’ve started using it on my iPhone and it really is fantastic! Incredibly simple to use with stunning results, and really makes the most of the iPhone’s very underwhelming 2MP camera that has no settings and only one button to press!
Here’s a great vid from Chase explaining his philosophy and app in his own words:
As I mentioned in my last post, silly season is in full swing and there are Xmas parties kicking off left, right and centre!
I covered one last week at Sydney’s Luna Park for Mitchell Communications Group – Australia’s biggest media agency. It was a great night and I’ll be posting on that soon, but at the end of an exhausting night of shooting (and partying with them!) I had the task of reviewing around 700 photos and culling them down to a final cut of around 200.
If you’re an event photographer you’ll know how time consuming, tiring and (let’s face it) monotonous this can be. But today I found an amazing alternative solution courtesy of legendary photog Chase Jarvis. He hosted his own company’s birthday party recently in his studio, and rather than rove around with a camera to shoot his staff, clients and guests, he stuck a 32GB card in a Nikon D3, set it on timelapse and just got everyone to have fun in front of it. Genius!
In just under 5 hours the camera took an incredible 21,112 photos! That’s around 1.5 shots every second!
And the result? A 12 min timelapse video of a great party requiring no sorting, no culling, and no editing! Ok, so DSLRs are capable of shooting HD video these days and he could have just used that facility, but there’s something about timelapse videos that makes them a hell of a lot more interesting and artistic. I think it could be the way forward for capturing events! Check it out:
It’s silly season once again and I’ve been busy shooting events and Christmas debauchery parties, so apologies for the brief hiatus.
I’m also lining up more model shoots to increase my work in the air-kissed and air-brushed walk-in wardrobe of fashion – although I must stress that I don’t use Photoshop and have quite strong reservations about entering the whole multi-layered realm of post-production. Well, until now.
You see, I’ve always positioned myself as something of a purist; wanting to get the perfect shot straight out of the camera with very little editing in Aperture 2 apart from the “accepted” level adjustments to contrast, exposure, brightness and saturation, and a bit of cropping here and there. I like to know I’ve used my knowledge and experience to get the best from the camera rather than relying on software to save me. Photographers the world over argue and protest the pros and cons and rights and wrongs of post-production. Should a photo be as the eye sees it or as the photographer perceives it? Is it documentary or art? And with the amount of modes and variable settings available via a digital camera’s menus, is that not a form of pre-post-production? The debates rage on and everyone gets their rolls of film in a twist (well the purists do – digital photogs overheat their memory cards).
Anyway, yesterday was the first Sunday of summer in Australia and it was a scorcher. Bondi Beach was packed (and so was the Beach Road Hotel for the Miss Bondi competition) and I felt the need to avoid all of it and make use of the weather for a stroll with the 5D2.
I recently joined ModelMayhem, the world’s largest social networking site for models, photographers, stylists and make-up artists.
“Joining the Mayhem” is something you really need to be do if you’re starting out in fashion photography as I am. You get to work with professionals of varying levels of experience who are striving to hit the big time, and therefore often offer their services for free in return for hi-res photos to add to their portfolios.
The name ModelMayhem itself is definitely appropriate for the site! The guidelines say that a new member’s profile can take up to two days to approve. So after nearly a week of constantly checking my inbox for confirmation, all I could do was assume that the moderators were spending a lot of time scrutinising the four initial photos I had to supply with my profile. Or were all lording it up at a fashion show somewhere, which I thought was more likely. But I can’t lie: I was nervous. I really want to break into fashion and this seemed to be the main conduit into it. If I didn’t get approved, what was I going to do? Sure I had met a dozen models at a recent model search and become facebook friends with most of them but those things only happen a few times a year. Plus a few of the models and stylists from the event had recommended that I join ModelMayhem so I was really keen to get on board and get shooting.
