2degreesofseparation's Blog

Tag: photography

  • Doing a phototour

    Doing a phototour

    Is it worth doing a phototour?

    Yes.

    In a world of clickbait headlines that make you wade through a whole lot of ads before providing an answer, rest assured I’m not going to put you through that. I did my first ever photo tour last year, and I’m just going to explain why I would recommend doing one…and gratuitously show some photos I took. So if you’re interested, please read on…and if you’re not interested, you should read on anyway, because ‘you won’t believe what happens next as bully gets taught a lesson/person shows true meaning of kindness/politician gets owned/Aardvark does the most adorable thing!’…or whatever weird sentence the algorithim thinks will get you to read-on.’

    So what is a photo tour?

    There are probably as many answers to this as there are combinations of photographers and photo tour leaders. You can have group tours, or individual tours. You can have the tour leader take you through how to use your camera or you can just have a tour leader who takes you to a location and leaves you to it. It can be half an hour in the laneways of a city, or three weeks in the desert of Morocco. 

    Our family was on a holiday to the south island of New Zealand, and so I was looking for a photo tour where someone could take me to a few great locations and let me take some photos. Ultimately I was looking to pay someone to get me to the right spot at the right time to take some photos. 

    I think that about 90% of any great photo is just being there to take the photo, the last 10% comes down to composition, creativity and experience…but that last 10% doesn’t mean much if you’re still in bed at your hotel, or in the wrong spot for a sunset, or trying to explain to an angry person in a foreign country exactly why you thought it was OK to take a photo of them. So I was very keen to find someone with local experience in the Wanaka area that could give me the best chance of making the most of my ‘last 10%’.

    I ultimately narrowed it down to three companies who were offering similar packages, emailed them, and then went with the highly scientific approach of choosing the first company who got back to me…this turned out to be Ridgeline NZ.

    How much did it cost?

    The tour I did cost $1,200. Did this feel like a lot of money to pay someone to wake me up early on holiday and drive me somewhere? Yes. So it’s probably worth also explaining that this was also a 50th birthday present to myself. This made me feel marginally less guilty about spending this much money, and besides, this idea had originally started as a 7 day trip through Morocco. So really…you should be looking at all the money I’d saved!

    But in short, this got me a half day photo-tour, I could invite someone along at no extra cost, Ridgeline would pick us up and drop us back to our accommodation…and they would throw in hot coffee and fruit cake. One of the other photo tour companies I was looking offered a full day option at a similar price…but I preferred the idea of having some time to work on the photos in Lightroom on the same day as shooting them…and I also felt that taking landscape photos in the middle of the day would probably not yield the best results.

    So while it was a lot of money, having done it, I would definitely do it again.

    I need something to help me get to sleep, please take me through a detailed account of the day.

    Harsh…but fair. I won’t take you through a blow by blow account, but we did have a brutal 5am start to catch the sunrise, and a drive to the location on a piece of land only accessible to Ridgeline that really made me appreciate having a local behind the wheel…and that wheel being attached to 4 other wheels on a Landcruiser. It’s always amazing driving through the dark on overgrown tracks, and then suddenly emerge onto a sweeping vista.

    The sunrise we had woken up at 5am to see…decided to hide behind clouds, which was a bit of a bummer. But while it meant we missed the sunrise, it also meant that we had an hour or two of constantly changing light, which was actually a lot more fun to take photos of. Not to mention mountains in the background, a lake in the mid-ground and all manner of things to use as foreground…the pictures pretty much took themselves.

    The Kea

    After about an hour of tramping across the countryside Josh heard a birdcall and asked our guide (Mark) if it was a Kea. Mark listened for a bit and then said ‘It is!’ and so we set off to see if we could find it. Kea’s are an endangered parrot that are as renowned for their shock of orange feathers hidden under a demure green, as for stealing things from people’s campsites and balconies. 

    As we rounded the hill, sure enough, there was a Kea happily sitting on a rock preening itself.

    I’m not a wildlife photographer, so I don’t have any 200mm-300mm lenses that would allow me to get a great shot from a distance, so we had to take a few photos from a safe distance…and then skulk forward hoping not to spook the bird and take some more shots. Then repeat until the Kea flies away.

    At one point it did fly away, and I thought ‘Ah well, I got a few good shots’…but then it promptly landed back down on a rock even closer to me than it had been before. In the end, I think the bird knew it could get away from us if it wanted to, and was potentially plotting to steal some of my camera gear, so we were able to get remarkably close before it did eventually fly off into the mountainous postcard of a background.

    It was a pretty awesome experience, and judging by the expression on our Guide’s face…a pretty rare opportunity.

    The Post-Kea era

    We drove and walked to a few other locations, and as with almost anywhere in NZ, the views were amazing. There was very welcome coffee and fruit cake…and less welcome wet feet from trekking through long wet grass.

    By 9am we were heading back down the mountain, and by 10am we were back home, ready to load in *checks notes* 350 photos!

    Do I recommend doing a phototour?

    Absolutely. There is no way I would have taken these photos any other way. I wouldn’t have got up early enough and I sure as hell wouldn’t have been in these locations. If you’re in Wanaka I cannot recommend Ridgeline NZ enough

    My tips

    Having someone else on the trip with you is great, even if it’s just so you can have someone in the photo. I noticed that a few of the tours charged the same for two people as they did for one or a little bit more (I’m assuming because they already have the car and guide booked, and an additional person isn’t going to change any of this), and so if you have another budding photographer in your family or group, it’s worth bringing them along.

    Don’t be a dick. It can be really easy to slip into ‘I’m spending a lot of money, so there’s no need to be nice!’ mode…but you’re in a car/van with the tour guide for at least a few hours, so just make the most of your time together, don’t make life difficult. It’s a lot more fun when you all feel like you’re on an adventure together…plus they’re the only one who knows the way home.

    Your guide will almost certainly be a great photographer…so get them to take some photos of you!

    Don’t be afraid to ask if you can borrow gear. I didn’t pack a tripod as I knew I would need it for the rest of our trip. But I was worried I’d miss out on some great shots without one, so I asked if I could borrow one for the tour and it was no problem. Did I use it? No…but it was nice to have it available.

    Get as much local knowledge from your guide as possible. We got some great recommendations on other places to go for photos, the best times to do some local attractions, and most importantly a GREAT recommendation for a place to go for a meal. So make the most of your time with someone who really knows the local area.

    Phones are pretty good these days. Now clearly the most important part of being a photographer is having a camera that clearly shows the world that you are a photographer…but I took quite a few photos on my new iPhone, and it was painfully hard to tell the difference between them and the photos off my Fuji.

    You don’t need a full day. If your social battery is going to be as depleted as your camera batteries after 4 hours, then just do a half-day. I’m convinced I got as many great photos in a half-day as I would have got in a full day, plus I got all of my photos loaded into Lightroom by lunchtime…and I got to spend that lunchtime with my family at a place that our guide recommended that turned out to be amazing. So it was a win all round!

    I was super happy with this photo of two sheep on a hill, until I realised it looked like it was someone having sex with a sheep…then it lost its lustre.

    Overall, I got an incredible experience, I met a great person in our guide Mark, I got some photos I’m really happy with, and I learnt a lot. So I will definitely be doing another photo tour, and if you have a recommendation of one to do, I’d love to hear it.

  • Taking photos of Snoop Dogg

    Taking photos of Snoop Dogg

    ‘Are you able to take photos and video of Snoop Dogg tomorrow?’ As a public servant, this is a question I get asked a lot.

    Snoop working on his words and verbs.


    For context, some students at Warringa Park (a school for students with a disability) had recorded a song at their studio and invited Snoop Dogg to come to the studio and record a verse. In a move that I don’t think anyone expected, Snoop agreed and asked that the event not have any media, so that it could just be for the students and teachers. So, as the in-house creative team for the Department of Education, my team was asked to document the event.
    This was right up there with a request in 2011 to drive to Kerang to take photos of actual royalty, in the form of Prince William who was there to survey the flood damage.

    Now admittedly, these requests are few and far between. But requests to ‘quickly grab a few shots at the launch’ or ‘get a photo of *insert senior person in organisation* at *insert event where person will be standing at lectern in front of very bright Powerpoint presentation*’ or the dreaded ‘Just grab a few photos for socials’ are everywhere now that we all have cameras that can also make phone calls in our pockets.
    So I thought it might be worth passing on some tips and tricks for taking photos at events like this…and yes, what to do if you get called up to take a photo of a legit superstar.

    Clean that lens

    I genuinely want to run a workshop called ‘How to take better photos with your phone’ and just say ‘Give the lens a quick wipe before you take a photo.’ Then thank everyone for their time and wish them well.
    It seems so simple, but if you’re ever wondering why your photos look ‘flat’ or ‘muddy’, have a quick look at the glass on the lens and see if there are any finger prints/sunscreen/sweat on them. If you’re anything like me, there will be…but they can be gone with a 2 second wipe.
    On the bikepacking trip I did earlier this year I made a conscious effort to wipe the lens each time I went to take a photo, and the results were glorious.

    Bike on a wet road with misty bush behind

    Tell a story

    I know that this is tricky, especially if there isn’t a story that’s immediately apparent. But so many photos I see from events seem to say ‘A thing happened. Here’s proof’. This is great if your sole objective is ‘have proof we did something’. But if you’re looking to engage with an audience who has an entire social media feed of super interesting content. You’re going to have to work a little harder.
    If you’re taking photos at an annual event, you want something that makes people think ‘I have to go next year’. If it’s a one-off event, you want people to think ‘Wow, I wish I had been there!’, if it’s just to document something that happened (a visit by someone important/ a workshop/ a conference), then you want people to think ‘I wonder what it was like to be there’.
    It’s also worth remembering that 99% of your audience are people who would be attending your event, not presenting at it, so make sure you get photos of people enjoying/engaging with the event (no one at the events I’ve taken photos at has signed a consent form saying ‘it’s OK for Chris to use this on his own personal blog’, so I don’t have any examples to show…but rest assured, I take them at every event).
    In short, you want people to engage with the pictures and create a story in their minds.

    Your Chief Financial Officer probably won’t be as good at posing as Snoop, so enjoy it while you can.
    Make sure you’re ready to capture moments like this.
    The lyrics to what Snoop was about to rap.
    The music teacher and Snoop’s entourage discuss production techniques, while he works on his flow.


    People love stories, and our brains love finding connections, so try to take a few photos that tell a story and that allow people to make connections between.

    In this picture you can see; Snoop Dogg is there, he’s at a school, and the kids are excited he’s there. Also, the number of people who made reference to what’s written on the board when they saw the photo was staggering. Why did they like it? Because they were able to make the connection between ‘teachers writing a message for students on a white board’ and that message including ‘fo shizzle’ which is something that Snoop would say. You let their mind make the connection, and they got a little dopamine hit for doing it. Everyone wins!!

    Three’s a crowd

    We’re all susceptible to a bit of FOMO. So when you’re taking a photo of something you want to make people say ‘Oh, I wish I was there!’, then frame the photo between people who are there. On a purely liminal level, it puts the viewer into a situation as if they were actually there (unless you’re right at the front in the VIP seats, you’re probably going to have people in front of you) and it makes for a more interesting shot. On a subliminal level it says ‘there were so many people at this thing, the photographer had to take the shot through a crowd of people. Why weren’t you there?!’
    Best of all, if there aren’t heaps of people at the event, you only need 2 people to make it look like there were!

    Unfortunately I don’t have consent forms to cover me using the photos I take at work events, so can’t show you an actual example…but it works just as well at music gigs.

    Get to the part about Snoop Dogg!!

    Ok, I’ve buried the lede long enough. What do you do if the stars align, the Gods smile upon you, and you’re suddenly called upon to take photos of someone BIG?

    Have a plan

    I am genuinely amazed at the number of times people assume that because you have a camera in your hands you know what should be happening. And believe me, if you say something like ‘I don’t know…just…you know…act natural’, you are in for a selection of the most awkward photos you’ve ever taken.
    So with Snoop, I had a series of questions I was ready to ask if the students got too nervous to talk, or if Snoop was looking like he needed some direction. I also had five shots in mind that I wanted to get, so I knew I could ask people to do those if there were any awkward lulls. For the record, both he and the students were so good, I needn’t have worried.

    Snoop with the list of artists the students had on their ‘wishlist’.

    Take a LOT of photos

    We are not shooting on film, with just 12 exposures…and you have the rest of your life to delete the photos you don’t want. So take a lot of photos. I know professional photographers will sneer and call this a ‘spray and pray’ approach. But at the Prince William event I mentioned at the start of this blog, I missed a photo of one of our key staff shaking hands with the Prince. It still haunts me, and I would have happily deleted photos for hours rather than have to send him the email admitting I’d missed the shot.

    At the Snoop shoot, I took over 500 photos in under an hour. I reckon there will be about 20 that I’m really happy with, and probably 3 that I’m stoked with. But every person there got a photo with Snoop where they both look good, and that’s worth its weight in gold.

    Be confident…or at least fake it convincingly

    If you look like you know what you’re doing and you’re happy to be there, you will get great responses from the people you’re taking photos of. If you look stressed or overwhelmed, people will ‘tighten up’ in front of the camera. Now this truly sucks, because internally you ARE going to be freaking out, and your mind will be running at 1,000 thoughts per second, and it would be GREAT if people knew that and all said ‘Oh you poor thing, this must be so stressful for you.’ But you know what doesn’t make a great photo…people looking at you with an ‘Oh you poor thing’ expression on their face. So take a deep breath, put on a big smile and get used to saying ‘That looks awesome! OK, just one more, looking here. Perfect!’

    At the Snoop shoot I think I was a picture of positivity, but at the end I helpfully got a message from my watch saying ‘This has been a stressful period, make sure you balance this with some relaxation or meditation’.
    Not now, watch…not now. 

    But stress aside, this was a genuinely amazing experience. There was an amazing sense of joy and excitement in the room, and I like to think I captured some of that. So if you’re not afraid to take a photo, then put your hand up to take some photos for your work events…and if the opportunity to work with Snoop Dogg presents itself, then I highly recommend you take it!

  • Bike-packing the Tassie Trail

    Bike-packing the Tassie Trail

    I didn’t set a whole lot of KPI’s when I started my parenting journey, but I think it’s fair to say that if you’d told me back then that in the same year I turned 50, my 19yo son would want to go on a 7 day bike-packing trip across Tassie, and that what’s more, I’d still be physically capable of doing it, I reckon I would have been pretty happy.
    So I’m very happy to report that I have smashed those non-existent KPIs by riding the 480km Tasmanian Trail from Devonport to Dover.
    I’m probably more happy that I’m not still doing the ride, as it was genuinely one of the toughest things I’ve done, and instead of providing a travelogue of the journey, I think I’ll focus on what I learnt while I was doing it.

    Plans are awesome, as you watch them fly out the window

    I had never gone bikepacking before. So I had no idea how much of a difference carrying sleeping bags, a tent, clothes, a camping stove, etc. would make to how fast we would ride.
    I also failed to realize how steep some of the climbs were going to be, or that some of them would be up rocky hills that were impossible to ride up.
    So as we planned the trip, I was thinking, ‘Well, I can normally average 30 kph, so if we assume with all the gear we’re carrying we can only average 20 kph, we should be able to comfortably do 80 kms per day. So if we get on the road by 8 am, we can be at our next stop by just after lunch… then we can swan around whatever town we’re in, and I can take photos. What an amazing and relaxing way to see Tasmania!’
    Cut to a scene where Josh and I are riding in the cold and dark on day one, with only one decent front light, hoping to make it to our accommodation before their kitchen closes for the night.


    If I take a few steps back, we had started later than 8 am because our flight didn’t land until 10 am.

    By the time we had taken the bikes out of their boxes and assembled them (or more accurately, Josh assembled them and I found places to put the packing materials), it was 11:30 am, then it was a 10 km ride from the airport to the start of the trail.

    So by the time we’d had something to eat, it was already 1 PM. But using the patented ‘Chris Riordan travel estimator,’ we would still be arriving around 6 PM, which was fine. In fact, everything was so fine that we found time to stop and take photos. This was exactly how I had hoped this trip would be: lunch in little country towns, pleasant riding through beautiful countryside, stopping for photos… what a time to be alive!

    But then the country roads and pleasant paths gave way to gravel roads and stony trails, the midday sun turned to early dusk, and we were taking off our shoes in order to push our bikes across a river.

    By the time we got to our second river crossing, the light had almost gone, and so we had to push on through windy single-track trails with only a few meters in front of us illuminated by our lights.

    Then we came to a serious climb. It was so serious I had to get off and walk for some of it. By the time I got to the top, we were still at least 10 km from Deloraine, it was cold, it was dark, we were hungry, and suddenly this did not feel like such a great time.
    Thankfully we had mobile reception, and so we were able to use Maps to plot a course that kept us off the highway as much as possible, and cut a few km off our trip. But seeing as I had the brightest light, I had to sit in front of Josh for the rest of the trip…which is a bit like putting a Clydesdale in front of a racehorse.

    We pulled into our Deloraine accommodation just before 8:30 pm…our ‘4 hr ride’ had taken over 8 hours, we were cooked…and it was only day 1.
    Plans are great!

    Serendipity

    As I came to discover, one of the cool things about the Tassie Trail is that you will encounter climbs where you wonder, ‘Should I have bought a smaller chainring at the front… or just some rock-climbing gear?’

    Enjoy that climb at the 45 minute mark.

    Our second day had two of these climbs. The first one was non-negotiable, but the second one could be avoided if you took a longer route through a town called Poatina. The trail guidebook said that the steeper climb ‘was not advised for horses or bikers’, but Josh was very keen for the adventure, and I just figured that if I had to walk the bike up some of the climb, then so be it.

    We stopped just before the start of the climb to have a banana and some lollies to fuel up for the push up the hill and then onwards to a campsite about 20 km after the top the climb. You access the climb via the driveway on someone’s property, and as we were standing there, a lady drove out of the driveway. We got chatting, and she explained that her parents owned the property, and that while it would be really difficult to ride up the trail, it was really great…and that also, there was a cave about 2/3 of the way up that we could camp in if we wanted. We thanked her for the info, but knew that we were aiming to camp on the other side of the climb…things would have to be going pretty badly for us to be camping 2/3 of the way up this climb.

    We started the climb, and after about 200m things started to go pretty badly. It was really steep, but more importantly, it was pretty much just rocks, and so some pretty impressive mountain bike skills were required just to ride over them…skills I did not possess. So I had to start walking pretty much straight away. Of course, it’s not just walking; it’s walking while pushing a 30kg bike, and sometimes that meant pushing the bike in front of you, locking the brakes to hold it in place, then taking a few steps, then pushing the bike in front of you, locking the brakes, taking a few steps, then repeating this for half an hour.

    Once again, the light was starting to fade, and we weren’t even halfway up. There was no way we were going to make it to the top, then ride for another 2 hours to get to our campsite. But we could make it to the cave. I was able to text Josh to wait for me at the cave, and by the time I got there, we had just enough time to set up the tent and get a fire going before darkness descended like a weight.

    It was incredible. Just the two of us, in the middle of nowhere, two-thirds of the way up a mountain and completely protected from the elements. It was exactly the sort of adventure I had hoped we would find on this ride, and it would never have happened if we hadn’t bumped into that lady at the base of the climb. One of the beauties of being willing to take on a challenge like this is that serendipity tends to follow you.

    This sign was at the end of the trail for people coming the other way…good to know.

    Highway from the comfort zone

    I am a great believer that true growth comes when you’re out of your comfort zone, and this trip really showed me that while I may believe this, I’m not so great at putting it into action. That’s not to say that I don’t do a lot of things that I tell myself are putting myself out of my comfort zone. For example, every Sunday I have my long run. Up until this trip, I would have said ‘I’m pushing myself for 1.5-2 hrs, so I’m really getting out of my comfort zone!’ But, at best, I’m pushing myself a little out of my physical comfort zone. Mentally, I’m super comfortable. I know how far I’m running, I know where I’m going, I know when the hard bits are, and if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, I can call someone to give me a lift home.
    In fact, I think my comfort zone probably is where I can maintain an impression of discomfort while maintaining complete control.
    This trip pushed me to my mental limits, often for hours at a time. I haven’t had to push my bike up a hill since I was about 16…but I was having to do this on a daily basis. I HATED not knowing how hard the next climb was going to be. I was furious every time we climbed up a hill for an hour, only to find there was a short descent before the next hour-long climb. I took it very personally every time a descent was so technical that I couldn’t enjoy it, and probably had to expend more mental energy on the way down than up. I. HATED. NOT. HAVING. CONTROL.
    But you can’t control everything, and acknowledging that but still continuing was the comfort zone I had to get myself out of.

    On day 6 we had our last big day, 80kms from New Norfolk to Geeveston. The day started with 4 hours of climbing, and much like descending into the ‘9 circles of hell’, this climb presented multiple levels of torture. Really rocky paths gave way to a 4wd track that was full of enormous puddles and tyre-width wide ridges between them that you were meant to somehow balance your fully laden bike across without losing momentum… then the ridges disappeared and you just had to work out how to get your bike across 6ft puddles of indeterminate depth… then the path just became large rocks and boulders you had to push/carry your bike over.
    It’s fair to say I got a little bit ‘sweary’ at this point, not the least because I knew that if the descent was the same as the climb, I was going to have to walk that as well, and it was going to be a loooooong day.


    For better or worse, the descent was not as bad. It was still full of decently sized rocks or slippery clay or some winning combo of both…but with enough patience and forearm strength (as you pumped the brakes to try and keep yourself from flying down the hill) it was doable. My whole rationale was ‘If I just fly down the hill, I may save myself 10 minutes, but if I come off, I will ruin the whole trip. So just grip those brakes and play it safe.’
    But then we came to a section (you can see it looks like a vertical drop on the profile) that was insanely steep. It was so steep that I had to stop because my forearms were getting exhausted from holding the brakes so tight. It was so steep that when I started again, I almost went over the handlebars trying to clip my feet into the pedals. It was so steep (and the trail was just tennis ball-sized rocks) that I realized that even with my brakes on full lock, I was still hurtling down the hill; it’s just that with the brakes on full lock, I was much more likely to wipe out on a section of deeper rocks. I could see the end of the section, and I could see Josh waiting for me, and so I just let go of the brakes. It’s three weeks later and I can still remember the feeling. I was flying. I was bouncing over the rocks. If I came off, it was hospital for sure. There was no sound, just the bike bucking wildly underneath me, just trying desperately to keep it upright, and knowing that I was completely out of control, it was down to luck and my reflexes, and I had never been so far from my comfort zone.

    Then it was done, and I was slowing down on a slight ascent; then I was chatting to Josh about how much he had loved it. The memory is so visceral that I know my mind has had to do a lot to process it, and hopefully, it’s grown because of it—new pathways, new possibilities. But if you asked me to do it again…I’d probably say ‘no’…there’s no way I could get that lucky twice.

    Capitulation or perserverance

    I have always enjoyed sports, but never excelled. From about my 30s onwards, I discovered that while I could never win a race, I could always grind out a decent finish. Capitulation was never an option.

    On one of the days when I was walking the bike up a muddy cliff-face somewhere, I had to come to two knee-high boulders that I had to squeeze the bike through. The only way to do it was to put the bike on its back wheel and push it through vertically. It worked, and to celebrate my logistical prowess, I promptly walked my knee straight into one of the rocks. It hurt at the time, but over the next few days it got worse and worse.


    On day 5, we were riding 80kms from Ouse to New Norfolk. We had decided to stop in the town of Ellendale to get an early lunch, but when we arrived there, the one shop in town was closed. It had been a tough day already, and my knee was really hurting, to the point where I was basically free-wheeling any slight downhill (and I think I was driving Josh insane with how slow we were going). So to arrive at what we had hoped would be our lunch spot, where we could get something warm to eat and ideally a coffee… and instead be eating the cold packet of beans and rice we had intended to have for dinner that night, and to know that we were about to embark on some hefty climbs on very rough tracks. Well, it was rough, and my mindset was not good. I had a look at Maps on my phone and realized that there was a roadhouse about 12kms away that served food; I also realized that the trail took a 20km detour through the hills before arriving at the same roadhouse. So I decided that I would just ride along the road for this section and meet Josh at the roadhouse after he had enjoyed the highs and lows of the trail.


    I had expected to feel guilt and regret as I rode along by myself. But suddenly, being able to ride at my own pace, I found my mindset getting better. After a short climb, I found myself on a long sweeping descent. The sort of descent where you can just stop pedaling and enjoy the ride, the sort of descent I’d been praying for after each climb over the last few days. I knew that at the bottom I would need to start climbing again… but instead, like some wonderful apparition, at the bottom of the hill was a raspberry farm that had a coffee machine and homemade ice cream. While in Melbourne it can be hard to walk for more than 5 minutes in any direction without tripping over a barista… it’s fair to say that if you spend 90% of your time riding on fire trails and weird horse-tracks through the hills, you very rarely stumble across anyone offering a decent coffee. So I asked if they could make an affogato, and they happily poured a shot of coffee over a scoop of homemade ice cream… I think I may have been the happiest I had been in days. So happy, I took a photo of it to show Josh later.


    Then I pushed on to the roadhouse, ordered myself some food and was about to text the photo to Josh, but decided to just see how far away he was first. His response came back that he had noticed a puncture about 5 mins after we separated (this was our only puncture for the whole trip!), and while trying to fix that, his pump had broken, and when it had broken, it had cut his hand. So he was still out in the middle of nowhere, on a tire that wasn’t properly inflated and with a cut hand.
    I decided that now was not the time to send the photo of the affogato.

    With some judicious use of Panadol, my knee was fine for the rest of the ride. I have no idea what would have happened if I’d just decided to be a ‘completist’ and stuck to the trail… but I think that the simple act of kindness I had offered myself to take the easier option got me across the line. If nothing else, it gave me the first ‘non-sachet’ coffee I’d had in days!

    The end of the trail

    When talking about the US Space program, JFK famously said, ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ Unfortunately, I lack both JFK’s brevity and work ethic, because I think mine is more along the lines of ‘I do these things not because they’re easy, but because I thought they would be easy, but then they proved to be a lot harder than expected. At the same time, I’d already committed a lot of time and effort to them, and so I guess I may as well finish them.’

    So on day 7, we rode triumphantly into Dover. In a true metaphor for the ride as a whole, we rode up a really long and punishing hill before descending on some sketchy trails that became shingly paths that became a dirt road, before finally becoming a paved road that descended all the way down to the beach. As we rolled down the hill, we had our arms out wide, soaking up the feeling of accomplishment and feeling like we were flying. Then at the bottom of the hill, we realized that it wasn’t the actual end of the ride, and that we had to turn left and ride up one last super steep hill on a double-lined road with an impatient truck behind us.
    So we did.

    Will I ever go bikepacking again? Absolutely.

    Will I travel with Josh again? If he’ll have me, without a doubt. He was the perfect travel companion.

    Are there things I would do differently? Most definitely, but that’s for another blog.

    Is one of those things not carrying a camera in a backpack the entire way? Nah… ’cause it let me get this photo… and you can see all of the other photos from the trip here


  • Best photos for 2023

    Best photos for 2023

    It’s that time of the year when I’m on leave and archiving off all of my photos from last year onto external hard-drives, so it’s time to dive into my favourite 23 photos from last year.
    These are in no particular order, as I’m far too lazy to rank them.

    The smiling assassin

    Wombat at Wilson's Prom


    I was out for an early evening stroll at Wilson’s Prom when I rounded a corner to see this handsome devil on the path ahead.
    Instead of heading towards them (and potentially scaring them off), I took a punt on where they were heading next and got myself set up. Lo and behold, they headed in my direction, and came up so close that they briefly looked like they were going to take a chomp out of my lens.
    Did I ask for the shy smile? No. Am I taking full credit for it? Yes…yes I am.

    Right leg kick-through


    There is nothing better than discovering a subculture. Last year I started doing ‘Animal Flow’, which is basically a series of moves based on different animals. If you imagine a group of gymnasts, and a group of Cross-fit types meeting at a zoo and trying to torture each other…then you’re not far off.
    On this day, Alisha Smith was down in Melbourne to test some instructors and run some classes. Given the choice between doing the class…and taking photos of people doing the class, I chose taking photos.
    One of the upsides to having done some of the classes was knowing when the best moments were going to be to take a shot…and then having someone with such perfect technique to make it look easy.

    Cycling in Vietnam


    In what I think will be a bit of theme in this year’s photos…we went to Vietnam! As part of it we rode for 4 days through rice paddies and rocky outcrops. We also rode through about 3.98 days of rain, so I love that this photo captures both the beautiful vistas we were travelling through, as well as the constant spray of mud up the back our jackets!
    Shooting on a GoPro while riding does involve a degree of taking a photo and hoping for the best…and with the lens so wide, you really need to be pedalling hard to keep the person in front of you as the focus, but this sort of scenery can make up for a what you’ve missed in the foreground.

    The Bridal Waltz

    The Bridal waltz

    Going to a wedding of your friends in your 20’s can be a slightly tense experience. There is a LOT of pressure to not screw anything up (this is the BEST day of their lives after all), and so people are often too nervous to actually be themselves.
    But weddings of people in their 40’s are usually a lot more relaxed. It’s often a second go at a wedding for those involved…and so they’re there to have fun. This may mean that what looked liked a speech, devolves into the bridal party swarming onto the dancefloor to recreate the zombie dance sequence from ‘Thriller’, and then whisking the bride away.
    A good photographer will be able to capture that moment (and may even be brave enough to drag the shutter to capture the movement as well). A bad photographer won’t know what’s happening as the Bridal party swarms towards them and very nearly gets in the way of a choreographed dance sequence.
    I will do both.

    On the buses


    We were on a bus in Vietnam driving over a mountain range. The fog outside was so heavy that we could hardly see more the 5 metres in front of us…but it did make for some amzing diffused light. Just as I was taking a photo of the bus, Xav turned around in front of me, and I snapped this pic.
    I know that if I had tried to pose this, it would never have worked, but sometimes the photography gods smile on you.

    The farmer is strong in him

    Every year we head to my Uncle Pat’s farm for an early Christmas get together. We’ve been there in drought and in windy heat, but this year everything was green and growing. On the traditional post-lunch walk I snapped this pic of one of my cousin’s sons. His dad is a farmer…and the stance, and look of wary concern is clearly genetic.

    Hanoi streets


    I know what you’re thinking…’Chris, it’s been an entire photo since you’ve shown-off about being in Vietnam!’ Well fear not…we’re back.
    I think I really like this photo because it shows me that I’m learning. This street corner in Hanoi was definitely photogenic. But I chose to wait until some people walked into the shot (to give it an extra element of interest), I got down low to change the perspective, and when I did that I remembered not cut off that light in the top left of the image (that’s the sort of thing I would have missed in the past, and been furious with myself later).

    On the way to Fairy Cove


    While I may have had my nice Fuji for the photo of the wombat…I definitely wasn’t lugging it along for this hike to Fairy Cove. Which I thought I was going to regret, as the early morning light revealed this vista of the Derby River.
    Thankfully, the iPhone is a pretty impressive beast, and this was the result.

    Post race


    Many moons ago there was a photographer taking super-shallow, close up portraits of cyclists after the big 1-day races in Europe. I really liked them as there was invariably one happy person…and a LOT of very broken and exhausted people.
    This photo was taken after a loooong morning of riding in a combination of the rain and the Vietnamese countryside. We had just arrived at the spot where a bus was picking us up to drive to the next location…and the bus driver was making it clear that our filth was not a great addition to his clean bus. So while negotiations raged between him and our tour guide, I snapped this photo of Josh.
    As a complete aside, our guide had told us the night before our first day of riding that he was preparing some special ‘lamb juice’ for us. He insisted that this was always very popular with cycling tours, and had a lot of salt and other minerals added to it.
    It’s fair to say that up until that point I had not seen a single sheep in Vietnam…and was certainly not sure how ‘lamb juice’ was going to help our cycling. But maybe it was some form of ‘bone broth’? Either way, it’s a testament to Aussie politeness, that at our first drink stop when he showed us a water cooler full of ‘lamb juice’, quite a few of us were willing to give it a shot.
    It turned out to be ‘lime juice’…and was indeed delicious.

    Street portrait


    As the negotiations between the tour guide and the bus driver continued loudly in a tiny town on the way to Ninh Binh, this guy arrived on his scooter. The sight of a group of mud-spattered Australians standing around a bus was clearly the best thing he’d seen all day. I did my best to ask if I could take his photo in Vietnamese, but his laughter implied that I had not done this. Through a lot of laughs he said 3-4 words in English, and I think one of them was ‘lunch’…so I realised that charades was going to be the winner again. I pointed at my camera and then pointed at him with my face doing it’s best to convey that this was a question. He laughed again and nodded, and so I snapped a few shots. The colours, especially with the flag in the background, were great, but the black and white was my fave.
    I won’t lie, my first instict was to just snap off a few surreptitious shots without him noticing. But I think a really important part of taking photos is connecting with people, and you won’t do that snapping off photos of people when they’re unaware. Plus, watching each other destroy the other person’s language was a great bonding experience for the two of us.

    Early evening swim


    As a family we have always had a pretty clear beach schedule; the mornings hold an optional walk or surf (if the waves are good), then lunch, then an early arvo beach session, then a cup of tea, then dinner, then the News and eventually bed. At no stage was a post-dinner dip in the ocean an option.
    Then my wildcard wife Katie threw it in as an option, and it is now a family favourite. Now clearly, after hours swimming means you’re there without any lifeguards, so there is a presumption that you only swim when it’s safe to do so. But the rewards are pretty epic. The wind has normally died down, so the waves are clean. Any warmth from the day is still in the water, and the setting sun looks amazing through the cresting waves. All you need now is a GoPro to capture a few shots!

    Vietnamese landscapes


    I imagine that if I had grown up in Vietnam and I saw someone get off their bike (and therefore consign themselves to at least 20 minutes of furious pedalling to catch back up to the group) to take a photo of the landscape, I may well have said ‘What on earth are you doing? It’s just a misty mountain range, with some rice paddies in the mid-ground and a yellow road winding towards them in the foreground!! Why are you wasting your time, when you’ve grown up with the majesty of Bell Street in your life? How can this even compare?!’
    But that’s just the joy of being a tourist, everything is new and interesting. Either way, I’m really glad I did jump off the bike to take this photo. Interestingly I took this photo and then thought ‘I bet the composition would be even better if the road was in the centre leading away from the viewer’…it was not.

    Fiddler in the spotlight


    My daughter had a role in a local theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof. As part of the show, Tevye was walking through the audience behind the fiddler with just a single spotlight on them. I would love to say I planned this composition, and the downcast look from Tevye, but I really just got lucky.

    Ha Long Bay


    As part of our trip in Vietnam we spent a night on a ship in Ha Long Bay and did some activities out there. For some reason, I thought this activity was going to involve us going somewhere in kayaks, so I just packed the GoPro. But it turns out we were going for a hike through some incredible caves, and then emerging to this stunning view of the bay. ‘Oh excellent!’ I thought ‘I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve brought the camera that is pretty much designed to be strapped to the chest of someone hurtling down a mountain on a bike, or skiis, or Grizzly Bear. Instead of…say…the camera back on the boat with all of the lenses.’
    But sometimes you just have to play the hand you’ve dealt yourself, and so I took this photo on the GoPro, and it’s actually a LOT wider than I would have taken normally, but works really well.

    Black and white and prog-rock all over


    I really love photography, and I really love live music, and I really love teaching people about photography. So last year I did a photo workshop where I talked about the fundamentals of live music photography, and then headed to a gig where Psi-Phi were playing to put the theory into practice.
    This is one shot that I took that I was super happy with. I love the glow being cast by the overhead lights, and the way it looks like it’s those lights that are illuminating Ryan’s face.
    Pretty sure that’s a can of Heaps Normal in the centre of the frame…so I’m also very happy for this to be used in some form of advertising campaign.

    I’m on the nightrain.


    In a beautiful homage to 1980’s era Guns n Roses, we caught the nightrain from Hanoi to Da Nang. This photo was taken on the morning we were arriving at Da Nang. We were snaking our way through green forests, with sea visible down below. I was trying to replicate photos I’ve seen where outside is a blur while inside is a still-life. But you had to hold the windows down as they were springloaded to close, so trying to co-ordinate a long exposure while also holding down the window, while also making sure you didn’t fall victim to some sort of errant pole or sign or tunnel as you stuck your elbow out of the train and looked in the opposite direction, was tricky.
    So I got Xav to hold down the window and act as my ‘here comes a tunnel’ warning system, and snapped this shot.
    On an unrelated note, every now and then a cascade of water would come off the roof of the train and down into the open windows. It wasn’t raining…and we were close to the toilets…I really hope the dots I joined were incorrect.

    Let there be Rock!


    I think I can pretty much divide my selections for this year into two categories; Vietnam, and Live Music…and to be honest, I’m pretty comfortable with that.
    This shot was taken at Doggerell’s album launch at Shotkickers in Thornbury. Now live music photography can be tricky, but if you’ve got someone with the stage presence of Keir (on the Dobro here) and the lighting of Rosie at Shotkickers, then you’re job is pretty much just waiting for the moment to happen and then capturing it.
    As part of my ‘Yeah, but how did photographers with just 12 shots on a roll of film ever actually survive’ series, I can assure you that the 5 photos before this, and the 6 after were magnificent examples of me ‘not capturing it’…but it doesn’t matter, because I got this one!

    Self portrait…of someone else.


    In our last night in Hoi An, Josh and I went out to take some photos. Outside where we were staying there was a bus-stop style illuminated ad that was throwing out a lot of light. So Josh and I took turns standing in front of it and using it to illuminate ourselves, without losing the lights of the town behind.
    I love the colours in this, and look of metal on the camera…I also love that it looks like some modern version of a Vivian Maier self-portrait in a mirror or shop window.

    He’s not terrifying, he’s my son.


    We were spending a family weekend at Point Lonsdale, and I dragged our youngest out to take some photos of the lighthouse there. Lighthouses (or ‘Lightheese’, as I believe is the correct way to say the plural), can look bloody amazing…or they can look ‘kinda fine…I guess’, and this photoshoot was falling very much into the second category, so we headed down onto a nearby pier. While we were there, there was another photographer taking photos looking out to sea. I looked out there, but couldn’t for the life of me see what he was taking photos of. Then he said ‘Have you seen the Aurora?’ and showed me the screen on his camera. Lo and behold, there it was, the Aurora Australis! It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but with a few seconds of exposure it suddenly appeared.
    I took a number of photos, and they were all pretty good…then I took this photo of Xavier looking like something that was going to haunt my dreams…and I preferred it to all of the photos of the Aurora. Photography is a funny game sometimes.

    Beer goggles


    I’ve had the pleasure of taking photos of Danny Ross on numerous occasions. One of the many upsides to this is that I’m now pretty comfortable trying new things when I take photos of him performing.
    This shot was taken with an empty beer glass being held in front of the lens to distort the image. I know that this could have just as easily been done in Photoshop, and I could probably have done it in AI and never even left my house…but I got to see a great gig, drink a beer, and then take this photo. So I reckon I won this one.

    Quintessence


    Any time you take a portrait of a person, you ultimately want to capture an image that conveys the essence of that person. When you give them posing suggestions, it can usually go one of two ways; you make them do something that is so disengenous that you lose any chance of getting a natural shot, or the very act of trying something different unlocks a moment where they forget they’re being photographed.
    I love this shot, because it’s how I see Holly; happy, confident and enigmatic.

    Give the drummer some more


    There have been numerous occasions where I’ve had to explain to a drummer after a gig, that while I got some great shots of the singer and guitarist, my photos of them pretty much suck. This isn’t entirely my fault. Drummers invariably hang out at the back of the stage where the lighting is crap, and they surround themselves with things that make it super tricky to get a clean shot.
    So when I got the chance to take photos for ZOJ at their Melbourne Recital Centre gig, I was super pumped to take photos during their rehearsal, where I had free-rein to get as close to Brian (the drummer) as I wanted, without becoming a distraction to him or the audience.
    It’s worth noting that I don’t even know what he’s using as a drumstick in his right hand, but his left hand is playing some bells on a string. In another shot he has a singing bowl in one hand and is moving a marble inside to get a resonating ring…and he’s only half the band!

    The Prom


    I won’t lie. When I decided to do 23 photos for this post…I kinda forgot that I was going to have write about each one. So this has taken a LOT LONGER than I was anticipating.
    With that in mind, I chose this one because I think that if someone else had shown it to me I would have said ‘I wish I’d taken that shot, it’s really atmospheric’.
    But I did take it, so now we can all stop reading and writing and get back to whatever it was that we were meant to be doing before I embarked on a 23 photojournalism saga.
    See you again for 2024!

  • Best photos of 2022

    Best photos of 2022

    I’m on holidays, so it’s time to compile my favourite photos from last year. It’s a wonderful time for me to reflect on the year that’s just past, reminisce about good times…and in the wake of COVID, say ‘Wait…was that last year? I thought that was two years ago…or 6 months in the future!’
    As per usual these aren’t in any particular order other than ‘let’s not have all of the beach/band/black and white photos next to each other’. But if there’s a theme to this year’s selection it’s probably ‘trying something new’. Quite a few of these leapt out at me as I was going through my ‘4&5 star’ rated photos in Lightroom, because I remembered trying something new to achieve them.
    So if you’re on holiday, sit back and have a read…and if you’re back at work, pretend you’re doing research, either way, enjoy!

    GoPro through sunglasses

    Not how I expected this shot to work…but still happy.

    On the beach at Warrnambool on a stinking hot day I was noticing how much better everything looked through my sunglasses. So I thought I’d put the GoPro behind my sunglasses lens and see how it looked. ‘Chaotic’ is probably the answer. The colours are all over the place, the light is baffling, and I have NO IDEA why there is that weird shadowing around the the arms. BUT, if I had achieved this result on purpose, I would have been super proud of myself, so the next best thing is to claim a mistake as a success…then hope that no-one asks me to replicate it!

    Spontaneous surf selfie

    A family that surfs together…

    If there are two things I usually avoid, it’s selfies and spontaneity. So the fact that this is one of my favourite photos from last year, really does speak volumes. We were down at Sandy Point in late January and after dinner, made an impromptu decision to go for a surf. The sun was sitting low on the horizon, the light was incredible, the surf was great, and for one quick second we were all in the same place at the same time and I took this shot.
    If you’ve ever taken a photo of someone, you know how hard it can be to get a genuine smile…and if you’ve ever worked as a photographer, you’ll know how hard it is to get a photo where everyone looks happy at the same time. So as a photographer, this is a great keepsake…and as a parent, it’s everything!

    When in Rone

    Helen and Rone

    I do genuinely think that this is an objectively good photo. It’s someone in a great outfit, striking a great pose, in a great setting.
    But for it to happen, visual artist RONE had to have created this incredible installation above Flinders Street Station, and I had to have taken the unusual step of booking Katie and I in for a social event (a trip into the city to see RONE’s work), and while we waited in the queue to be let in, Katie had to have started up a chat with Helen and her son and said that I would take a photo of her inside, and I would have to have a GFX100S in my hands because Fuji had loaned it to me for another project, and while we were walking the around the installation I would have to see Helen and compose this shot, and then with such a great subject, in such an aesthetically engaging environment and with a very expensive camera, I would have to not stuff up the photo. If any one of these elements hadn’t coalesced, this photo would never have happened.
    But they did…and I love it!

    Trainspotting meets Bladerunner

    Coburg station by night

    From memory it was raining for most of November, and repeated trips past Coburg station in various forms of precipitation had left me with the thought that there were some good photo opportunities there.
    All it would require was; me leaving the comfort of the house on a rainy night, me taking the time to actually set up a good photo, and of course me being willing to be ‘that creepy guy taking photos of a train station at night’.
    Needless to say, the chances of this actually happening were very slim. So I was very proud of myself for actually heading out and taking the photos, and really happy with how they came out.
    But the real joy was posting it online and hearing from people who had worked on the redevelopment of the station, or had designed the lighting for the station, or were just proud Coburgers/Coburgians/Coburinians?
    You just never know what is going to connect with people…so get out there and take those shots!

    Rock and/or Roll

    Sophie from Body Type

    One of my big photographic focuses for 2022 was to shoot more live gigs, with a view to getting proper accreditation to do it ‘for realz’. So when I saw that Body Type were playing at The Brunswick Ballroom, I pulled what strings I could (aka got in contact with Cecil the drummer, who I used to work with) and got myself on the door to take photos.
    Having shot photos of John Flanagan a few weeks earlier in the same venue, I was confident I could get a few good shots. And when Cecil told me ‘This could get pretty loose tonight!’, I knew I was in for a great night.
    Body Type are a freaking amazing live band, and there was a LOT of energy in the room.
    This photo is the one I keep coming back to. It’s definitely not one that jumps straight out at you, but I just love the pose. I had set myself up so I was shooting between to people (that’s why there is so much black around her…that’s actually the people right in front of me blocking out the rest of the picture), and I certainly didn’t plan for the lights to turn red just as she did this pose…but I’m very glad they did!

    Black, white and live

    John Flanagan live on stage

    If I could spend the rest of my days taking photos like this, I would be incredibly happy. Obviously I love black and white shots, and I love taking photos of musicians…but in this case, I had also worked with the band in rehearsals and developed a rapport. Because of this I was able to be on stage to take the photo them as they performed…and so suddenly it wasn’t all just ‘up the nose of the lead singer’ shots, and I was able to bide my time and wait for the shot.
    John is a contemplative performer…and his decision to book the Brunswick Ballroom for the gig (and play with a 6 piece band!) was a big swing after two years of no live gigs as a result of COVID restrictions. So to not only see him in his element, in front of an appreciative crowd, but to also be able to capture it, was a real privilege.

    Silhouettes and sunsets

    Sue Johnson

    One of my favourite jobs for the year was shooting some portraits of the wonderful Sue Johnson. Now clearly the vast majority of the photos were ones where you could actually see Sue…but this one, where we had headed to the slightly flooded grasslands of Coburg, was the one that as soon as I set up the shot, I knew was going to be a keeper!
    The late afternoon Winter sun just peeking through, the blue sky and the movement of her hand *chef’s kiss*!

    Comfort zone

    Phil

    It’s probably a testament to my lack of skill as a videographer, that the whole time I was setting up for this video interview, my main thought was ‘This would make a great photo!’
    I love taking photos of people in their homes (and to clarify, I love doing this when I am in their homes with them for the purpose of taking photos…not just lurking outside with a long lens!) I get to see the place with a fresh eye and see the things you miss when you’ve lived in a place for more than 3 months…and they get to sit in a space where they’re in control.
    I think there’s a fair bit of relief that the video interview was over in his face…and bemusement that a complete stranger was asking him to stare out a window. If there was a thought bubble it would say ‘If I just do this…then he will leave’.
    He was of course wrong…I overstayed my welcome by at least another 3 hours!

    Maps and chats

    Carol and Lyn

    This one was taken as part of the same project as the photo of Phil, where I was trying to capture the essence of Carol’s relationship with her parents. One of Lyn’s favourite memories was a trip she and Carol took to Italy, so I looked to capture that idea of both planning for, and reminiscing about, that trip.
    I love the way the maps and travel books tell a story, and I’m so glad I used the vase with the Irises to frame Carol…but it’s the way the smiles look so relaxed, comfortable, and authentic that makes me the happiest.

    Can I get a light check?

    Lighting test

    I had a very specific idea for a portrait I wanted to shoot, and had borrowed a friend’s light to shoot it. So I spent an hour or so doing a practice run, and roped my daughter and niece into posing for me.
    I cannot begin to describe how much this was exactly the light I was going for…and how far away I was when I took the actual shot with the actual people. So I’m keeping this photo as a reminder that I can get the light that I want…just not necessarily when I want it.
    Also, if this isn’t the album cover for their debut EP, I will be furious.

    Splashdown

    Post-ride swim

    On this day Josh had ridden just over 200kms from Preston to Sandy Point…and this was him getting into the surf for a cool-down. On a metaphorical level, this was a teenager who loves exercise and the outdoors who had just come up for air after 2 years of lockdowns.
    To me this is a perfect portrait of relief and renewal.

    Flinder’s Street Station

    Flinder’s Street at dusk

    I’ve lived in Melbourne all of my 47 years… but I reckon I’ve been in to the city to take photos 3 times in my life. If I’m staying in any other city I will religiously take my camera and get some photos. But for some reason I have a blind spot with my home city…probably because it’s always there, so there’s never any urgency to make a trip in.
    In December I was due to return the GFX I’d borrowed from Fuji, and so I thought it was probably high time I headed in to the CBD and get some photos.
    After about two hours of taking a series of photos that were very nearly good…but were just lacking something. I decided to just embrace my inner tourist and take a photo of the iconic Flinder’s Street Station.
    As soon as turned the corner of Swanston St I saw this incredible purple dusk sky. I rested the camera on a the edge of a bench so that I could drag the shutter a little and then waited for a tram to trundle through and give me a snapshot of Melbourne…this city loves me so much, it gave me two!

    Thanks for indulging this trip down memory land. Now it’s time to relax, and make some plans for 2023!

  • Self portr-AI-t

    Self portr-AI-t

    Why I’m dabbling in AI

    One of the hardest parts of working in the creative arts is being able to make the jump when technology changes. Sometimes it’s a change of software; Final Cut to Premiere or Quark to InDesign. Sometimes it’s hardware; from film to digital, or from big cameras to DSLR’s to phones. Sometimes it’s a change in what audiences want; from website videos to Tik Tok.
    The challenge of course is that you never know what is going to be the next leap forward, and what is going to be a jump into obsolesence. Have you learnt to how to make great vertical videos…or are you now the proud owner of a $10K steadicam rig that lies dormant while other people use a $300 gimbal.
    These choices are amplified as you get older, as you normally have a number of existing responsibilities, and so following one of these new ideas isn’t so much ‘a chance to learn for the sake of learning’ as it is something that you’re going to have to make sacrifices in another area of life in order to accomodate this new interest.
    Listening to Chris Marquardt on his ‘Tips From The Top Floor’ photography podcast got me thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in photography…and wondering if this could be the next big leap.

    So what is AI photography?

    Ever wondered what an angry avacodo on a skateboard in Paris would look like? Well AI can create multiple versions of that. And if you also want to see what that would look like if Rembrandt had painted it…or if it was in a White Stripes video clip, or if H R Giger had created it while using Ketamine and drinking Pink Rabbits…AI can create that as well.
    It basically takes a massive number of images and uses machine learning to create artwork based on whatever prompts you put it.
    Clearly the success of this is based on:
    a) the images the machine learning has access to,
    b) the ability of the user to create prompts that the machine learning understands, and,
    c) the processing power and intelligence of the machine learning to create something that is actually what the user is after.
    Parts a) and c) are clearly the domain of the AI tool that you’re using…but the ability to write prompts that it can use, is a skill you can learn…and so that’s what I set about doing.

    An early attempt where instead of photo of me in the style of Annie Lebowitz or Wes Anderson…it created a composite of me, Annie and Wes. Not great.

    Using Astria.ai

    The platform I went with was Astria.ai as it was one of the more user friendly options for those of us who can’t code.
    I uploaded about 15 photos of me from my phone, from a variety of angles and in a variety of environments, and then let the tool use some of its default prompts to create some images of me.
    I think it’s fair to say my expectations were pretty low, most of the examples I had seen to this point were on social media, and were very much of the ‘Ermagerd! What is even happening with this?!’ variety. So I was genuinely surprised when at least three of the images made me think ‘I wish I’d taken that photo!’

    Just my usual Friday night attire
    From my ‘Dress like Klaus from Umbrella Academy’ phase
    When Vivienne Westwood shaved and dressed me


    Now, was this because they made me look about 15 years younger and with cheekbones you could juice an orange on? Yes…that certainly didn’t hurt.
    But ultimately, I actually really liked the way they looked, and I have to stress, this wasn’t a case of just taking one of my images and putting it in a different context…none of these images of my face existed before, let alone the feathers and accouterments that accompanied them!

    But what does this mean for photography?

    Once I got past the ‘Machine learning does the darnedest things!’ stage, I started to think about what it meant for one part of photography that I love – portraiture.
    At its most base form, when I take a portrait of someone, I bring together a range of elements (the person, the environment, the lighting), capture them with a machine (a digital camera), and then use software to bring that photo to life (adjust the contrast, make it black and white, add a vignette, etc).

    Is that really so different from what this AI tool had just done?
    What would happen if I entered one of these photos in a portrait competition?
    What it the line between ‘digitally enhanced’ and ‘artificially created’?

    I didn’t actually know…but it did give me a great idea for a portrait!!

    The portrait

    Any time I look at the work of great portrait photographer (Simon Schluter…I’m looking at you!) I’m always really impressed by the way they can build an image from the ground up in order to tell a story.
    I’m very comfortable just capturing an image of someone and hoping it tells a story, but actually setting out from the get go to tell a specific story with a photo, and building everything around it…that’s really not a strength I have.
    But I suddenly had a vision of an image where I was surrounded by the AI portraits of me, as a reflection of what I was wondering about what the future held as a photographer. When I came up with the idea of the title ‘Self portrAIt’…I knew I had to make this happen.

    The first step was to get a selection of the AI portraits printed in a way that I could use for a photo. I went with canvas prints with a wooden frame so that I could stand them up, or hang them from something.
    Next step was to work out a background. In my dreams it was a big, austere room with the photos suspended around me…given the complete absence of large austere rooms available with a budget of $0, I settled for a white sheet suspended behind me in our backyard, with the photos suspended from the monkey bars the kids used to play on.
    Artistically, I was going to shoot with my trusty softbox so that I could make it look dramatic by just picking me and the photos up with the flash, while everything else fell off to black/grey.
    Technically, I was going to shoot it on the GFX 100S I had on loan from Fuji for another project…and the GF32-64mmF4 lens (equivalent to a wide angle lens on a full frame camera).

    Cool plan…so how did it go?

    As you would expect…badly. First of all, screwing little hooks through canvas into wooden frames is about as much fun as it sounds…but perhaps more importantly, securing these frames to monkey-bars via fishing line is a freaking nightmare, and the fishing line just cuts through masking tape, and was slipping through the electrical tape we had. It is only through the patience of Josh (my eldest son) and the wonders of gaffer tape that were were able to suspend them where we wanted them.

    The next weird problem was that the wide-angled lens that I had thought would be perfect…was actually too wide, and was showing a lot more of the monkey bars and sheet than I had hoped. Fortunately I also had the GF80mm F1.7 lens to work with…and it was a freaking revelation!

    Last but not least, having waited for the sun to go down sufficiently so that the white sheet background didn’t have any bright spots on it, and my flash wasn’t having to work overtime trying to knock out too much ambient light. My flash decided now would be the perfect time to ignore my wireless triggers, and not fire when I pressed the shutter.

    * Insert gif from Brooklyn 99 of Peralta saying ‘Cool…cool, cool, cool’ *

    So we reset the camera to work with the natural light, and Josh diligently took multiple photos while tried a variety of poses and facial expressions.
    It’s a testament to my inability to self-direct facial expressions, and the frankly dazzling file sizes on the GFX100S that we managed to fill a 128GB card with photos that were roughly 5% different from each other!

    The result

    After going through hundreds of photos that felt like they were exactly the same photo…I came down to these as my faves.
    Huge props go to Katie for getting me to actually interact with the pictures in that first one. Where most of my photoshop attempts look like bad photos…thanks to the fishing line, this photo was suddenly looking a bad photoshop. But actually getting my hands on them, showed that there weren’t just digitally inserted.

    Option 1
    Option 2
    Option 3

    So now the million dollar question -Which is your favourite and why?

  • Backstage pass – Part 3: The gig

    Backstage pass – Part 3: The gig

    So I’d had my idea, and I’d done my rehearsal…but now it was time to bring it all together for the gig.
    So on a chilly Melbourne evening I headed along to the Brunswick Ballroom as John and his band were getting ready.
    There were so many questions running through my head:
    Was having access to the band going to make for better photos?
    Were they still going to talk to me after seeing the photos I took?
    What’s it like to stay up past 10.30pm on a weeknight?

    There was only one way to answer these questions – with a blog!…written about 2 months after the gig…because life got really busy…and The National STILL haven’t called!

    The gear

    All the cameras and all the lenses

    I was very selective with the gear that I took…in that I selected every bit of gear that I had, and took it.
    So this meant I carried:

    • X-T1 body
    • X-T4 body
    • 16mm f1.4
    • 10-24mm f4
    • 35mm f1.4
    • 50-140mm f2.8
    • 56mm f1.2

    I did ‘um’ and ‘ah’ about taking the 10-24mm and the 50-140mm …but my decision to take them was 100% vindicated by the 0 photos I took with the 10-24mm and the 2 photos I took with the 50-140mm. On the bright side, my shoulders were stoked with carrying the extra weight all night for no apparent reason.
    My big lesson from the night was that I should have just taken my prime lenses and shot on those. I would almost have said that I could have gone with just the 16mm and the 56mm…but three of my favourite shots from the night were taken on the 35mm.
    As Zack Arias says ‘There’s just a bit of magic in that lens!’

    Backstage on the 35mm
    Between glasses on the bar on the 35mm

    The support

    Now admittedly we all have busy schedules, and after 2 years of lockdowns, some of us are still trying to limit the amount of time we spend in crowds. But it is 100% worth your while to get there early enough to take photos of the support act. It’s a great trial run to see what is going to work when the main act comes on stage, and no up-and-coming muso is ever going to say ‘Nah, I’m good for photos’ if you send them the shots you took. In fact you may be the person they contact as their career starts to take off!
    Of course, John didn’t have an ‘up-and-comer’ as his support…he had the incredibly talented Maggie Rigby. So I was always going to have someone who was giving an incredible performance. But I’m still really happy with the shots I got…especially as some of them worked incredibly well with a single perfomer, but failed dismally when John and his band were on stage.

    This mirror shot worked a treat with Maggie, but not with John and his band
    Maggie Rigby never phones it in.

    Shoot early, shoot often

    I think a lot of people taking photos of gigs dream of taking iconic photos like the ones of Iggy, or Kurt, or Patti that they had seen growing up. And yes, these were all probably taken by someone who had two rolls of film that allowed them to take 24 photos for the night. And yes, ‘you should never spray and pray’, ‘you should always take the time to compose the shot and shoot it once’, and ‘it’s no good just filling up hard-drives with useless shots’.
    But if I need to shoot a whole lot of shots to get the one I’m after…then so be it. It’s not like I’m demanding that people look through all of my shots.
    No.
    I’m just taking multiple photos of a very similar shot, then cursing myself when I get home to find that I’ve taken over 550 photos…and no one even got married! Then I’m spending an inordinate time switching between two versions of the shot and saying ‘I really like the singer’s hair in this one…but the bass player’s eyes are open in this one…I think I’ll just keep them both!’
    BUT, so much of what I’m trying to achieve with my photos is to capture a moment that encapsulates the energy of the performance…and sometimes, that moment is there and gone before you can even take the shot.
    This is one of my favourite shots from the gig, as it really captures John’s energy and committment. But I can tell you that the photos taken 1 second before and after, just don’t have the same energy. So if I have to delete 50 photos out of Lightroom just to get this one…then no amount of ‘photographer snobbery’ is going to stop me!

    Hiring gear

    My wide lens is the 10-24mm f4. For non-photographers, this means the lens goes from 10mm (which is very wide and great for photos of urban landscapes or sports like BMX and skating where you’re trying to get a lot into a shot) to 24mm (great for landscape shots and group photos), and at f4, it’s great in full-light, but starts to struggle in low-light.
    Most live venues are ‘low light’, and so if you’re trying to capture a moment with minimal blur you’re probably shooting about 1/125…and really ramping up the ISO. As a result, I only use this lens if I’m trying to capture the whole band on stage, and very rarely for action shots.
    I knew I had permission to get as close to the band as I liked, and I really wanted to get some up-close action shots…and so I fell down a rabbit-hole of YouTube videos on the 16mm f1.4 lens.
    In the end I decided that this lens was exactly what I needed. But at about $1,000, it would be insane to buy it just to take band photos. The smart and pragmatic thing to do would be to hire the lens for $50 every time I needed it. That way, I could do 20 gigs before I had incurred the same cost as buying it outright! It’s this kind of considered and emotionally constrained thinking that makes me such a great businessman.
    So I hired the lens for the night, loved it so much that I went out and bought one the next week.

    Take that pragmatism!!!

    *sigh*

    Tell a story

    John had given me access to the band before the gig, I’d spent time with them so they knew who I was, I could get as close to the band on stage as I wanted. So, how could I use all of this to not just take photos of the show…but tell the story of the night? The short answer was, ‘take the photos of the little moments’. In a social media landscape that rewards the big and flashy moment…it can be hard to take the time to capture the little moments, that make up the big story.

    Before the show
    Backstage
    Out in the crowd

    Post-script

    Thankfully every photo that I take is perfect and needs absolutely no work in Lightroom…but if I were the sort of person who spends a LOT of time deciding on which black and white preset to use, then I would say I lent very heavily on Chris Orwig’s presets for these shots.
    His ‘BW strong v1’ and ‘Add snap’ presets are usually my ‘go-tos’…but for this show, some of his film simulations ‘Film Classic Warm Plus’ and ‘Film Cross processed’ really made the shots pop, and gave them an almost 70’s Rock vibe.

    So was it worth it?

    I honestly don’t think I could be happier with how it all went.
    I got to work with some incredible local musicians, and take a peek behind the curtain to see how it all works.
    I got to challenge myself creatively, and learn a hell of a lot that I would never have known if I hadn’t taken the risk.
    I captured some great photos on the night (click on the image below for the full shotlist): John Flanagan at the Brunswick Ballroom

    and I got other gigs after shooting this one (again, click the image to see the gallery:

    Body Type

    AND I now have a portfolio of shots to use for future photo accreditation: https://www.twodegrees.com.au/live-music

    But best of all, I got to see an artist at the top of his game, breathing musical life back into the city I love!

  • Backstage pass – Part 2: The rehearsal

    Backstage pass – Part 2: The rehearsal

    On a recent project for work I was interviewing teachers who had been working for 40, 50 and 55 years. One of the things that really stuck with me was a teacher saying that they got to the end of each year thinking they were getting the hang of it…but that they spent their entire careers with that feeling because they ‘Didn’t know what they didn’t know’. So at the end of each year they knew that they knew more…but that had shown them what they didn’t know and needed to learn.
    Shooting this rehearsal was VERY much the same thing for me!
    So having told you about the idea behind this project, let me take you through the rehearsal.

    What I knew I knew

    Shooting in low light environments is never fun. Admittedly, most venues where you shoot live music are low light environments…but they make up for this by at least having lights on the performers. Rehearsal studios on the other hand give exactly zero shits about the insane ISO levels you’re going to have to use to get your photos.

    BRACE YOURSELF FOR A PARAGRAPH OF RANDOM COMBINATIONS OF NUMBERS, LETTERS AND PHOTO JARGON!

    My wide angle is a 10-24mm f4 lens. I normally find that to make sure every shot of a moving musician isn’t blurry, my minumum frame rate is 1/125…but with f4, I was having to go to 1/30 and hope the IBIS did its job.
    I shot on all my lenses (50-140mm f2.8, 35mm f1.4 and 56mm f1.2), and when I went back through the photos, it was the 35mm and the 56mm that did the best work. But even then the ISO was often around 2,000 which saw me going to black and white quite a bit to hide the noise.

    For the non-photographers reading this, a lens with a lower f number, means it lets in more light. In my case, the 56mm F1.2 lens, which is considered a ‘portait lens’, was the lens that let in the most light.
    I can’t say this often enough, the 56mm is amazing for low-light photography!

    Politeness vs photography – If you’re one of those people who can walk up to a complete stranger in the street and just take a photo of them, then this next para isn’t for you.
    But if you’re someone with even a little humanity, it can be really hard to find that balance between getting the shot you want, and not encroaching on the space of the person you’re photographing. After all, if John had to choose between me getting a good shot, and one of his band members nailing their part…I’m quietly confident my artistic aspirations were going to come a distant second.

    This is probably my favourite shot from the day

    So I spent the first hour or so just getting wider shots or shooting on my zoom lens. Then as it got less weird to have someone in the room taking photos, I moved in closer and took some portraits.

    Musicians are great to photograph – I have no confidence in my ability to get people to pose for a photo…but I do trust myself to capture a moment if they give me one, and musicians always give me one…no…wait…that came out wrong!
    Look, all I’m trying to say is that musicians give you shots like this:

    What I didn’t know I didn’t know

    Trombonists are hard to photograph – If you’re tight enough to get their face, then you’re going to lose the slide…but if you get all of the slide, then it’s a really wide shot.
    Plus if you get it on the wrong angle the bell covers their face.
    I guess I should just be happy that I’m not taking photos of the 76 trombones in the big parade.

    It’s the notes that aren’t played that make good photos – I got into the habit of putting down the camera each time the band would stop playing. But that meant I missed a lot of the collaboration and discussion between the band members. At the end of the day, photos of people dressed casually, playing their instruments in a room with terrible lighting…are going to be, at best, poor versions of the photos I was hoping to get at the live show.
    So I had to make sure I got some of the shots that showed the process of the rehearsal as a document of the day.

    The end result

    I was super happy with the photos I got. I probably could have got up closer to the musicians and really taken advantage of the opportunity of being in the room with them…but at the same time, I was there to take photos at their rehearsal. They weren’t there to play instruments in my photoshoot.
    I also wish there wasn’t so much ISO noise in the photos, but outside of setting off a flash at regular intervals or bringing in a light, I don’t think I was going to avoid this.

    You can see the full gallery here:
    https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzS4tB

    Best of all, John was really happy with them…and the rest of the band all still spoke to me at the gig! Which gig? Well that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next post.

  • Backstage pass – Part 1: The idea

    Backstage pass – Part 1: The idea

    I think it’s fair to say that I’ve always been a vicarious musician. The harsh truth of not having any musical ability has not stopped me from occupying as many music adjacent roles as possible.
    I’ve done radio, driven DJ’s to gigs, managed perfomers, made video clips…I’ve even done a University degree in Music Industry. If the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame was to open a ‘Person who has done the most music related things without ever playing a note’ category, I would be in with a STRONG chance of being inducted.
    So why do I love working with musicians? Is it partially because I hope that some of their talent will rub off on me, and suddenly I’ll be playing to sold-out arenas? Yes, of course. But also, they act as a constant reminder that there is an alternative to the 9-5 world I inhabit. A world where you start work when other people are going to bed, a world where writing passionately about things that piss you off is seen as genius and not a potential HR issue, and of course a world where each time you finish part of your job, people are obliged to applaud.

    But of course, it’s also a world where your livelihood is reliant on cramming as many people as possible into a confined space and getting them to yell and scream. Which is not ideal during a pandemic of an airborne virus.
    The sad reality is that musicians have been doing it incredibly tough over the last two years. Live gigs have only just started again in earnest, the 2c per track they get from streaming services isn’t really the same as selling a $10 CD at show, and Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside’ on Netflix showed that whether you’re a musician, videographer or stand-up comedian…he’s better at it than you.
    Plus the government made it PRETTY clear, that when it comes to showing support for people doing it tough, artists can pretty much get stuffed…they chose this lifestyle anyway!!

    Backstage silhouettes

    So I was keen to come up with a way to support local musicians. A quick review of my finances revealed that I could not bankroll a series of concerts…but I could take some photos of musicians, that they could then use to promote their shows.
    When I saw that local singer/songwriter John Flanagan was putting on a show where he was hiring the Brunswick Ballroom and putting together a 7-piece band, I knew that this was exactly the sort of endeavour I wanted to support.

    Altruism?

    Wow Chris! You sure are generous! Looking to help musicians, without getting anything for yourself!! Children should be studying you in school!!!
    Um, yeah…about that. This was definitely not pure altruism. Having been invited to shoot a few gigs for friends, I had to tried to get a photo pass to shoot the HoldSteady at the Croxton Hotel…and couldn’t even get a response from the promoter. In short, without a magazine or website saying ‘He’s shooting for us!’ I couldn’t even shoot the show for free! And without a decent portfolio of shots, I couldn’t really expect The National to call and say ‘Chris! These shots you took on your phone from the crowd have convinced us that YOU are the one we want documenting our next tour!!’

    The crowd at The Hold Steady…shot on iPhone
    I’m not bitter…but I have never spent a show saying ‘That would have been a great photo!’ as many times as I did at this gig.

    So when I reached out to John to see if I could shoot his show, one of the first things I asked was whether I could have backstage access to get some shots before the show, and could I get some shots from on the stage?
    Basically, I wanted the chance to get shots that the audience couldn’t. I wanted to be able to tell the story of the show, and that meant shooting from both the audience’s perspective and from the band’s perspective…and did I dream of getting a shot of the band, with the lights flooding onto them and crowd mesmerised by the performance? Yes…yes I did.

    Carrying two cameras and a camera bag meant walking across the stage was an exercise in ‘Don’t knock anything over…and don’t trip on a cable!’

    Reaching out

    I really should take a step back, because ‘when I reached out to John’ really does make it seem like this was easy. But rest assured that sending a DM via Instagram to someone you’ve never actually met and saying ‘can I come and take photos of you?’ is NOT easy.
    But I had a few things working in my favour;
    – while I had never met John…Katie (my wife) knew him, so I wasn’t going in totally cold.
    – one of my regular dog walks actually went right past his house, so if he said ‘no’, I could train our dog to crap on his lawn.
    – he’s a folk musician, and these really are the Canadians of the music world…so he would be too polite to say ‘no’.
    – I genuinely felt that this was mutually beneficial. I’ve done jobs where I’ve felt that I had got the better side of the deal…and I’ve done jobs where I felt like I had been exploited. This one felt like a happy medium where we were both going to benefit.

    Thankfully John agreed. Not only did John agree to me shooting the gig, he also invited me along to a rehearsal the band were doing…and that will be the focus of the next blog.

    John Flanagan at the rehearsal for the show


  • Live music photography tips

    Now I know that at the moment the idea of talking about photography at a live venue with a group of people all crammed in together in a non-ventilated space where they can yell and scream…may seem a tad far-fetched. Who knows, by the end of this year all pubs and band rooms may just have wisened old hipsters looking into the middle-distance and saying ‘Live music? We ain’t see no live music since…well shoot…not since Omicron!’
    But I’m an optimist…and I think I’m also now at the stage where I have shot enough gigs to have learnt from my mistakes, but I’m still sufficiently new at the game to remember all of the things I wanted to know when I started.
    So I think it’s the perfect time to give some tips on shooting photos at live gigs.

    Get out there

    A remarkably important part of taking photos at live gigs…is actually being at those live gigs to take photos. So while I have waited remarkably patiently for The National to call and say ‘Chris, we want YOU to follow us around the world and take photos at our shows’, I have also hustled to find performers to take photos of.
    Now, admittedly, having the drummer from The Cat Empire as my brother-in-law has opened quite a few doors. But if you haven’t made the strategic decision to marry into the Hull-Browns…then that’s on you.
    But in all seriousness, I’m yet to come across a musician who has said ‘Nah, I’m all good for free photos that I could use on my numerous social channels, and I certainly don’t need a new shot that I can send to potential venues, and the venues I am playing at really hate it it when I bring along an extra person who buys a few drinks.’
    This is a win-win for you and the artists, so see if you can find a friend/cousin/friend of your kid/local parent/open mic night participant who is doing a gig and get photographing!

    The composer at a Darebin City Brass show my daughter was playing at.
    My son’s piano teacher at the end of year concert

    Spot focus

    Ok…this is going to get a bit technical, but I promise the payoff is worth it! If you’ve ever been at a gig, or a kids concert, or anywhere where the person on stage is in the spotlight and taken a photo of it on your phone…you’ve probably ended up with a photo where that person is very bright, and the background behind them is kinda murky. This is because your phone (and you camera will do the same), has taken in all of the light from what is in the photo and found a place where on average everything has the right amount of light. So the person in the very bright spotlight and the background which is very dark…have been evened out. The dark bits are a bit lighter and the bright bits are a bit darker. In a normal daylight shot, this is great…and you will say ‘Thanks phone/camera for doing all of that thinking for me!’ But in a darkened room with with a performer in the spotlight you will be saying ‘Stuping phone/camera! That looks like balls!!’
    Fortunately the answer is pretty straight forward. You can tell your camera to just focus on one part of the photo and get that bit exposed correctly…and then base everything else off of that. So in the case of someone in a spotlight, you set your ‘metering mode’ to ‘spot’ and that will make sure that the very bright person is exposed correctly and everything else will become dark. There are other modes you can choose that will vary from camera to camera…but basically the options will be for your camera to see the whole image and balance out the exposure, or take a section of the image (usally the middle of the image) and balance the rest of the picture based on that, or take a specific part of the picture and balance the rest of the image based on that.

    Maggie Rigby from The Maes
    Gale Paridjanian from Turin Brakes


    A really good example is this shot I took of Danny Ross at the Wesley Anne. It was early evening the and the setting sun was coming through a gap in the curtains and hitting the stage. It was so bright, it was even brighter than the lights in the venue, which made taking photos REALLY tricky.

    As you can see, that bright light is so bright it blows out whatever it touches

    But then also gave some opportunities that I could never hope to replicate without a LOT of time.

    But exposing just for that light, suddenly gives you some arty ‘light and shadow’

    Get wide, get tight, get outside!

    This is my advice for pretty much every photography job…but it’s particularly true for live music, DON’T SETTLE FOR MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF THE SAME SHOT!
    Absolutely get the standard photos from as close as you can, and if there are multiple people in the band, make sure you have a good standard shot of each of them. But then…get creative!

    Go in as tight as you can

    Danny Ross

    Get as wide as you dare

    Lisa Mitchell and band

    Take photos of their shoes

    Chuck Taylors: Rock n roll since forever

    Shoot from the back of the room

    Danny Ross at the Corner Hotel

    Shoot from outside the venue

    Outside looking in on a gig at the 303 Bar

    I can safely say that they will not all be good shots…but I can also guarantee that one of these shots will be your favourite shot from the gig, because you made it happen!

    Signage

    I once presented at a conference and there was a screen outside the room with my name on it…I took a photo of it. Why? Because in one image it showed that I had been at conference, and I had presented…and no-one had escorted me off the premises saying ‘Sir, you have no place being here’.
    I think most performers want the same validation.

    It’s time to move away from ‘auto’

    The ‘auto’ settings on your camera are a far better photographer than I will ever be. They can do calculations that will result in the best combination of f-stop, shutter speed and ISO in milliseconds. BUT they are not set-up to provide the best shot in a darkened room, with a subject who keeps on moving and who has something sitting just in front of their face.
    In fact, leaving your settings to auto will almost certainly lead to a slightly blurry photo of the performer (as they were moving when you took the shot), but that doesn’t matter, because the autofocus will have focused on the microphone instead of the singer

    So you’re going to have to get comfortable manually setting some of your parameters.

    Shutter speed – If you have a guitarist/singer then you’re probably looking at a minimum of 1/125. If they’re just sitting on a stool and singing you could probably go lower, if you’re trying to capture the drummer, you will have to go higher…and if you’re capturing a punk band, I wish you the best of luck.

    f-stop – If your shutter is only staying open for 1/125 of second, then you’re going to have to let your aperture do a LOT of the heavy lifting in terms of letting light in. So go the lowest you can go. I have a beautiful 56mm f1.2 portrait lens that is hands down my favourite lens at a live gig as it just lets so much light in. Whereas my wide angle is only f4 and that needs a steady-hand, or a LOT of noise-reduction in post.

    ISO – Modern cameras are remarkably good at taking great photos at ISO levels that would have been considered laughable in the past. So don’t be afraid to let it get as high as 5,000. There’s a reason a lot of my live music photos are black and white, and that’s becuase it’s easier to hide noise reduction (a setting in Lightroom that ‘smoothes out’ the crunchiness of a shot with high ISO).
    If you’re in a venue with a lot of different lights, then I would leave the ISO on auto, because if a bright light suddenly comes on just before you take the shot, the camera will adjust before you’ve even pressed the button…you probably wont.

    Focus – If you have your camera on autofocus, then it will focus on the thing closest to the camera in the auto-focus zone. So if the performer has a microphone in front of their face, and you’re focussing on their face…then it’s going to focus on the microphone. So be brave and try a bit of manual focus!

    Ollie Knights from Turin Brakes

    Drummers are people too

    Look, I get it. When your choice is between the charasmatic lead singer, striking a rock-star pose, with the lights shining on them at the front of the stage…and the person at the back of the stage, moving frenetically, with no lighting and a car-crash of cymbals and drums surrounding them. You’re going to take the photo of the lead-singer everytime!
    Just try to get a least one decent shot of the drummer…and the bass player (they’ll be hiding next to a speaker somewhere).

    Drummer with Lee Rosser

    Something in the way

    Part of the joy of any live gig is the people around you. You very rarely get an unencumbered view of a performance, so don’t be afraid to capture this with your photos.
    Get down a bit lower and shoot between people’s heads.

    The man in the hat

    Or ‘dirty up’ a clean picture by shooting through something (in this case it was an ornate hand rail that was about 3cms in front of the lens…but with the focal length set for the stage, actually created some nice shadows and deliniation between the performers)

    Managing to get Will and Ryan into a shot of the Danny Ross Trio

    Next level stupidity

    Looking for something a bit different? Then why not hold your phone under your lens to create a mirror effect?

    Lisa Mitchell x 2

    Or take a photo through another lens?

    Shantilly Clad at The Wesley Anne

    Or zoom your lens while taking your photo

    I know this didn’t work…but I gave it a go!

    If they work, then you’re a creative genius…and if they don’t…the internet never has to see your mistakes (unless you publish them in a blog…as above!)

    No flash photography

    The standard rules for taking photos at a gig if you’re actually there on business is ‘First three songs, and no flash’. I will never understand why you can only take photos for the first three songs, as I think it’s like the venue selling a recording of the gig, but only including all of the between song banter and tuning of guitars…you know, all of the stuff that happens BEFORE the band actually hits its straps?!
    But the ‘no flash’ thing makes perfect sense. No one wants to see their favourite singer stagger off stage having been blinded by some muppet unleashing a flash in their face…and no unseasoned performer wants a constant visual reminder that someone is capturing everything that they’re doing.
    Also, if you’re shooting on your phone, just remember that the flash is designed for people about a meter away…so if you’re 15 rows back pinging of shots of a band…you’re really just taking stunning portraits of the backs of the heads of the few rows in front of of you.

    Share the love

    If you’re taking photos at a gig and you see another photographer…just remember, they’re not the enemy or the competition!
    Realistically they are the only other person in the room who is facing the same challenges as you, and most likely the only other person you can learn anything from. So don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation, and like their photos on Instagram the next day. If you’re feeling really generous, why not grab a quick photo of them in action and send it through to them. Just as chef’s are less likely to be invited around for dinner (as people feel increased pressure to make an amazing meal), I can pretty much guaranteed that most photographers have very few photos of them in action (in fact I think the only photo I have of me in action, is me giving a photographer friend the finger while taking photos at a wedding!)

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

    At the Corner Hotel gig I got chatting to one of the other photographers (the remarkably awesome Samantha Meuleman ) and during the next music shot grabbed this shot of her.

    Sam in action

    Is it the greatest photo? No. Was ‘here’s a photo I took of you while you were at work!’ an awkward conversation starter? Yes. But do I have any regrets? No!

    So there you go…some of the lessons I’ve learned on my journey so far. If you’ve got any tips you’d like to throw my way, I’m always keen to hear them.