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Running a photo workshop

If I were to break down my photographic journey, I would say that it has so far consisted of three phases:
Phase 1: I knew nothing, and was happy to admit it. I spent about a year happily asking the dumb questions as I felt this was my right as a newbie.
Phase 2: I didn’t know much, but felt obliged to hide it. I had taken some photos that people liked, had started using Lightroom and suddenly people were asking me questions about how I did things. I was still floundering with my camera, but had become quite adept at hiding that by using presets in Lightroom. But I couldn’t admit that, so I started acting like I knew a lot more than I did and as a result had to stop asking the questions that got me to where I was, and start learning via YouTube, web tutorials and podcasts.
Phase 3: Realised I did know some things, and wanted to share them with other people. I had always had the fear that if I taught somebody my tricks, and showed them my Lightroom presets, then suddenly I would become redundant. Whatever work I had would be snaffled up by the people I had just given my secrets to, and the game would be up. But I eventually came to see that there are quite literally millions of people who know a lot more about photography than me…not many of them are either willing or able to teach this to other people. I’ve spent the last couple of year’s giving workshops on how to shoot and edit videos and they have always been well received…so why not do the same with photography.
And so, I decided to run my first ever photography workshop. Here’s what I learnt.

I’m not a teacher…so I won’t pretend to be one.

There is a great episode of the Simpson’s where Homer gets a job teaching at a local Adult Education Centre and announces to his family ‘Look now that I’m a teacher…I’ve sewn patches on my elbows’ and shows his leather jacket now has tweed patches on the elbows. Marge says ‘Homer, it’s meant to be leather patches on a tweed jacket. You’ve just ruined a perfectly good jacket!’ To which Homer holds up a tweed jacket with two patches cut out of it and says ‘Incorrect Marge. Two perfectly good jackets.’
In other words, in his desperation to become what he thought a teacher was…he was already failing.

So I was pretty determined to just be myself for the workshop. After all, it’s hard enough trying to pretend that you know everything about photography, without trying to pretend that you’re someone else at the same time.
So I basically sat the participants around our dining table and spoke to them as if I was chatting to a friend who had asked about photography. I had a rough outline of what I wanted to cover, but if we disappeared down a rabbit hole for 10 minutes while answering someone’s question…then that was fine.

Do unto others

I’ve done a few photo workshops and my strongest memory is spending at least 70% of the time listening to people either talk about themselves or about how the camera works. I spent precious little time actually using the camera. In fact, one of the guys actually doing the workshop said that he did a half day course when he got the camera, and the only practical thing they did was turn the camera on and off. So I was determined to make my workshop as ‘hands-on’ and practical as possible. When we spoke about ISO, we would take a shot at ISO200 and then without changing anything else, shoot the same shot at ISO1,000 to see the difference. Same with shutter speed, and the same with aperture. Then we would lock one them in and use the other two to get the shot we were after.
For the last hour I roped…OK, paid…my two eldest kids into coming over the (closed on Sundays) Preston Market to act as models while the people in the group took photos.
Admittedly, this is simply the way that I like to learn…but it seemed to go really well.

Trying out a fast shutter speed.

‘Everything is free now…’

One of my favourite Gillian Welch songs is ‘Everything is free’, which starts out:

‘Everything is free now,
That’s what they say.
Everything I’ve ever done,
I’m gonna give it away.
Someone hit the big score.
They figured it out.
That we’re gonna do it anyway,
Even if it doesn’t pay.’

I’ve always thought that it was a treatise on the fact that musicians (or indeed any creative people) are now expected to simply give away what they do for free. Writers, photographers, graphic designers, singers…are all told to give their content to clients on the basis that it will garner them ‘exposure’ (and as my friend Tim Arch always says ‘People die from exposure!’) But implied in Gillian Welch’s song is also the fact that part of the fault lies with the artists, because they love what they do and are going to do it anyway. It’s a bit of sad reflection of where we are as a society. We have become so conditioned to the fact that a ‘job’ is something we do, so that we can afford to do what we really want to do. If you actually enjoy your job, then you’re kind of cheating…and as such, you have to factor this cheating into what you charge for your services. After all, if you’re enjoying it…it’s not really a job!
So deciding what to charge for the workshop was actually a real challenge. After all, I had never done this before, so I probably shouldn’t charge too much…but if it does go well, then I’ve set my precedent for charging already, if people want a follow-up workshop (as has been the case) you can’t really say ‘Yep happy to do another workshop…but now it’s 50% more expensive’.
In the end I charged $110 for a 3 hour workshop. This felt right for my first one…but given how well it went, I think I will probably bump up the price for the next one.

The numbers game

One of my other memories of other photo workshops was of having large groups where vast amounts of time was wasted dealing with the litany of reasons other people’s cameras weren’t doing what they were supposed to. So I was very keen to make sure that I didn’t have more than 4 people in the workshop.
I’m willing to admit that part of the reason for saying that I wanted to keep the numbers low was also that if only one person said they wanted to do the course…then I could say ‘Well that’s great…because I wanted to keep the numbers down.’ Then I could walk to my room, close the door, and cry, and cry, and cry.
In the end I had 3, and this was pretty much perfect. I think that as I do more of them, I will be able to get this up to 5 people…but if there are any more than this, or if there is a big discrepancy in their skill levels, then I think it would be a real struggle to give everyone the attention they deserve.

Traps for young players

Have you ever had that experience of someone with a different phone to you saying ‘I can’t work out how to get to my photos, can you help?’ and then spending the next 10 minutes desperately trying to navigate your way around a device you’ve never used before muttering ‘Why the hell is that there? Who designed this menu?! Oh God, what did I just delete?!!!’ Well now imagine doing this in front of three strangers who had paid for the privilege. Let me assure it’s not fun. Obviously the more of these I do, the more adept I will become at navigating around the various menus of the various camera brands without swearing or saying ‘Look I think I’ve just broken that…how about you just shoot on your phone for the rest of the workshop?’

I was genuinely worried that I wouldn’t be able to fill in 3 hours with the basics of photography…but I soon discovered that for every 15 minute segment I had prepared, there were at least 5 half hour long rabbit holes that I could fall down if I wasn’t careful (‘So that’s how you can get more light into your photo using ISO/exposure/Aperture. But you could also use flash [blah, blah, blah]…and if you are using flash you can use on-camera or off-camera flash [blah, blah, blah]…and then you need to think about using diffusers [blah, blah, blah]…and speaking of diffusers [blah, blah, blah]…oh sorry, our three hours is up.’)
So, know your audience, tailor the information to them and then stick to it. People who are looking to move beyond using the automatic settings on their DSLR are not interested in a 10 minute investigation of the inverse square law.

Ask for feedback after the workshop. This doesn’t mean saying ‘Did you guys like it?’ as you usher them out the door. It means actually following up with them a day or two after the workshop with a few basic questions, and making sure they feel comfortable telling you the truth (and trying to not get too hurt if they have some negative feedback). If you want to do this again, you need to know what worked and what didn’t…and then fine tune your next workshop accordingly.

The crew

So in conclusion

When I think back over the last 7 years of taking photos, there have been quite a few ‘Aha!’ moments…but they are usually interspersed with months of ‘Blah’ moments where you feel as though you’re just treading water. So doing a workshop with people who are just starting with their DSLR is kind of rewarding in that you suddenly get to realise how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learnt.
I also realised that when I was just starting to throw myself into learning about photography, I was really looking for someone who could mentor and guide me through to the next level. So it was really nice to be that person to somebody else.
But if you’re not the sort of person who likes to stand in front of complete strangers and talk to them for 3 hours…then there are probably easier ways to make your money.

Last but not least, if your wife is willing to bake a cake, and the participants are a really great group of people, and you have access to a coffee machine, and the weather Gods shine on you, and you do a lot of preparation, and you have kids who are willing to model for you, and a local bingo hall has recently been covered in art-work…it really helps!

And of course…if you are interested in taking the first step away from the ‘auto’ settings on your camera…let me know.

June 15, 2016
Moving from Canon to Fuji

I was once taking photos in a bar in Melbourne and the guy next to me started asking a few questions about my camera. We chatted for a few minutes about the relative pros and cons of Canon, and then he said ‘Well, no prizes for guessing what I shoot with’ at which point he lifted his suit pants up to his knee to reveal a tattoo running the length of his calf saying ‘Pentax’. Up until that point, I didn’t even realise that Pentax still existed, and yet here was a businessman who had their logo permanently etched into his skin. It really brought home the fact that photographers do tend to invest themselves in their photo brand. You learn the form of the camera, you know how to quickly navigate settings, you know what the capabilities of your camera are, and most importantly, you’ve probably dropped a sizeable amount of money on lenses and other gear… so when you make the jump from one brand to another it can be a scary and cathartic experience. I should know, as I’ve just moved from a Canon 550D to a Fuji X-T1. So if you’re thinking about jumping ship, here are some things to consider.

My first portrait shot on the Fuji

Do I really need a new camera?

New gear is awesome. It can be smaller, lighter, faster, have a bigger sensor, make us look more pro…and in truth, it can help us take better photos. But it can also cost a shirtload of cash, and can sometimes be used to hide our inadequacies. So I reckon you need to be confident that you’ve learnt everything that you can from your current camera. You need to make sure that the new camera will make you a better photographer…not just give you nicer photos.

I’ve been shooting on the 550D for five years now. In five years the technology in cameras has come a long way. Things like ‘face detection’ and built-in wifi, just weren’t on the table when I bought my 550D…and the thought of taking a decent photo at ISO800 was fanciful. So any new camera was going to make life easier right away. But I also felt that I had pushed the camera as far as I could. I had learnt a hell of a lot on a great entry level DSLR, and now it was time to upgrade to a few bells and whistles.

Blinded by the light

How deep is your love?

If you’re not really into photography and you’ve made it this far, then well done…or commiserations on your lack of alternative things to do with your time. But you should probably know that a lot of information is sent from the lens to the camera, not just the image, but a whole lot of information about the image. For example, autofocus is sent as a message from the lens to the camera. So, while you can always buy adaptors, it makes sense that Canon lenses talk better to Canon cameras, than say a Sony lens talking to a Canon camera, or Fuji lens talking to a Nikon. So while you may be able to mount the lens on your camera, you may find that it doesn’t autofocus because the lens and the camera work on different systems. The long and the short of it is, if you’re looking to change to a new brand of camera, you may find that a number of your lenses will not make the transition. So your new purchase of a camera may require additional lens purchases as well. Which can make for a pretty expensive exercise.

Fuji, Canon & GoPro…and it all fits in a backpack!

For better or worse, I was pretty lucky that I only had the two Canon lenses (a 50mm f1.4 and the 17-55mm f2.8). But if I was to move to Fuji, then I was pretty much writing them off. I had come to terms with this…until a friend offered a 2nd hand Canon 5Dmk3 with some really nice lenses. Which leads nicely to my next point…

Shallow Inlet

Dollars and sense.

There is no shortage of really good cameras out there. By the time I’d done all of my research I had reduced my list to; the Fuji XT-1, the Sony A7r2, the Lumix GH4 and the Canon 5Dmk3. Should the Olympus OM-D been on that list?…yep. But was I having so much trouble choosing between 4 cameras that adding a 5th camera was just going to make me cry?…also, ‘yep’.

They all had different pros and cons, the 5D would let me stay in the Canon ecosystem and let me go full-frame…but then it’s a big camera, and the lure of the mirrorless was strong. The GH4 shoots beautiful video and I could get the body with a good range of lenses for the same price as the body of some of the other cameras…but it wasn’t a considered a great stills camera. The Sony was the way of the future, great video and great stills…but at a price to match. My original idea had been the Fuji…but with more video work coming my way, its shortcomings on the video front made it less attractive.

So after weeks of cross referencing tables, drawing up lists of pros and cons, and boring everyone to tears with my constant analysis of these tables and lists…I went with the Fuji. Why? Because, that’s what I really wanted. The other cameras all made sense, but when it came down to it, the Fuji is the one I had my heart set on. Also…

Zack Arias told me to do it.

Looking for information about cameras on the internet is a bit like drinking from a firehose. There is just so much information, and so many opinions (most of them differing) that it’s overwhelming. What you really want is a professional photographer who can take you through all the relative pros and cons of a camera. To tell you what lenses would be best suited suited to your style of shooting, and to walk the talk by actually using the camera they recommend. Fortunately for Fuji, they have Zack Arias doing just that. He goes through all of the cameras, then all of the lenses, then breaks people down into a range of users and suggests the best combos for them.

http://dedpxl.com/fuji-x-buyers-guide-part-1-cameras/

http://dedpxl.com/fuji-x-buyers-guide-part-2-lenses/

This information was invaluable. So much so that I pretty much followed his recommendation verbatim. So if you’re looking to make the move to a new system, make sure you find a source you trust and then work out exactly what you want, because now it’s time to take the plunge and purchase your new gear.

Country wedding

Clicks and mortar

If you live in Australia, then you know that buying online is going to save you about 30% over buying in an actual store. But you will also know that websites don’t have a ‘haggle’ button that you can press and knock some money off the price…which is something you can do in store with an actual person. Also, there is a lot to be said for supporting a company that pays local people. So in the end I decided that if I could get the gear that I wanted from an actual store, for within 10% of what I could get it for online…then I would buy it locally. While I couldn’t get the camera body and lenses for this price, by the time I had haggled getting a camera bag, SD cards, a spare battery and mic adapter thrown in, I was there! So on the day of my 40th birthday I got to walk out of the store with my new camera and a bevy of lenses (for the record; an X-T1, 10-24mm f4, 35mm 1.4, 56mm f1.2 and 50-150mm f2.8).

That new camera feeling

Post-purchase regret

The best thing about dropping a large amount of cash on a new camera system is that it will change everything for the better! You’ll be faster, shoot better photos, look more pro, become a better lover (actually you may have to chose between the first one and the last one). Which is awesome right up to the point where you miss a shot because you where you normally stab your thumb to adjust the auto-focus has instead changed the ‘film stock look’ of your photo, or you can’t for the life of you work out how to make your flash fire remotely, or you discover that you have to upgrade Lightroom because your camera isn’t supported by the version you have. This isn’t what you signed up for!!! Why did you change?! Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?!!! I wonder if you can sell this and return to the warm embrace of the ecosystem you chose to leave?!
Stop.
Calm down.
It’s all going to be alright. Remember when you bought your first good camera and you spent weeks freaking out at all of the options at your disposal? Remember how you spent ages just shooting on ‘automatic’ or ‘aperture/shutter priority’ until you got the hang of things? Well you’re just going to have to do that again…but now you have the advantage of years of experience in working with people, and framing a shot on your side. So while you’re not as good as you were on your previous camera yet, you’re also not back to square one. So get out there and shoot!
However, if after a month or two you are still getting photos that are as bad as the ones you bought new gear to improve…then the problem may be with you. So go and do a photo course and brush up on your skills…or take up macrame…macrame’s nice.

Yurts and universes

‘I stop and think, this is Australia’

Four months in

It’s now four months since I jumped head long into the Fuji world. In that time I’ve shot over 1,000 photos on the Fuji (well, I’ve shot a lot more…but I’ve kept that many). I’ve shot a wedding. I’ve followed a guy doing 8 Ironman’s in 8 days and shot both photos and videos. I’ve captured some treasured memories of my family, and most importantly I’ve really enjoyed getting out and taking photos again.
So if a fear of the unknown is the only thing holding you back from taking the leap to a new brand, then just remember ‘Life begins on the other side of your comfort zone’.

Shaz & Lofty

Suns & daughters

April 8, 2016
Top 8 photos from #8in8in8

The opportunity to document someone attempting 8 Ironmans in 8 days in the 8 States/Terrritories of Australia doesn’t present itself all that often…in fact when Craig Percival mentioned it to me, he also mentioned that he would be the first person to ever attempt this feat. I readily said yes, as it was a very good way of ensuring I wouldn’t be asked to join him for any of the swimming/riding/running.
By the time all of the logistics and financial implications were sorted, we agreed that I would travel to Canberra to see Craig finish there, then travel with the team to Sydney, sleep the night in Sydney, then document all day in Sydney, fly home to Melbourne the next day and then film and photograph Craig’s final Ironman in Melbourne.

Fuji, Canon & GoPro…and it all fits in a backpack!

Things got off to a poor start due to the predilection of Melbourne drivers to crash into each other as soon as the roads get wet…despite leaving the city at 4.30pm, my 6.45pm flight had left by the time I got to the airport. So I had to book another flight…and given that there weren’t any more flights into Canberra, I had to fly to Sydney instead. I called Kate Patterson to let her know that I would meet her at the accommodation in Sydney, and I got the distinct impression that things were not going well in Canberra…and that perhaps my throwing another spanner into the works was about as welcome as a cold-sore. In fact, Craig was unlikely to finish the Canberra Ironman until about 2-3am, and so the team was going to drive directly from Canberra to the pool in Sydney to start the next one. Craig would sleep in the car as would the rest of the team…although ideally not all at the same time as that would make driving treacherous.
Clearly this was not the ideal start to my filming and photography…but a little drama never hurt anybody.

But when Craig arrived at the pool the next morning I realised that it hadn’t been ‘a little drama’, and it had indeed hurt him. In fact Kate and Lindell pulled me aside to tell me that during the drive from Canberra they had agreed to pull the pin on 8in8in8. Craig would do as much of the swim as he could…but that was it. It was over. As the guy who was meant to be documenting a triumph…I quickly realised that my day was over before it began.
But then 3 x Ironman World Champion Craig ‘Crowie’ Alexander jumped in the pool with Craig and I thought I may as well take some shots…so here, in no particular order, are my top 8 shots from the 8in8in8. These are not necessarily the best photos, or the photos that best encapsulate the whole thing, but they are the images that captured the key moments for me as a somewhat embedded observer.

#1 The before shot

A few days before 8in8in8

Traditionally the ‘before’ photo is used to show how much someone has improved in the ‘after’ photo. How much weight they’ve lost, or how ripped their abs are now. But I think that in the ‘after’ photo for this one, there probably wouldn’t have been the relaxed smile, the quiet confidence and the ‘let’s do this’ attitude…I also think the t-shirt would have said ‘Ragged’ instead of ‘Jaggad’.

#2 The swim in Sydney

Gotta love the GoPro

If you ever want a brutal reminder of just how out of shape you are, let me assure you that donning the budgie-smugglers and hopping into a pool with a 3 x Ironman World Champion and a man who has done 5 Ironmans over the last 5 days is a remarkably good place to start. But I was determined to get some under water footage of Craig swimming, so myself and the trusty GoPro jumped into the pool. After I got the footage I was after I decided to get some photos too. One of the challenges with shooting with this GoPro is that it doesn’t have a viewfinder, so you can’t actually see what you are shooting. You just have to line up a shot that you think will work and shoot. I was shooting on burst mode so that I got 10 shots in 3 seconds. The other nine shots in this burst were rubbish (catching a swimmer mid stroke can either look powerful and fluid…or like they are coming a distant second in an underwater dancing competition), but this one I love. The reflection creates really nice symmetry with both the stairs and Craig’s arm, and more importantly I know I never would have got it if I hadn’t swallowed my pride and jumped in the pool.

#3 The power of words

When John Maclean talks, you listen.

As I said earlier, Craig had decided to pull the pin on the 8in8in8 on the way from Canberra to Sydney. He had pretty much done the swim because Crowie and John Maclean were there. But the local Cronulla Tri squad had sorted a masseuse to come and give Craig a rub down, and while Craig was lying there John Maclean came over to talk to him. Sometimes you can see two people talking and just sense the gravity of what they are talking about, and this was one of those times. I knew I had to capture it, but when I took the photo from the side so that I could see both of them, it just didn’t work. So I scampered the other way so that I could see Craig, but that still didn’t work. Then I went behind Craig’s shoulder and realised that I could see John’s wheelchair in the background and knew that this shot would really tell a story. So I framed up the shot, pulled focus on John and waited for him to look up towards Craig…when he did ‘snap’, I knew I had the shot I wanted.
Over the last couple of months I’ve been working really hard on not just taking a shot from one angle, but trying to take it from a variety of angles. In this case it really paid off.

#4 The painful reality

60kms into the 180km ride,and still a marathon after that. Sometimes the only person who can support you is the person who knows you best

When I think of some of the most powerful photos I’ve seen, I realise that the photographer hasn’t been trying to help the starving child, or save the people running from the explosion, or stop the horror unfolding before them. They have made a decision that their photo will do more to change a situation than anything else they can do. For better or worse they have had to choose between taking a photo, and actively helping someone, and they have chosen to take the photo.
While of course not on the same scale, I had quite a few moments on my day in Sydney with Craig when I was tempted to take a photo that showed the physical and mental toll the day, and the indeed the previous five days…and no doubt the thought of the next two days, were having on Craig. To show how broken he was. But it just didn’t seem right. I felt as though I would be betraying Craig, Lindell, Kate, Ginny and everyone else who was supporting him.
So when I saw this moment, I knew I had to get it. It showed just how shattered and exhausted Craig was, but it also showed the wealth of support that surrounded him.

#5 Getting ready for the run at Cronulla

‘You’re still here mate?’

Perhaps this is the reward for not getting in Craig’s face for the preceding 11 hours. It was about 5.30pm, Craig had just hopped off his bike and was preparing to do the marathon along the Cronulla foreshore. I was just waiting to get the right shot of him when he looked at me, laughed and said ‘You’re still here mate?’ As with a lot of the other photos in this blog, this shot serves as a signpost to a turning point. I wasn’t there for the first five days, so I don’t know this for sure, but I felt as though Craig had spent the first five days enjoying people’s support, but not relying on it. But over the course of the day, Craig had let his defences down and realised that if he was going to do this, he was going to have to rely on the support of a whole lot of people he had never met.
So for the next 7 hours he walked the marathon, and people came from all around to walk with him. Earlier in the day he had been worried about what people would think of him if he walked the marathon…but by the end of the day I think he knew exactly what people thought of him BECAUSE he walked the marathon.

#6 The cheer squad at Prahran pool

This group of kids cheered Craig’s every lap.

Craig’s motivation for doing the 8in8in8 was to raise money for the John Maclean Foundation. Last year when he told me he wanted to raise $80K from this, I did my best to pretend that this was achievable. But deep down I wanted to say ‘Are you out of your mind?! I think you’re gravely overestimating the generosity of people’
Fast forward three months and Craig is swimming his final swim leg of the 8in8in8, and after the swim he is going to present a cheque to Tommy Le’Au and his family so that he can get a wheelchair. Tommy’s siblings and cousins had perched themselves by the side of the pool and were cheering him every time he went past. I’ve got three young kids and I know how hard it is to keep their attention for the time it takes to swim one lap of a pool, let alone 76. But these kids clearly knew what Craig was doing and why he was doing it…and they wanted him to know how much they appreciated it.

For the record, Craig has already raised over $84K and has now set his goal as $100K…so if you haven’t donated already, every little bit helps…and this is who you’ll be helping

Tommy and his Mum.

#7 Midnight in Melbourne

Running on the Albert Park Grand Prix track.

It’s nearly midnight on Sunday, we are on the closed roads of the Albert Park Grand Prix track, there are over 50 people still running with Craig, and he’s just let us know that he’s confident of finishing this epic event. If that’s not worth a photo, then what is? Of course the challenge is that it’s really dark, they’re too far away to use a flash…but that f1.2 56mm lens that you beat yourself up for buying, has just come into it’s own!

#8 ‘You know I’m going to do this!’

‘You know I’m going to do this!’

Kate Patterson had worked tirelessly in the lead-up to the 8in8in8…and while ‘tirefully’ isn’t an actual word, if it were, then she would have worked tirefully for duration of the 8in8in8. Surviving on smatterings of sleep, taking days off work to be there when Craig needed her and doing all of the media and social media stuff along the way. She was indefatigable.
About an hour into the final run (on the Albert Park Grand Prix course no less…another thing that Kate had managed to organise), I had perched myself at the 2km turnaround point of the run and was giving Kate some photos for her to feed the ravenous beast that is Facebook. When Craig ran past, then doubled back and said ‘You know I’m going to do this!’ and gave Kate a hug. He still had another 4.5 hours to run, but this was the first time I had heard him say this, and the first time he had let his game face slip, and reveal a little bit of the optimist inside.
Technically this is not a great photo. It was really dark where we were so the ISO is ramped up to 1600, I was clearly hunting for focus so the image isn’t sharp, but it captures a moment…and that’s all I ever really want to do.

Now for the movie

For those who don’t already know I’m putting together a short video about 8in8in8. I’m hopefully shooting the interviews next week, and then will be furiously editing it for a couple of weeks. I’ll do my best to write a few posts about this process.
But in the meantime I just want to thank Craig, Lindell and Kate for taking me on for this project. To Amanda, Grant, Ginny, Shrek, Ailie and everyone else who helped me out along the way, thank you so much, it was greatly appreciated. Last but not least to everyone who supported Craig whether it was in person, or on social media, or by donating to support JMF, you were part of something pretty special and I hope it inspires you to do something great.

March 23, 2016
10 things I’ve learnt about parenting

The internet and Malcolm Gladwell will tell you that if you practice something for 10,000 hours, you can become a master. Well I’ve now been parenting for 10 years, that’s 87,600 hours (or 87, 548 if you subtract the hours I was asleep), which means that I am pretty much the Yoda of parenting. So here are 10 things I have learnt over 10 years of parenting.

1. Spinning plates

I can remember a time in my 20’s when I knew that if I just dedicated a Sunday to ‘catching up’ then I could get back on top of pretty much anything. Finances? Check. Clean the house? Check. Annoying little jobs around the house? Check.
But the arrival of Josh lead to a 2 year period where life became a constant plate spinning act.
Finally feel that I’m getting on top of things around the house? But what about fitness? Quick do more fitness! Oh no…what about that Tax Return that’s due? Quick do that. Aaaghh!! What about spending time with the Hull-Browns…Oh God and the Riordan’s? Oh crap, I’ve got to devote some of my time to keeping the marriage together, and the dogs could really do with some attention…but I also need to get on top of things around the house!!!
By the time Holly arrived I started looking on in horror as some of the plates I was spinning crashed to the ground…and by the time Xavier arrived I was pretty much walking around with the sound of crashing crockery rebounding around my head. Did the world end? No. Did my marriage dissolve? No. Did the kids become little monsters? N…actually…look, let’s just say it could have been worse. But the simple fact of the matter is that spinning plates is foolish and overly ambitious. Just have as many plates as there are people in your family, put good food on them, make sure everyone uses them at the same time, clean them when they’re finished with and everything else will sort itself out from there.

2. Misery likes company

You need to make friends with people who are going through the same thing as you. Friends without kids will be nothing but a well meaning source of jealousy. Parents of kids who are older or younger than yours are also of little use. Those with kids older than yours have already repressed the horror that you’re going through, and besides they’re a little distracted by ‘Oliver! Get down from there! No don’t jump down!!! Oh God. I told you not to…yes, yes I do think it’s broken.’ And people with younger children have absolutely no interest in entertaining the possibility that things could actually get worse (or as I like to call it ‘bad, but in a different way’).
What you need is people who can look at you through bleary eyes and say ‘Yeah…I actually went in and woke her up at 2am so that I had an excuse to watch the Tour de France’. People who aren’t appalled when you mention your kid has Hand, Foot and Mouth, people who will buy birthday presents that aren’t Axle-F playing toy cats, and people who will occasionally utter to your child the most beautiful sentence known to parents ‘Yeah, of course it’s OK if you come over for a sleepover!’

3. Money

There is no end of things you can spend your money on once you have kids…and roughly 6% of these are things that you actually want. Mortgages, rent, cars, basketball, piano, choir, food, clothes, food again, I have been genuinely appalled at the number of times I’ve had to slink into a bank branch to withdraw money in the days leading up to a payday, simply because I had less than $20 in my account and so couldn’t take money out of the ATM.
If I had my way, the whole family would be living in a tent somewhere subsisting on foraged food and care packages from concerned relatives, while money accumulated in our bank account. ‘Fun costs money!’ I would yell at members of the family as they suggested expenditure of frivolous items such as holidays, or parties, or running water. To say the least, I am a fiscal conservative.
Katie on the other hand doesn’t share my fear of spending money. Indeed, if she had her way, we would probably be living in the same tent foraging for food, but we wouldn’t have a large bank balance and instead would have an amazing array of life experiences to show for it.
Fortunately we have managed to find a middle-ground that sees me spending a lot of time feeling anxious and Katie spending a lot of time feeling frustrated…but our kids have a renovated roof over their head, they rarely have to forage for food, and the care packages come in the form of dinners at our parents house. Which is really the sweet spot you should be aiming for with your parenting.

4. They need you…but you need you too

I’ve seen a few parents who have continued on with their lives after kids exactly as they were before they had kids, and I’ve seen parents whose lives were gradually subsumed into the lives of their kids. As with most of these things, somewhere in between is where you need to be. You need to be there for your partner and kids…but you also need to maintain enough of the person you want to be so that when you look in the mirror you don’t wonder ‘Who is that chubby, dull, old guy?’
Having said that, I have swung to pretty much both ends of this pendulum. On the one hand I’ve spent an entire year training for an Ironman, and on the other hand I’ve spent so much time as the ‘self-nominated child minder at social events’ that I have pretty much become a social ghost in that I’m constantly leaving conversations before they can develop into anything interesting as I’m scampering off to move someone away from a ladder, or playing with a child until they have ‘warmed up’ enough to go and play with the other kids…or not even attending grown-up social events because I’m at home looking after the kids. The net result has been and increasingly reclusive lifestyle that only leads to jealousy about other people’s non-reclusive lifestyles.
So this is ultimately a very long way of saying, if I’m talking to you at a party and I’m really struggling to make small-talk…please bear with me…I’m a bit rusty.

5. Sleep

With all three of our kids we have spent the first two years of their life not sleeping through the night. So I clearly have no advice to pass on here, other than that sleep deprivation is a freaking killer. It kills motivation, patience, creativity, passion and tolerance…which are pretty much the essential ingredients for a successful family life, marriage and career. There will be plenty of times when you put a strain on these things…but if you feel you are losing them, get help. Try sleep school, ask your friends what they’re doing, see if you can palm the kids off to a relative or friend for the night so that you can at least get one night of uninterrupted sleep. But don’t just try to ride it out. Sleep deprivation is like an insidious gas that distorts your perception and clouds your judgement, the only cure is a few nights of unbroken sleep…or failing that coffee…lots of coffee.

6. Mini-Me

Have you ever wondered what the personification of all of your insecurities and weaknesses would look like? Well let me assure you it looks a lot like your child as you watch them loitering around the outskirts of a social occasion, or you see them being dragged along the beach by a dog because they have absolutely no body weight…but are determined not to let go, or of course in that precious moment when at 3 years old they drop something and say ‘Oh, for Christ’s SAKE!’

7. They’ve got to take risks

This is one is really hard. Put simply, if you never let your kids take any risks you will probably have an unblemished report card when it comes to visits to the Emergency Department. But I also think you will have a child who will compensate wildly for this lack of risk taking in later life, or a child who is too scared to take the risks that we need to take as human beings to progress in life. With that said, I still feel a pang of fear each time one of the kids goes for a ride around the block, or heads up to the shop to get some milk, or stands on something very high and asks me to film a slow-mo video of him jumping off. But that’s nothing compared to how proud of themselves they are when they do it.

8. Parental guilt

One of the most brutal parts of raising kids, is realising what a turd you were when you were a kid. How hard you made life for your parents, how ungrateful you were for everything that they did for you, how ignorant you were of the myriad battles they were fighting. You want to apologise to them, you want to say ‘Is there anything I can do to make up for it?’, you want to do anything you can to assuage the guilt and feeling of indebtedness.
Instead, you say ‘Can you PLEASE look after the kids this Saturday night?’…and dig that hole a little deeper.

9. Some things you grew up with were actually really good

Growing up in Melbourne, and in a family that liked sport. I was pretty indoctrinated into the worlds of Cricket and AFL Football. But in my late twenties, I found that I was actually getting way too involved in the actions of 18 men on a footy field who I had never met and slowly started to divorce myself from footy. I also stopped hanging out with people who enjoyed watching cricket (or perhaps more accurately started living with someone who didn’t enjoy watching cricket) and I slowly lowered my cricket status to ‘aware of enough to make conversation if necessary’.
By the time Josh was born, I hadn’t watched a game of footy or cricket for years and so he has grown up without doing AusKick, or going to a footy match, or watching an ODI or 20/20 cricket match.
While we were down at Wilson’s Prom in January some kids came over and asked if he’d like to play cricket with them, he tentatively said ‘Yes’, but then admitted ‘But I don’t really know the rules’. In an instant I realised that at his age I was out pretty much every night in the backyard bowling at an imaginary batsman, or bouncing a ball off our back wall and catching the rebound, and that Saturday nights always held the potential of watching a Day/Night match at the MCG with my Dad.
I’d deprived my kids of this, just because I didn’t like the way it turned out for me…not because it was a bad idea. What’s more, in a city that lives and breathes sport, I’d deprived them of key information that will most likely provide the backbone of thousands of future conversations.

10. Don’t listen to people on the internet

For the love of God, you’re an adult…and a parent. Why are you reading this? You don’t need advice from someone on the internet about your own children. You know full well they’ve probably just plonked the kids in front of a screen so that they can find the time to write a blog about how to be a good parent. You also know that the photos that people post on Facebook showing the happy family engaged in an educational/cultural/physical activity was preceded by 5 minutes of screams and threats. You know that the parent humble bragging about their child’s achievement at school/sport/lion taming is glossing over the part where their child also nearly set fire to the cat.
So don’t surround yourself with someone else’s curated version of parenthood. Surround yourself with real life parents living with real life kids and share the good, the bad and the ugly. Because that’s what parenting should be about; sharing the dazzling highs and commiserating on the soul-crushing lows. But most of all it’s about talking honestly about what your kids are doing and what they are going through…and then walking away and thinking ‘well at least my kids aren’t doing that!’

February 3, 2016
Scaling back, changing tracks or dropping out?

10 years ago I’d been made redundant twice in 3 years and was then out of work for 3 months, I’d taken a job 2 days after Josh was born and was subsequently working long hours for very little money for people I didn’t like, making videos and TV commercials that I knew were going to come back to haunt me in later years.
So I took a lateral step into the Public Service, on the basis that a bit of job security would probably be a good thing with a young family…but that I would only do it for 2-3 years, so that I didn’t get ‘institutionalised’.
By ‘institutionalised’ I meant becoming someone who had become reliant on the perks of working in the Public Service. As I saw it, the trade off was that you took a pay cut, you said goodbye to any ideas of creativity and independence, but in return you got job security and sensible work hours.
You also got access to things like ‘flexible work hours’ and ‘sick days without a certificate’ and ‘working from home’ and ‘long service leave’. But I knew what these things were. They weren’t mana from heaven…they were tests from the Devil. Once you had started taking advantage of these, you had succumbed to the dark side. You would soon start referring to taking a day off work when you weren’t sick as a ‘mental health day’, you would have an email signature that looked like a weekly planner had vomited on the bottom of your email as you tried to explain the days and times when you would be in the office, you would sit down at the start of the year and map out all of the public holidays and work out when you could take a day of annual leave and gain a four day weekend. In short, you had become lazy, and the private sector would never look to give you a job.
But this wasn’t going to be a problem for me, I would be done in 2-3 years. I would have the experience of working in government, but without the stigma that is attached to long term public servants.
I was too strong to succumb to the devil’s wiles.

That was 10 years ago. I’m now due for long service leave…you know, that baffling thing where an employer pays you to not come to work for three months because they haven’t fired you in 10 years?
Last year I worked from home every second Wednesday. I’ve already booked annual leave for Jan 25th so that I can make Australia Day a four day weekend. I’ve become pretty much everything I feared I would become…and I’m about to take the final step into the warm embrace of the public service and cut my work days back to 4 days a week.
Which, to be honest, is kind of freaking me out.
I feel as though I’ve suddenly caught myself halfway down a slide, and I can either choose to work my guts out and climb back up the slide. Or I can fully commit to the ride, let go and just yell ‘Wheeee!’ as I slide into the unknown. Will I get to the bottom and discover I’m now the mediocre and uninspiring cog in a very large machine I feared becoming? Or will the bottom of the slide actually yield the opportunity to hop on another ride? There’s only really one way to find out.

So for this year, my Wednesdays will be focussed on the 4F’s: Family, Fitness, Film and Fuji (and if you think I’m going with ‘Fuji’ instead of ‘Photos’ purely to shoehorn an alliterative 4F allusion into this…you know me too well). This means that if you have a photo or video project you’d like me work on, then let me know, I now have Wednesdays and weekends to work on them. If you want to make Wednesdays a regular early morning run/ride/swim/gym then let me know. If you’ve ever wanted a portrait photo taken of yourself, or of someone you know…then let me know. And if you’re a member of my family hoping that I will be able to spend more time with you…then I’ll be there for you…provided I don’t have a better option available.

‘Wheeeeeeee!’

January 13, 2016
An open letter to Zack Arias

It’s a strange world we live in where you can have a mentor that you’ve never met in person, but followed from thousands of kilometres (or miles for our American viewers) away via the internet. But that’s how I feel about Zack Arias. I’ve never met him, but his videos and website have had a more profound effect on my photography than anything else. So Zack I’m genuinely bummed to know that you’ve had a less than ideal 2015. Especially as, under your proxy mentorship, I have had one of my best years.

Your Onelight video cajoled me to try shooting with a flash…and your John Keatley video dared me to take the plunge and approach a stranger and ask to shoot their portrait.

Your ‘Inspiration Interpretation’ blog made me rethink the way I use exercise as a way to inspire my photography…and I got so carried away I wrote a blog about it and tried (admittedly unsuccessfully) to get it published on your site.

Your ‘Art of editorial’ and ‘Shoot Rabbit’ videos gave me some amazing pointers on getting people comfortable and getting them to pose, that I tried out on my Dad.

But most, most, most importantly, I watched your Fuji guides and read your descriptions of the cameras and lenses so much that I think I wore down that part of the internet. The net result being that when I turn 40 in three days time, I’m putting all of the money I earned on a recent job, into purchasing a Fuji kit. And I am so excited about this, it’s concerning.

So I’m genuinely sad that you’ve had a rough 2015. But if I could have produced even 10% of what you did this year, then I’d be shouting it from the rooftops. But more than that, you’ve put so much back into the world. So thank you. If ‘what goes around, comes around’, then you are going to have one hell of a 2016!

December 11, 2015
Shooting your first wedding

Last year a mate of mine (the inimitable Tim Arch) asked if I would be interested in shooting a wedding. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to work with someone who knows what they’re doing and to learn a few tricks of the trade, so I said ‘Sure.’ But a few days later I re-read his message and suddenly realised that he hadn’t actually said that I would be assisting him, and after a flurry of DMs on Twitter I came to realise that in fact Tim would be attending the wedding…and I would be shooting it by myself. So I explained that while I felt happy with the way my photography was progressing…I didn’t really feel comfortable being the ‘be-all and end-all’ for someone’s wedding day. So Tim said he would explain this to the Bride and Groom, and a few days later he let me know that they were still happy to have me shoot their wedding. So it was time to HTFU and shoot my first wedding!
Was it terrifying? Yes. Were there things I could have done better? Yes. Did I learn more in about 4 hours than I had in the previous year? Yes. Will I ever shoot another wedding? I don’t know…but at least it’s not a definite ‘No!’.
So I’m no expert on wedding photography…but here’s what I learnt.

Preparation

Admittedly this is not going to come as a massive surprise…but the more prep you do, the easier the day will be. I had a few meetings with the groom before hand and a meeting with the bride and groom about a week out from the wedding. This was invaluable for making sure we were all on the same page in terms of what I was going to shoot.
I also headed over to the venue the day before at about the same time as the wedding was going to be to make sure I had a few good ideas for where I could shoot the group shots. While I was there I also roped a friend into walking towards me so that I could work out what shutter speed I would need to get shots of the bride walking towards me.
You may not use any of the the info that you glean from this preparation (Lord knows I certainly did!), but you will be able to carry yourself with the confidence that comes with being prepared.

I discovered this location on a walk a few months earlier and thought it would make for a great shot.

Improvise

Preparation is great…right up until that moment you when the spot you had in mind for the group shots suddenly isn’t available and you have to come up with another option. Or when the bridal party is crossing the road to get from one location to another and you see a chance to shoot them with an iconic Melbourne tram in the background (admittedly this shot didn’t work…but at least I got it!) So keep your eyes open for opportunities, and don’t freak out if you have make a last minute change.

Make sure you get a few shots that ‘tell the story’ of the day. This one serves as a good introduction.

Carry a shot list and ideas for shots

I’m sure that once you’ve done a couple of weddings you will know what shots you need and how to get them. But for me, having a list on my phone of the shots I needed to get and a few ideas for setups was invaluable. If you’re shooting the wedding by yourself you’re going to be flat out trying to keep people happy for the camera, taking the shots and making sure that they are working. You won’t have a whole lot of time to think about where you should be shooting next, or what would be a good set up. So if you’ve got a list, you can just refer to that and know that at the end of the day you’ve got what you needed to get.

I hadn’t intended to take a shot here, but the light was great and the grey background really made the bride and groom pop…also the bride suggested the photo and I’m too smart to refuse.

Go with what you know

I spend a lot of time taking photos of my kids, so I know the importance of waiting for a shot to happen, rather than trying to manufacture it. I’m also more comfortable shooting people with available light than with a flash. So there were moments like these where I knew I had nice light and I knew I could get a good shot if I waited for the right moment

Future bride and groom

And there was a moment where the bridal party wanted a photo in front of the fountain with late afternoon sun behind them. I thought that with about half an hour of mucking around with the flash I could get a good shot…but I also knew that I didn’t have that sort of time, so I had to just say ‘I’ll take the shot, but I think the sun is going to be too bright behind you.’ They were happy that I took the shot, and in the end the shot was too blown out…but I’m glad I didn’t waste precious time trying to make a shot that my skill level was unlikely to achieve. Because two minutes later I got these shots that I wouldn’t have got otherwise.

The Gear

Going into this, I think I was more concerned about the gear side of things than actually taking the shots! Will I need two cameras? Will I need a full-frame camera? How will I go shooting on a different camera when the pressure’s on? What lenses should I pack? Should I take a prime or zoom? How do I carry it all? AAAGGHHHH!!!!!
In the end I was very lucky and got to borrow a Canon 7D and a 70-200mm f4 lens. I also took my 550D with a 17-55mm f2.8 lens and a 50mm f1.4 lens. I had one camera on a sling and the other camera just on a strap and so carried them everywhere. I also had a tripod, flash and reflector.
So, did I need two camera bodies? Yep. There’s no way I could have changed lenses quick enough to get both this shot on the 70-200mm lens and then this one on the 17-55mm.

Perfect…apart from that creepy photographer in the background.

Did I need a full-frame camera? No, I’m happy with the shots I got on the 550D and 7D. How did I go shooting on a different camera when the pressure was on? Fortunately the navigation on the 550D and 7D are pretty similar, so I didn’t have any issues. But had I been shooting on a 5Dmk3 or different brand of camera, I think it would have ended in tears.
Should I take a prime or zoom? Given that so much of this was just running and gunning I definitely could have left the 50mm prime at home. I toyed with the idea of borrowing an 85mm for the portrait shots, but I’m glad I didn’t as I don’t think I would have had the time to change lenses and it would have just been another thing to carry.

One of the few shots on the 50mm

How did I carry it all? Well…I just carried it all. It was freaking hard work. My shoulders were cactus by the end of the day, and there was one awesome situation where I had a camera set up on a tripod in preparation for the group shot, and then was asked to take some photos 100m away in another part of the park. So I was left getting people to pose for some photos, while desperately checking over my shoulder to make sure no one was running off with the camera and tripod I’d left set up. This was not in any way, shape or form relaxing, and if I was doing it again I would definitely rope someone in to assist me.

Eating and drinking

If you’re someone who likes to eat (and I am) then you should definitely try to get some food into your system before the ceremony begins, as there will be very little chance for you to eat anything other than snacks for the next couple of hours. Fortunately I was pretty much running on adrenaline for 4 hours straight, and it wasn’t until I stopped that I realised just how hungry and tired I was.

I would also recommend taking a water bottle with you if you can. I was shooting in the late afternoon of a warm Summer’s day (about 30 degrees) and knew I would get pretty dehydrated if I didn’t drink a fair bit of water before the ceremony. So I drank plenty of water in the lead up to the ceremony and carried a water bottle with me. While I certainly didn’t get dehydrated, spending the next 2 hours with a full bladder and standing next to a fountain was not ideal.

Conclusion

What I don’t know about photography could fill a library…but fortunately what I do know about myself could fill a small self-help pamphlet. I know that I achieve the most when I push myself out of my comfort zone. So while I was terrified about taking on the job of photographing someone’s wedding, I just told myself that it was like any other photography gig and went for it…although admittedly it is ‘like any other photography gig’ except for the fact that it’s one of the biggest days in most people’s lives…and you only really get one shot at getting the photos…and people are almost definitely going to print the photos and look back at them over the years…in hindsight, I should never have done this.

But I was also really lucky to have a really lovely couple to work with. They said from the outset that they were going to be relaxed and easy going…and they were. I think that if they had been a high-maintenance couple then this would probably have been my last wedding…but as it stands…if the right couple came along…I reckon I’d do it all again.

How to deal with pesky onlookers telling you how to do photography.

November 28, 2015
Around the Bay 2015 – The plan

After spending exactly zero hours training together, the three members of a team for the Around the Bay meet to discuss their strategy for the day. Chris Riordan lays out his plan:

‘Ah gentlemen, glad you could make it. Austin, could you please close the door behind you? We don’t want everyone hearing our plans for the ride.’

‘Excellent. Thank you. Well this Sunday is the big day and I feel it’s probably a good idea to discuss our tactics for the day. Now, as the team leader…yes Austin…no, no you are not. While you have excelled in the logistical side of arranging our entry to the race, I’m sure you will agree that on the day we need a team leader who has a shot at winning.’

‘Well it’s exactly that attitude that makes you such a poor candidate for the role Austin, eye rolling and exasperated sighs aren’t going to help us at the pointy end of the race now are they? Also, quick show of hands everyone who was at this year’s Tour de France’…no one else?…That’s what I thought. So it’s agreed that I’m the team leader? Good.’

Melbourne – Queenscliff

‘Now as there are only three of us I’m suggesting we alternate between a 2:1 formation (in which two riders sit at the front and one sits behind) and single file formation. Clearly as the team leader I will not be able to sit at the front in either of these formations, so you will need to organise yourselves as to how quickly you want to roll the rotations…but with our 0 hours of training together, this really shouldn’t be a problem.’

The ferry

‘A lot of teams will be using the ferry as a chance to rest their legs. We will not be. I’m a firm believer in ‘active recovery’ and so I will expect one or both of you to work on my legs for the duration of the trip. This is not some pansy rub down…but nor is it a deep-tissue, let’s use our elbows on his hamstrings affair either. I can’t be more specific at the moment, but rest assured I will tell you everything that you are doing wrong on the day.’

Nutrition

‘Clearly stopping at the aid stations to collect food runs the risk of an accident with all of the merging cyclists…it will also diminish my ‘numbers’ in terms of average speed for the ride. So 500m from the aid station I will be passing one of you (I would suggest you rotate this role) my drink bottles, two of us will then ride past the aid station and skirt around the danger, while the other will stop, grab food, replenish the water bottles and then put in the hard yards to catch up with us. I will be easy to spot as I will be sitting on the wheel of the person who I’m riding with and taking selfies.

Sorrento – Melbourne

‘Clearly we will adopt the same riding formation on the ride back to Melbourne. However on the climbs, Paul it will be your responsibility to set the tempo (Austin I will need your legs of the flat section from Frankston). As we near the top of each climb I will swing past and claim ‘King of the mountain’ points. Ideally one or both of you will take photos of this. The social media plan for distributing these images will be covered in the ‘Social Media’ section of this briefing.
Once we hit the 10km to go mark, it will be important for me to start getting the legs ready for the final sprint. So I will be moving to the front to get the legs warmed up. These moves to the front will only be for 200-300m max, and it will be your jobs to adjust to these sudden surges in speed, and then allow me to tuck in behind once I’m done.’

The Finish

‘This is what it’s all about. All the training we haven’t done comes down to this moment. All the time we haven’t spent away from our families, all those mornings when we got up at 4.30am and then went back to sleep, all those sacrifices we didn’t make will all be worth it. But we need to execute this correctly! I do not want you screwing this up on me.
At 800m to go Paul will wind up the pace and start stretching the elastic of the weaker riders, then at 600m he goes flat out, I want to see some Tony Martin style drool coming from out of your mouth, then at 400m, Austin, you swing around the exhausted corpse of your brother and really turn on the after burners (while also checking behind you to make sure you haven’t dropped me…if you have, you must wait until I catch up and then start sprinting again). At 200m I swing past Austin (If I don’t have the leg speed to do this, Austin will start braking to create the impression that I am flying past him), then it’s all on me. I will power to the finish line, victory Riordan!
I will of course acknowledge your efforts in all post ride interviews, however (and this is very important) all winnings will stay with me. After all, I was the one who came up with this plan, I was the one who had to sit behind you two all day, and I was the one who put himself on the line for that last 200m to take the victory. So while there is no ‘I’ in team, there is in ‘win’. So you think about that before you start sending any snide tweets about me.’

Social media

‘Clearly any time I roll to the front it is incumbent on you to take photos of this so that the people at home know that I’m a team player and willing to do my fair share of the work. I’m suggesting hashtags of #whataguy #trueleader #sunsoutgunsout (this is only to be used if it is in fact sunny, and you have managed to capture an angle at which it looks like I have muscles…please let me know when I should flex).’

‘So that’s it. It’s a going to be a great ride, and I look forward to having a few drinks after we’re done (although I should stress that this will not be with either of you).
Go team!’

October 8, 2015
Shooting the Tour de France: An amateur’s perspective

“The tour, it’s like Crack isn’t it?” laughed the pro-photographer with the South African accent, before hopping on the motorbike to follow the peloton “Every year I say it’s my last time…but I keep coming back!”
Well I’ve never actually tried Crack, but thanks to the good folk at Cycling Tips and Exodus Travel I did get to see the tour this year, and while it’s pretty unlikely I’ll be able to afford to get back there any time soon, here are some things I learnt about taking photos at ‘Le Tour’.

Travel light…but not too light

The best way to get to a lot of the climbs and good vantage points to watch the race is to ride or walk. So whatever gear you want to take, you will be lugging with you on your back. On my first two days I carried just a 50mm prime and my Canon 550D. Which was good from a weight perspective…but made shooting a lot of things difficult. First of all, the 50mm being a prime lens means you can’t get a good spot by the roadside and then zoom out to get both the riders and the beautiful Alpine background…no, you need to step back a bit. Which means you are going to either have to shoot through a crowd (less than ideal) or shoot the riders quite tight (good to have, but you don’t want all of your shots to look like that).

Sagan tightening the straps for the descent

So for the remainder of the time I carried the additional weight of the 17-55mm and pretty much shot everything on that. At the end of the day, riders on a road could be anywhere, so you need to be able to get wide enough to tell the story of where they are.

Geschke on his way to a stage win at Pra Loup

I didn’t take a 55-200mm lens on this trip…not because I didn’t want to…but because I don’t have one.

Use a motorbike.

All the pros get to use a motorbike…so why shouldn’t you? Well, because you’re not accredited so you couldn’t get access to the course…plus it costs too much…and let’s not forget helmet hair. But you will find that you can use the motorbikes in the tour to your own advantage by using them to set your shutter speed. Now if I learnt one thing from my time on the tour, it’s that professional cyclists go freaking fast…so you want to make sure that you have all your settings dialled in before they arrive. But if you’re an amateur like me, then you’ll have no idea what shutter speed you should be using. So I just experimented with different speeds and shot the motorbikes as they went past (there are quite a few that come through before the leaders arrive). If the motorbike looks sharp, then you can be quietly confident that the cyclists will be sharp when you shoot them.

Providing valuable info to fans, riders…and photographers

You’re a photographer or a spectator…you can’t be both

It was embarrassing the number of times I thought there was still another big group of riders to come because I hadn’t seen the yellow jersey yet…only to go through my photos and realise ‘Oh…he came past five minutes ago…here’s a photo of it!’ Or I would be chatting to the guys I was watching the tour with and they would say ‘Did you see the look on Cav’s face on that climb?…he was suffering’ and I’d think, ‘Crap! That must have been while I was taking photos of the Colombian fans!’

These guys were having a good chat the whole way up the climb

You can try to occasionally just leave the camera in the bag and soak up the atmosphere…but deep down you just know that as soon as you don’t have the camera ready, Sagan will go past doing a wheelie…or a Yeti will attack the grupetto as it goes past. It’s just not worth that risk!

Don’t ‘spray and pray’

Nah just kidding, if you’re a professional or a purist, you can crap on about just focussing on taking one shot and really nailing it. But for you and I, when those riders go past, you are going to keep shooting until the cache is full. There’s no shame in that. After all, you’re the poor bastard who’s going to have to go through all of them later.
And sometimes as you’re shooting madly, the guy next to you will create a perfect frame through which to view the riders as they disappear into the distance…and you’ll look like a genius.

More good luck than good planning

Don’t shoot the same shot every time.

I spent pretty much the whole time shooting and thinking ‘Well I’m just ripping of Kristof Ramon with that one…that one’s pretending to be Veeral…and look, I think I’m both Jered and Ashley Gruber in this one!’ In short, you’re remarkably unlikely to come up with a shot that’s never been done before. But by the same token you don’t want to come back with ‘Here are photos of 50 different riders, shot from the the same angle and with the exact same execution!’ So drag the shutter a little, focus on crowd not the riders, shoot tight, shoot wide, shoot portrait. Do whatever you can to make a shot that someone who doesn’t obsess over cycling will still want to look at.

‘That’s close enough’

The peloton roll out of Modane

Do the boring stuff.

Load your photos every night. Tag them with metadata. Back them up to some sort of storage so that if the worst happens, they are in two (or ideally 3) places at once. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so spend the extra half hour to make sure it’s a story you can tell that doesn’t start with ‘I took this amazing series of photos, but then…’

A quick look to see who’s coming

But above all just have fun. You’ll learn a lot just by being there, and if you end up with a pile of crap photos at the end, just hide them and tell people you were too engrossed in the experience of the ‘Le Tour’ to take any photos…they’ll never know any better.

August 9, 2015
France vs Melbourne

Having returned from my recent jaunt to France, I’ve realised that there are some things that the French do very well…and some things that the French could learn from us. I’m quietly confident that they’re not listening to me, but here is my list anyway.

Things the French do better than us.

Driving

Now admittedly as you approach, drive through, or leave a town you will be met with a bewildering number of speed limit changes (they even put 30km/h signs in front of speed humps), but once you are out on the highway it’s 130km/h (or 110km/h if it’s raining). 130km/h! That really makes a difference on long journeys. Plus they don’t sit in the fast lane and hold other people up…no, they just sit in the lane that they’re comfortable with, and if they have to pass someone, they do and then move back into their lane.
Plus they pretty much all drive manual transmission, which means they actually have to pay attention when they’re driving. Chapeau France!

Cheese

I had always thought of myself as relatively knowledgeable about cheese. I wasn’t scared of blue cheese, I’d cooked with Taleggio, I’d tried Rocquefort. But arriving in France made me realise just how much I didn’t know. Over here, Chevre is pretty much a one trick-pony (or goat as the case may be), but over there, there are dozens of types of Chevre. Not to mention sheep’s milk cheeses, local specialities like Neufchatel and a dazzling abundance of all of the cheeses you already knew. Best of all, everything I tried was delicious.

Cheese peddlers

Drivers vs Cyclists

The French appear to have taken an unusual approach whereby the cyclists aren’t jerks, and the drivers aren’t arseholes…and in a complete surprise, the ‘Drivers vs cyclists’ problem is non-existent. The two groups just co-exist. All it really takes is people being willing to forego 10% of what they want in order to accommodate someone else…but unfortunately with our new found national sense of entitlement, any time we don’t get 100% of what we want is seen as a calamitous loss. So I can’t see this happening here any time soon.

Freewheeling through a town in the Alps

Mountains and chateaus

One of the downsides to having a nomadic population up until about 1788, is that we didn’t have thousands of years of people constructing buildings to basically say to anyone who was looking ‘You want to know how I rich I am? I’m this rich…and I’m so French that I built this one for my mistress!’

Also, as a photographer, you’re always struggling to frame a nice shot that has a good material in the foreground and background. But in France, if you’re in the Alps, then you only have to worry about getting the foreground right…as having those mountains in the background makes every shot a winner!

Just place flowers in the foreground…and voila!

Things we do better in Melbourne

Coffee

On our last day in France, as Katie and I sat drinking a cup of black, plunger coffee I said ‘You know, this really isn’t that bad’. But I now see that it was that bad…it’s just that over the course of two weeks my standards had fallen so substantially, that what previously would have been considered a ‘coffee flavoured hot beverage’ at best, was somehow being passed off as coffee.
Now I know that you seem to put 98% of your milk into cheese and butter, and so need subsist on long life milk…but come on France, even your espresso was crap! Stop using crappy little machines and get something that can actually extract a decent shot. Don’t leave the group head in the machine after you’ve made a coffee until the next customer arrives, and get the grind right so that it doesn’t just look like a cup of warm coke.
With that said La Pommetier and Le Petite Atelier, you will always have a warm place in my heart for the coffees you provided.

Nectar of the Gods…not shot in France

Cheese

Ok, so I am already on record in this blog as saying that I love your range of cheese. But cheese should be enjoyed in refined moderation. It should be like that person at a dinner party who knows how to drink just enough so that they’re interesting and entertaining…but not so much that they become a bore. France, you are currently like someone at a 21st birthday party, drinking wine from a funnel! For the love of God, show some restraint!
Every time I didn’t know what a menu item was, it was invariably cheese. I had a pizza that looked like it had been on fire and so someone had tried to put it out by smothering it in cheese. Another time, my entree turned out to be a pot full of cheese, with occasional bits of ham and some bread to dip in there. If you’re going to serve fondu, at least have the decency to admit that it’s fondu!

Breakfast

For the first week of my stay in France I was riding at least 80kms per day, up some of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen, and in 40+ degree temperatures. The breakfasts provided were, a selection of pastries (3 days) and a croissant, tub of yoghurt & container of stewed apple (4 days). Now this is OK as a breakfast, provided it is either Mother’s Day in 1994 or you’re a 3 month old. But not if you’re an adult who is hoping to get something done that day.

Delicious…but not a breakfast.

Conclusion

So there you have it. France has more things to recommend it…but Melbourne has better coffee. So let’s call it a draw.

August 6, 2015