Sparkography

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?

The Storybook Wolf

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.

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Drool, drool, drool…

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.

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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:

Naomi's New Killer Heels

Jimbob's new Superdry shirt

Erin & Mark

Family fireworks kick off proceedings

Glo-sticks galore...

...and Mark couldn't get enough of them!

The Bridge and Harbour light up!