2degreesofseparation's Blog

Tag: photography

  • 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.

  • Best photos of 2021

    Best photos of 2021

    It’s perhaps a good indication of the sort of year that 2021 was, that when I looked at some photos from January, I genuinely didn’t believe they had been in the last year.
    ‘A photo of Uncle Jack Charles?! Wasn’t that 2 years ago!?’
    ‘A family camping trip to Wilson’s Prom? Didn’t we got to Narnia this year?’
    Time and reality were at best ‘fluid’ for 2021, and at worst…well…2021. A LOT of time within 5kms of the house, and VERY little time feeling relaxed and inspired enough to get creative.
    But there were still photos to be had and moments to be captured, so without further ado and in no particular order, here are my top 10 photos of 2021!

    Uncle Jack Charles

    Admittedly it’s statistically impossible to take a bad photo of Uncle Jack…it’s still awesome when you do. If nothing else, it means you’ve had the chance for him to tell you a story about how being able to read and write offered him protection in Pentridge…or his first ever play at the Pram Factory…or about being a cat burglar.
    He’s a genuine source of light, enthusiasm and warmth, and I think this shot captured that.

    Uncle Jack Charles

    The Prom

    The focus for this trip to Wilson’s Prom was our first ever overnight hike…and so I decided to leave my camera gear at home and live or die by the iPhone.
    This meant that on one day I was returning from a walk, when Katie and the kids were heading off in the kayaks. The sun was setting over the hills in the background, the kids were my mid-ground…and Katie was the foreground. The moment was only going last a few seconds, but that’s all it takes to take your phone out and take the shot!

    Bear and cubs

    Shantilly clad

    If you’re a ‘proper’ photographer taking photos at a gig, you’re normally only allowed to take shots for the first three songs (don’t ask my why…I don’t make up the rules). Which usually means you’re frantically trying to get as many shots as you can for those three songs. But if you’re taking photos at a venue like the Wesley Anne, you can actually take the time to experiment and get something different!
    In this case it was the old ‘hold a lens in front of your camera and take a shot through it’ trick.
    Also this is a band called ‘Shantilly Clad’ who sing sea shanties…I had to make sure they made the top 10, purely for their name.

    Shantilly Clad at The Wesley Anne

    Preston fog

    We have the level crossing removal work going on in Preston at the moment (for people outside of Melbourne, we have things called ‘level crossings’ that basically stop traffic to allow trains to go through…and we’re getting rid of them by elevating the train lines so that the trains can travel unimpeded…and cars can be stuck in traffic caused by other cars, rather than by trains). On one night had some really heavy fog, and I had borrowed a friends 12mm Samyang lens…and so I thought I’d put on my ‘street photographer’ hat and get some shots.
    I was having some issues working out how to get the lens to focus when about 10 metres in front of me, this guy walked out of his front gate in a long coat and golf-cap. With his collar turned up and the thick fog, he looked like something from a le Carre spy novel and I tried desperately to get a shot. But by the time I’d sorted the focus, he was already too far away and so I took this shot as I walked after him.
    I knew the shot I wanted to get, and this wasn’t it…but when I looked back at the photo a few days later…I really liked it.

    As close to a ‘pea souper’ as we get in Preston.

    Seagulls on the Portland pier

    With the exponential improvements in camera technology, the ability to take a great photo has never been easier. So a lot of the challenge is now being there to take the photo…and having the patience to wait for the moment to play out.
    I had originally been trying some long exposure shots, until I realised that the whole pier actually moved with the waves, and so getting a non-blurry long exposure was going to be impossible. I saw a few seagulls at the end of the pier under the light, and so I sauntered over to compose my shot, then waited for more to arrive. When enough had arrived I thought I had my shot…but then a few took off and I realised that was the shot I wanted. So I waited a bit longer until this moment.
    It’s something that I’ve learnt from years of doing video work, sometimes you have to set up a shot, and then wait for someone or something to populate it. If this means you have to sit on a cold pier for an extra 10 minutes while local teens chuckle at the guy on all fours looking at seagulls…then this is the sacrifice you have to make for your art!

    Patience is a virtue

    Strike a pose

    After years of taking photos, I would say I am very confident in my ability to capture a candid moment. An unscripted, spontaneous moment. But ask me to create that moment…and my confidence evaporates.
    Getting people to pose in a way that makes them look good, is really hard!
    So I watched an instructional video from Lindsay Adle and dragged Holly out in front of the camera…and this was one of the shots that I got.
    There were a number of shots that didn’t work, and it was really interesting to see how a comfortable pose can make for an unflattering photo, while poses that felt terribly contrived looked great in the final product.

    Strike a pose

    Sunset over sea

    It’s fair to say that the wind blows strong at Sandy Point…and usually onshore. So any day where the wind is down and the swell is up has to be taken advantage of. On this day we had arrived just after lunch and spent the arvo in the surf. After dinner I went down to the beach to take some photos and the surf looked so good, I ran back to the house, put the still damp boardshorts back on and charged back to the surf with Josh.
    It was magic! The waves were being held up by a slight offshore breeze and the sun was setting through them just before they broke. It was a constant battle between catching the waves and capturing them.
    This shot was taken on the GoPro as the last light from sun set over a softening sea.

    One of the many advantages to an early evening surf session

    Lisa Mitchell at the Corner Hotel

    As someone who has attended quite a few gigs at the Corner Hotel in Richmond, it was pretty exciting to get to take some photos there. I demonstrated just how excited I was by taking about 15,000 photos.
    I really love this shot because it shows some of the things I’ve learnt over the last 5 years.

    • When an opportunity presents itself…take it! Up until about 10 minutes before this gig I was still trying to sort out a problem for a job the next day, and nothing would have been easier than saying ‘no’ to travelling to Richmond on Thursday night to take some unpaid photos.
    • Try not to take the same photo again and again. Get low, get wide, get tight, look for reflections or interesting framing. I know I missed a few shots changing to get onto the wide-angle lens…but it was worth it!
    • Compostion counts – I was in ‘the pit’ (the fenced off section between the stage and the crowd) with two other photographers, and I had to work to get this position right in front of Lisa and then frame her between the foldback speakers
    Lisa Mitchell at the Corner Hotel

    Danny Ross

    I’ve been lucky enough to have Danny Ross ask me to take photos of a few of his gigs. In a year when live music has taken such a pounding, getting to see Danny play live was a constant reminder of just how important live music is.
    Up until this gig, I’d never taken shots of Danny with a proper lighting rig..and the way so much of this shot is blown out and faded but Danny’s face is still exposed properly…lets me know that I made the most of the opportunity.

    Danny Ross at The Corner

    After the storm

    One of my COVID-19 habits has been to walk almost every day past ‘The Tannery’ skate park in Preston. It’s basically an abandoned lot that some local skaters have converted into a skate park.
    I was on one of these walks just after a storm had passed the through and decided to duck in and see if there were any photo opportunities. The setting sunlight was diffused by all of the moisture in the air and the in the calm after the storm there was water on the ground and no wind in the air, making for the perfect conditions for a ‘reflection’ shot.
    It was then just a question of getting down low and getting the framing right, setting the iPhone to RAW, convincing the dog to stop walking through shot…and then taking the photo.

    Reflections and post-storm light

    So there you go. 2021 in 10 photos. Three photos of live music, two photos on the phone, one on the GoPro, one on a $10K camera I borrowed from Fuji, and one on a lens borrowed from a friend. Pretty reflective of a year where it was hard to plan for anything, you had to take your opportunities where you found them, and where family and music were the most important things!

  • iPhone photograpy …the follow up edition

    iPhone photograpy …the follow up edition

    A few weeks ago I wrote a post about using my iPhone on an overnight hike. Regrettably this did not result in Apple swiftly getting in touch and insisting that I take up a role with them as their official photographer. In fact all it did yield was some people asking me how I actually got the shots to look like they did.
    Now clearly, only an idiot would give away their trade secrets…so here I go.

    It’s not about the technology…no wait…it is!

    Earlier this year I upgraded from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 12 Pro. Now I can promise you that if you have an older phone, then the tips I’m going to give you will help you get better photos…but I also know that if I had taken these photos on my old phone, they wouldn’t have looked anywhere near as good. And besides, the battery would only have lasted for the first 35 minutes of the hike.
    Composition and technique help…but so does millions of dollars of Research and Development! So as with most things in photography, the more money you throw at your equipment, the more people say ‘How did you get that photo?!’
    But telling people you can take better photos by dropping $1,200 on a phone seems like the sort of advice that inevitably leads to a global financial crisis (albeit one that is beautifully captured in photos on Instagram), so here are some tips that won’t cost you a cent!

    Light bro

    We’ve all had that experience of incredible light. Whether it’s the last fading light of a summer’s day, or the first golden rays in the morning, or that incredible light that comes after a big rain storm. You can take pretty much any photo in that light and it will look amazing. Why? Because the light is being diffused. Whether it’s because the sun is just rising or setting and so is only hitting you with about 10% of its light…or because the light is being reflected around by moisture in the air. The result is beautiful soft light.
    The antihesis of this is pretty much any photo taken in Australia from 10am – 5pm, where the brutal sun just a makes everything look flat and unispired.
    So the first step to getting a great shot on your phone is to get up nice and early when that light is at its subtle best.

    ‘I love the look of Pano mode in the morning!’

    Setting the exposure

    If you have your phone with you…bwah ha ha! Just kidding. Of course you have your phone with you! So seeing as you have your phone with you, load up the camera and find a shot where there is something bright (a window or light), and something dark (perhaps an open cupboard or shaded area), and then put your finger on either of these spots. When you put your finger on the bright part, you should see everything else get a little darker…and when you put your finger on the darker part, you should see that the everything gets brighter (to the point where the bright part gets really bright).
    I know what you’re thinking ‘Cool story Chris…but how does this help me?’
    Well, the reason this is happening is because normally your phone is looking at a scene and trying to find the right balance so that the bright parts aren’t too bright and the dark bits aren’t too dark. It’s a bit like making a decision by committee, you don’t come up with the best result…just the one that people hate the least. When you put your finger on the screen you are telling your camera ‘This is the part that I want you to get right…and everything else can just work around it!’ So for example with this shot, it’s the colour in the sky that draws you in.

    More cloud…less guano.

    But if I had just taken this photo as the phone wanted to take it, it would have tried to capture the detail in the shadows on the log in front, or the hills, and so would have added a lot of light…and in doing so, would have made the sky a white mess. So I put my finger on the sky, told the phone that this is what I want it to get right, and this is the result.
    Tragically I have missed out on highlighting the beauty of the birdshit on the log…but these are the sacrifices you have to make as a photographer.

    Similarly if you’re ever at a gig or a concert and someone is up on stage with a spotlight on them, press on the screen where their face is so that the phone knows to expose for that and it will make the background really dark, but have them perfectly lit.
    There was a distinct lack of spotlights on the hike we did…but there some burnt out tree stumps…so exposing for the person’s face in the full light, made the blackened stump fall away to a perfect black background.

    Stand in this burnt out stump son…Daddy’s taking a photo.

    Composition

    I think we’ve all had the experience of walking into an incredible natural scene, being overwhelmed and taking a photo…then thinking “Wait…that looks a lot more shit than I remember!” I call this the ‘Every phone photo ever taken of the moon’ phenomenon.
    My non-scientific belief is that the experience you have is of feeling humbled by all that you’re taking in, but your phone can’t replicate that feeling (an iPhone 12 makes you feel many things…but ‘humble’ is not one of them).
    My photographic approach to dealing with this is wonderfully contradictory!
    First and foremost you need something in the foreground to give the grandeur behind it some perspective.

    At the same time…going for the ‘Pano’ approach allows you to take in a larger portion of the scene, while getting rid of a lot of the sky and ground (I think as humans we can see a bit of sky and a bit of the ground and imagine how the rest of the sky and ground looked). Unless the sky or the ground is the part that’s interesting, focus the viewer’s eyes on what you want them to be looking at.

    Also, speaking as someone who once had to ‘stitch’ 3 photos together in Photoshop (before this was an automated process)…the fact that you can just wave your camera around a scene and your phone will turn it into something comprehensible, is as much a modern-miracle as any life-saving drug!

    Get low

    We spend most of our lives walking around and looking at things from between 5-6 ft high. So if you want your photo to get people’s attention, try shooting from a different height. In particular…get low…especially if there’s water around for a reflection!

    Crystal clear reflections

    Getting high can also help your photography…but that feels like a different blog.

    https://imgur.com/r/thesimpsons/1Lw5r5S

    Post-production

    This may come as a shock…but I didn’t buy a special edition iPhone to take my black and white shots…I actually converted them to black and white in post-production! Similarly, I will almost always adjust the contrast, or pull back the exposure, or raise the shadows, or add a vignette to a photo before I publish them.
    The person looking at the photo doesn’t get to smell what I was smelling or hear what I was hearing…so I’ll be damned if I don’t try my best to engage them visually!
    All of these options built into your phone, and you can ‘undo’ any change you don’t like. So start experimenting and see what you can do!

    Straight out of the phone
    With some tweaking

    If you have access to something like Adobe’s ‘Lightroom’, then you can have even more fun working on your photos…just try to get past the ‘add heaps of ‘clarity‘ to everything’ stage as quickly as possible. Like ‘instant noodles’ and ‘undercut’ haircuts, we all have to go through that stage…but it’s nothing to be proud of.

    So there you go…some free tips on how to raise your phone photography game…for everything else, just drop a distressing amount of money on a new phone!

    Up the creek…with paddles
  • The best camera is the phone you have with you.

    The best camera is the phone you have with you.

    There’s an old photography adage that ‘the best camera you have, is the camera you have with you’. In other words, it’s no use bemoaning the fact that you don’t have your $5,000 camera as a Yeti rides past on a Segway…you need to use whatever you have at your disposal to capture this moment!
    For the last 10 years this ‘camera you have with you’ has been a phone camera, and over the last 10 years the phone camera has evolved from ‘if you squint you can kinda see what I was trying to capture’ to ‘this is only half as bad as I would have done with my proper camera’. But last weekend I went for an overnight hike with my family at Wilson’s Prom, and my iPhone got promoted to ‘this is the only camera I need!’
    So I thought I’d write a quick blog post about how it felt to take my proper camera gear with me…and never take it out of its case.

    ‘So I just push this button?’

    There is a very specific feeling of dread that happens when someone offers to take a photo with your camera. Invariably this will be when you’re taking a group shot, and someone will say ‘Hey, do you want me to take the photo?’ Sadly, societal norms mean that you can’t respond by saying ‘That depends…are you going to f*&# this up?’ So instead you will switch all your settings to ‘auto’ and say ‘Just press this button. No, not that button…this button’. Then they will hold the camera at arm’s length as if it’s a feral cat that’s trying to maul them to death…will press a button other than the one that you told them to…will frame the photo so that it’s only your upper-bodies and 3kms of sky above you…and when you look at the photo, while everyone else is smiling, you have a look of ‘WTAF are you doing?!’ on your face.
    But put a phone in their hands, and people will happily snap a series of in focus, nicely framed images where you are actually smiling…like this one!

    About to embark on our first family overnight hike

    ‘OK guys…just hang on a second, Dad’s just going to take a photo’

    You had best believe that any time this sentence is uttered…the response is a series of groans.
    Worst of all, these groans are 100% justified. Because the translation of the sentence is actually ‘Hang on for five minutes while Dad breaks any momentum that we’d generated so that he can unpack his camera, then decide he needs to change lenses, then get increasinly angry as no-one is able to re-create the happy scene that had inspired him to take out his camera five minutes ago’. But with a phone, you can simply take out the camera as you walk and get the shot.

    On the way to Sealer’s Cove
    On the boardwalk pt 1
    On the boardwalk pt 2
    Bowl of porridge…and a bowl of coffee. Camping done right!
    Zero fear of wading through water to take the shot.

    Yes, but Chris, I’m an artist!!

    Of course you are! And you will not be able to take epic landscape shots that you can blow up and print for your wall…or take tack-sharp portraits…but DAMN you can get pretty close!!!

    Wide-angled black and white. Would I have loved to have had a dancer creating a similar shadow next to this branch? Yes…but dancers were very thin on the ground at Sealer’s Cove
    Pano mode in the morning
    Crystal clear reflections
    Trees and reflections of trees
    More early morning shots. Pano mode with the wide-angle
    The old ‘get them to stand inside a burnt-out log and look towards the sky’ shot.
    The morning sun was breaking through the foliage in this one spot, so exposing the shot for that bright light made everything else fall off into darkness…or I carried a softbox and strobe for the entire hike in the hope of getting this shot. You decide.

    Photos on the run

    There may be times when I decide that it’s worth carrying the extra weight of my proper camera on a hike or bike ride…but there is NO chance I’m carrying a camera when I’m out for a run. Because I simply don’t need to make that any harder than it already is. But at the same time, I tend to do most of my running in the early morning as the sun comes up, and there have been many times that I’d wished I had a decent camera with me. Now I’ve got the best of both worlds. Now I can carry my phone, listen to podcasts, and if hypothetically speaking, there were an incredible sunrise…or a wallaby…or I see that the rest of family are about to paddle of up a river…I can take a shot!

    Up the creek…with paddles
    Pretty sure I’m being watched
    Sunrise over Tidal River
    Never pass up an opportunity to get a photo of a wombat

    So there you go. I don’t intend this to be an advertorial for any phone in particular…nor am I about to sell my Fuji gear. But what a time to be alive when I can get these sorts of photos out of the same device that I can also ignore your phone calls on!

  • My top photos of 2020

    My top photos of 2020

    As I count down the hours until I have to return to work for 2021, I thought I should enjoy my annual trip down memory lane by putting up my top 10 photos for 2020.
    Now I know that in the past I’ve done my top 18 in 2018, and my top 17 in 2017…but there is simply no way I can be bothered doing 20 photos for 2020. I tore the tendons in my ankle, Ruth Bader Ginsberg died…and I’m pretty sure there was something else that happened that wasn’t good. So in no particular order, here are my top 10, and you can just assume the other 10 are screenshots from Zoom meetings where I’m saying ‘You’re on mute’.

    National Photographic Portrait Prize

    My lanyard and program from the National Photographic Portrait Prize

    Impressed with how many times I can work the fact that I was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPPP) last year into conversation? Well you should be…and you should be glad I now have to devote equal gloating time to this and the Ironman I did in 2015.
    This is a photo that acts as proof that it actually did happen. I actually did get to go to Canberra, and see my photo hanging in a gallery, and get a lanyard with that photo so that people could decide if they wanted to come over and talk to me about it, and that the event where it was all going to be announced had to be scaled back drastically because of COVID restrictions…and I thought that this was DEFINITELY THE WORST THING THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME AS A RESULT OF THE PANDEMIC!!!
    Good times…good times.

    Horsing around

    Black hats and colourful ribbons

    The day after the NPPP, we took my daughter and niece to The Saddle Club where they learnt how to groom, feed, saddle, and ride horses. In my head this was going to be an amazing place to get some photos…in reality, it was bushland that was recovering from recent bushfires and was in full sun that made everything look ‘meh’.
    But at the end of the day, one of the instructors was walking along a corridor inside the house and I saw this photo opportunity. So all hopped on the confidence that being a finalist in the NPPP (and also an Ironman) brings, I asked if I could take a quick portrait, and this was the result.
    I love the colours, and the light, and the fact that Grace was rocking a hat that I could never dream of wearing.

    Opportunities and bees

    Abandoned shed on the road to Warrnambool.

    The last couple of times I’ve driven to Warrnambool, Google Maps has taken me via Camperdown and past this abandoned house/shed. Each time I’ve seen it I’ve thought “That would be a great photo!” But each time I’ve also thought “I’m already late for whatever it is we’re filming in Warrnambool so I can’t stop!”
    But late last year I was heading home from a job (there’s nothing better than driving to Warrnambool, doing a days work and then driving home at the end of it!) and I saw the shed, and I saw the wheat, and I saw the skies, and I realised I had to pull over and get the shot or I would never forgive myself.
    So I found a spot where I could park, and waded my way through the waste-high wheat, keeping a keen eye out for snakes. When I got to the shed I could see a small swarm of bees by the door. I’m not particularly worried about bees, and have a strong belief in ‘If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you’. So I took a few shot in and around the shed. But the whole time, there were a few bees flying around my head…then they started landing in my hair, then they started stinging my head, then I started flailing my arms wildly and running at high speed through the wheat back to the car, all the while trying not to drop my camera or get bitten by a snake (although I did wonder if I got bitten by a snake AND a bee at the same time, would I get super-powers?)
    Mid-scamper back to the car I looked back at the shed hoping I wouldn’t see a plague of bees coming my way…instead I saw this shot. I took one shot standing up, and then another crouching down to make the wheat the foreground.
    I was really happy with the result…and it nearly made up for the long drive home with bee-stings in my forehead.

    Just a test

    Portrait of my Dad

    If there were a theme to the portrait shots that I’m really happy with, it would be ‘people not smiling, but not unhappy, in black and white’. This is a case in point.
    On the last day that I had the GFX (Fuji’s Medium format camera) I spent the whole day taking portraits with my softbox. Dad was the first cab off the rank and so this shot was literally a test shot to dial in my settings. The shot was badly over overexposed, but the incredible amount of data in the medium format images meant I was able to pull it back in post-production, and it’s one of favourite photos from the day.
    It’s also a fitting tribute to Dad’s ‘Lockdown beard’.

    They shoot piers don’t they?

    The early bird

    As mentioned in the previous photo, I was lucky enough to borrow an eye-wateringly expensive camera from Fuji and play with it for a couple of weeks. During that time we went to Lorne and one morning Josh and I got up super-early to take some photos down on the Lorne Pier. I got some really nice landscapey photos of the pier…but I always much prefer to have a human element in my shots. We were just about to go when this old guy in a bright yellow jacket started walking down the pier, I took a few snaps…and this one with the bird just above him just really clicked with me. I liked to imagine that he was such a wily fisherman that he always got the fish, and the birds knew it…that’s why they were circling him.

    Outfoxed

    An extra from a Wes Anderson film if ever I’ve seen one

    In that wonderful time in between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2, we were lucky enough to get to Bright. The place we were staying had a billabong, and so I got up to get some ‘sunrise over water’ shots. I knew that these were going to be purely landscape shots, so I put my wide-angle 10-24mm lens on and trotted down to the billabong. As I stood there trying to work out the best shot, I heard a noise behind me. I assumed it was one of the kids coming to see what I was doing, but when I turned around I saw this fox. Now I know that foxes are pests and eat native animals…and so I shouldn’t have been so stoked to see it. But in my defence…check out that tail!
    The problem was, I was stuck on my wide angle lens, so unless I could get really close to the fox, it was going to be a very small part of a larger picture. I walked to a different part of the billabong, and noticed that it followed me the whole way. It always kept a safe distance…but was clearly interested in what I was doing. So I just settled into one spot and waited. Sure enough, it came in a bit closer, and then a bit closer still. If I moved the camera in front of my face it moved back, so this was taken from the hip and with a lot of faith in autofocus.
    To be honest I just wanted a memento to prove that this really did happen…I didn’t need to hear ‘Dad’s seeing foxes again’ from my kids.

    ‘Bones’

    Sandy Point legend ‘Bones’ on his way to the surf

    At the very start of the year, Holly and Josh got surfing lessons from ‘Bones’. He’s an incredible character who has been part of Sandy Point for as long as we’ve been going there.
    I was out of surfing action as I had done my ankle and was still in a brace. But after the lesson I asked Bones if I could take a few photos. I was so relieved when he said ‘yes’ that I really rushed through the photos as I was paranoid about taking too much of his time. As a result, the photos were OK…but I didn’t think I’d really captured him as I see him.
    Fast forward 11 months and Josh and I are heading out for a surf and Bones is walking in front of us. I had the GoPro with me to take some shots in the surf…so I grabbed this shot. I love the clouds, the green and blue and the leading lines of the fences…but most of all, I had finally captured Bones as I saw him.

    Advanced photography in the surf

    Josh tearing up the waves at Sandy Point

    A good photographer should be able to see the shot they want, compose for it and then nail the execution. What they should NOT be doing, is setting their GoPro for burst mode and taking 10 shots in 3 seconds and simply pointing their camera in the general direction of their subject.
    So for the record, I knew that if I took this photo at this exact moment, then I would frame Josh inside the breaking wave as it crashed over me. Furthermore, I was not joyfully surprised when I looked back at the dozens one single photo and saw this.

    Caught by the rising tide

    Caught out by the rising tide

    I know that for someone who spent a LOT of 2020 not being able to travel more than 5kms from my home…I sure do have a LOT of photos from the beach! Actually the majority of these photos were taken during that brief window between lockdowns. At the time it seemed insane to be travelling from Sandy Point for one weekend, then Lorne the next…after all, we had the rest of the year to travel!
    Bwah ha ha! Bwah ha ha! Bwah ha ha ha!
    I can’t begin to desribe the number of times Katie and I thanked our lucky stars that we travelled while we had the chance!
    Anyway, this weekend at Sandy Point was meant to be the starting point of me borrowing the Fuji GFX. But in a magical example of the world mocking my best laid plans, the GFX body arrived in time…but the lenses didn’t.
    So I was down on the beach, during an incredible sunset, cursing the fact that I had a $10K camera…but no lenses that would fit on it, when these two guys got caught out by a wave that came up a lot higher than its predecessors and I took this shot.
    I was a bit filthy that I didn’t have the big medium format camera to get this photo, as the colours were so amazing…but in reality, this was such an instinctive shot, that I think I would still have been messing with the settings of the GFX as this unfolded before me.
    As they say, ‘the best camera, is the one you have with you.’

    2020 in a shot

    Our protector

    2020 was a year of many things for our family. A lot of time inside, a lot time feeling that people outside were having fun and that we couldn’t be part of it, a lot of time walking ‘all of Brighton’…and a LOT of time being super grateful to have our Beagle ‘Marnie’ in the house.
    I hope that after the front-line workers get their hard-earned thanks…the pets of Melbourne get some sort of acknowledgment for the work they did keeping us all together during COVID times.
    So here’s to the dogs!

  • Uncle Jack & the iPhone

    Uncle Jack & the iPhone

    5 years ago I was lucky enough to work on a video shoot with Uncle Jack Charles. It was for an organisation called Malpa who are working to address the vast inequality in health between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. My job was basically to find a suitable location for the shoot (Malpa are based in Sydney, so they needed some local Melbourne knowledge). Never one to pass up an opportunity, I also bought along my camera to grab some stills during the shoot. I got some shots that I was really happy with…but this one haunts me to this day:

    So close…but just missing the focus on the eyes.

    This was taken literally as Uncle Jack was heading out through the house we were filming in. There was a light that just illuminated his face as we were walking and I quickly grabbed the shot. It wasn’t until I got it into Lightroom that I could see that I had hit the focus on his forehead instead of his eyes…I think I could have retired from photography knowing that I had peaked if I’d just got those eyes in focus!!!

    Thankfully that sort of thing doesn’t stick in my head, or keep me awake at night, or re-surface any time I look back at these photos. So when Malpa got in contact again and explained that they needed to film Uncle Jack for a TVC, and that due to the ever changing COVID situation they didn’t think they could travel down for it, and so would like me to do it…I jumped at the chance.
    I mean, had I Directed a TVC before? No.
    Did I have a camera that could shoot 4K? Also, no.
    Even if I could get a camera that shoots 4K, could I be trusted to shoot pictures and record audio at a quality that was acceptable for TV broadcast? No…again.
    But, did this provide me with my best opportunity to get an in focus portrait of Uncle Jack Charles? Yes! So I took the gig.
    Here’s how it went.

    Location, location, location!

    Malpa had said that they wanted a ‘grungy, Melbourne laneway’ for the location…but with $0 budget, there was no way I was going to find a cool laneway that we could section off for our use, and any other laneway that we tried to just rock up and shoot in ran the risk of traffic noise, people in their backyards, and of course if it was raining on the day, then we were stuffed. I also had some concerns about getting a man in his late 70s to walk along uneven cobblestones while looking to the camera delivering lines (the thought of the headline ‘Man who took out-of-focus photo of Uncle Jack Charles 5 years ago, now forces him to have a knee reconstruction after laneway mishap’ really didn’t appeal). But I found a few options near our house that had potential.

    Grungy laneway option

    Then on my morning run one day, I found a location that offered both ‘native bush’ and some graffitied walls that could offer ‘urban grunge’…and more importantly ‘place to film if it’s raining’. I pitched the idea to Malpa and they were happy with it. So I now had two locations…this was going to be great!

    Under a bridge…
    Native bush option


    As part of my rigourous pre-production, I headed back to the location in the mid-arvo, as this was when we were likely to be filming, to see if the light was ok. It turned out that there a significant difference in light between 8am when I had taken the photos…and 3pm when we returned. It was almost as if the sun had moved and become brighter over the course of the day…weird.
    Unfortunately this meant that the graffiti just near the bush location was out of action as it was in full-shadow and was too dark. But if we just headed over the bridge (about 200m) and down to underpass on the other side, there were some great options.
    We had two locations again…this was going to be great!

    Timing’s everything

    I got in contact with Uncle Jack to sort out a date for filming. Unfortunately, the first day that was an option for him was when I was going to be down at Warrnambool with the family, so I proposed a few dates in between when we got back from Warrnambool and when we headed to Sandy Point, but neither of these worked for him. Malpa were hoping to have the TVC’s ready for broadcast from Australia/Invasion Day, so our timelines were getting a bit tight. So I decided that if push came to shove, I could head back to Melbourne from Sandy Point to do the filming, and the return to Sandy the next day. The only day that didn’t work was Tuesday as that was when Josh and I were going to Tooraddin airfield for flying lessons, so I said to Uncle Jack “I can do any day after Tuesday”…and he said “Tuesday is great! Lock it in!”…and I thought ‘I think he’s messing with me!…but he’s somebody who has served time in Pentridge with Chopper…AND has worked with Hugh Jackman…I’m not going to risk it!’
    So it was agreed that Josh and I would drive from Sandy Point to Tooraddin, have our flying lessons, then drive to Melbourne to film in the late arvo. I wasn’t going to be doing the edit, so I could just upload the footage overnight and we could head back to Sandy the next day.
    Josh had been at the shoot 5 years ago…and I was keen for him to help out on this one as well.

    Josh and Uncle Jack in 2016
    Josh, Katie and Uncle Jack in 2021

    Fuji comes through

    I figured I was probably never going to get another chance to take some photos of Uncle Jack, and so decided to roll the dice and get in contact with Fujifilm Australia to see if I could borrow one of their Medium Format GFX cameras again. Against all the odds, and indeed against their better judgment, the magnificent Neil at Fujifilm made it happen! So I now had a confirmed time and location with an Australian National Treasure, a graffitied location that was going to make for an epic portrait, AND a medum format camera to take it with!
    This was going to be great!!!

    Can we shoot this on an iPhone?

    Unfortunately the date I’d locked in with Uncle Jack didn’t work for the DOP (Director of Photography…cameraperson) that I had hoped to work with. This meant that I would have to shoot the video, and seeing as I didn’t have a camera that shot 4K (one of the requirements for the final product), I was going to have to hire a camera.
    Now I CAN shoot on professional cameras, but in much the same way as I CAN eat an entire Tiramisu. Just because I can…doesn’t mean I should ( while both will lead to an amazing story to tell after the event…in reality, they will also lead to very high blood pressure, and no sleep).
    If you’ve ever seen a film crew, you may ask yourself ‘What are ALL those people doing? Surely they don’t need all of them!’ And 90% of the time that’s true…but it’s in those critical 10% of times where you need a dedicated professional to get the best camera shot, or realise that that there was a background noise that ruined the take, or someone to say ‘you missed a line of dialogue here’, or to realise that the shot was a little out of focus…that can make a difference between the success and failure of your entire project.
    With this in mind, I was a little wary of being the DOP, Director, Script supervisor, and sound recordist…especially if I was using a camera I didn’t know. So I asked to hire a friend’s camera that shot 4K and that I had shot on before…but promptly managed to miss this by a day.
    So I suddenly had a script, an amazing actor, locations, a fancy stills camera…but no video camera that could shoot 4K!
    Unless of course, I looked to use my new iPhone. After all, it shot 4K, did 10 bit colour, and had amazing autofocus & stabilisation. If I put my non-existent budget towards hiring some audio gear, and promoted Josh from ‘general dogsbody’ to ‘audio recordist’…and roped Katie into doing the clapper-board so that we could sync the audio, and using a reflector to bounce in light…then we might be able to make this work!
    At the same time, who the hell turns up to a TVC shoot with a renowned Australian actor and says ‘Look, I’m a trained professional who clearly knows what he’s doing…now if you could just look at my phone and deliver your lines, that would be great!’?
    So I did a LOT of YouTube research and eventually convinced myself that I could get the quality that I needed out of the iPhone…and acknowledged that one thing I do bring to a video or photo shoot is the ability to get people to relax and just be themselves. Could I do that while I was also trying work out f-stops and shutter speeds, and make sure I was in focus, and ensure I wasn’t moving the camera too much? Probably not.
    Plus, if everything went to shit, I would at least have my phone handy to call my DOP and blame them for everything that had happened…or use Google maps to find the nearest deep hole I could throw myself into.

    The shoot

    Josh and I left Sandy Point at about 9.30am and arrived at Tooraddin airfield in time for our flights. Any day where flying a plane for the first time is the second most scary thing you will be doing that day, certainly makes for an interesting life.

    Maverick and Goose…in that order


    We then drove back to Melbourne, picked up the audio gear, learnt how to use it, waited for Katie to finish work, then drove to the location. On the way there I saw someone driving a scooter with grey hair billowing from under the helmet…as we drew alongside, I realised that it was Uncle Jack. The man knows how to make an entrance!


    Once we are all at the location, we did a full run through of the script with a static camera…then did a variation with some camera moves, and took some stills.
    We didn’t really have enough to make a strong TVC with, but we still had our hero location under the bridge to do, so everything was going to plan.
    But as we were walking to the next location, I realised that 78 year old men don’t walk as fast 45 year old men who are running on adrenaline and anticipation. By the time we had passed the midway point between location one and two (the bridge between the two locations), I was starting to realise just how insane my idea of getting a shot from the top of nearby hill was. By the time we had crossed the bridge and I had explained that we just had to walk down the hill to the underside of the bridge…Uncle Jack said that he didn’t think he could make it down there.
    So what could I do?! Explain to a man who had fought against great injustice and who had overcome greater barriers than I could ever understand, yet was still willing to donate his time for a charity…that it was really important to my sense of artistic closure that he should suck it up and press on? Or come up with an alternative location and realise that it’s not all about me?
    So we improvised a second location…and it looked like balls…and then we filmed on the bridge as another option, but there was too much wind, and if we looked one way we had too much sun behind Uncle Jack…and if we faced the other way, we could see a housing development, that sort of ruined the vibe. But we got it done, and when the video came back from the editor, you’d never know there was a problem in the first place. Why? Because Uncle Jack Charles is a freaking genius, and the level of energy he brought to his performance could have carried any TVC…and because I wasn’t a jerk and insist he worked an Olympic distance cross-country event into a video shoot, he still returns my emails!

    So what have I learnt?

    • Always take on projects that challenge (and scare) you
    • Plan meticulously…but make sure you can improvise if you have to
    • Trust the technology and play to your strengths
    • Fujifilm Australia really do support their photographers
    • Katie and Josh are the best video crew you could hope for
    • Uncle Jack Charles is a genuinely amazing person, and I’m incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with him

    The TVC will be on SBS from today…and here are some stills from the day:

  • Fuji GFX

    Fuji GFX

    Have you ever seen an older gentleman in a hideously expensive sports car and thought ‘That machine is capable of so much more than you could ever ask of it. That is such a waste of potential!!!’ Well me using Fuji’s Medium Format GFX is pretty much the photographic equivalent. But that didn’t stop me from borrowing one from Fuji try it out. Here’s how it went.

    The camera

    If you’ve come to this blog knowing a bit about photography, you will already know what a Medium Format camera is…and if you’ve come to this blog not knowing much about photography you really won’t care about pixel counts and sensor sizes. So I won’t waste any time throwing numbers at you.
    In short, the camera I normally shoot on (the Fuji x-T1) has a sensor about the size of a postage stamp, and the GFX has a sensor about the size of a tea-bag.
    Do I think for a second that Fuji want me making this comparison? No.
    Do I think it’s very helpful for people trying to picture this in their mind? Also, no.
    But it basically means that each photo has a lot more pixels and therefore a lot more information and detail. When I had my photo (taken on the x-T1) in the NPPP I had it printed as large as I could without it losing any detail…and when I saw it compared to the other photos, my first thought was ‘Why is my photo so small?!’ Part of the answer may have been that the other photos were taken with cameras with a bigger sensor.

    ‘Soooo…your Dad’s photo is pretty small huh!’

    So part of me wanted to see just what was possible with a camera with a bigger sensor…the other part of me knew that I had purchased my entire Fuji kit (camera body and 4 x lenses) for $5K, and $5K wasn’t even going to get me the camera body of a GFX, let alone lenses. So were my photos going to be 4 times better with $20K worth of camera gear? Let’s find out! (Narrator’s voice – ‘They weren’t”)

    The lenses

    I was lucky enough to be sent 4 lenses; a 45mm, 63mm, 120mm and 250mm. Instead of banging on about them, here’s a snapshot of each:

    The 45mm

    I REALLY liked this lens. Wide enough for landscapes and architecture, but tight enough for an environmental portrait.

    The 63mm

    Hey, do you know what’s fun? Maths. So this 63mm on the medium format, is about the same as a 50mm on a full-frame and a 35mm on my Fuji x-T1. So this is a convoluted way of saying that if I could only have one lens on the GFX… this would be it.

    The 120mm

    The 120mm was probably my revelation as a portrait lens. I’ve never really done portraits where people’s hands are cut off, or heaven forbid, part of their head is cutoff. But I LOVED how some of these shots turned out with this lens, and I’ll definitely be using this in my future portraits…albeit with a LOT fewer pixels!

    The 250mm

    I added this to my list of lenses because I thought I was going to take photos of wildlife. I didn’t. So this lens didn’t get as much of a workout as the others. But I also took one of my favourite GFX pictures with it, so on average is was probably the best performer!

    So what’s it actually like?

    You 100% feel like a Pro with this camera in your hands. It feels solid and purpose built, the sound of the shutter is brilliant and it has the same functionality as my x-T1 so everything I needed was at my fingertips. The file sizes are enormous! I’m used to having my RAW files as 20mb files on the x-T1, whereas the jpegs that come out of the GFX are 20mb…the RAW files over 100mb! So on my first day of shooting I went to a skate park where I was shooting RAW+Jpeg on burst mode, and just about filled my entire 32GB card! There are a lot of reviews of this camera where people say ‘It really made me slow down and consider my composition’ which I had thought was a comment on just how much you can fit onto the sensor…but I now realise it was just code for ‘I can’t afford to buy another hard-drive to store these files!’

    Boneless
    Should have gone on the wider lens!
    I missed SO many of these photos where I tried to follow the skater to keep them sharp while everything else is blurred that I almost cried.

    I loved the amazing detail in the photos. I loved being able to shoot at f32 for a long exposure and not have to worry about ND filters.

    f 32 and 7 second exposure at Kalimna Falls
    f 22 and 5 seconds at a Lorne sunrise

    I loved that even shots that were brutally over-exposed could be made to look amazing!

    This was just a lighting test to set the level of the flash. Did I turn it down after this shot? Damn straight I did. But when I worked on it in Lightroom it actually became one of my favourite shots.
    I had been taking photos on the other side of the pier and when I turned on the camera it still had the old settings. It looked so ethereal in the viewfinder that I had to take the shot.

    I loved the results I got when using a soft-box or off-camera flash.

    But most of all I loved the motivation it gave me to get out and take photos ‘You’ve got $20K worth of camera equipment for a short period of time’ is a VERY strong motivator to get out and shoot!

    The photo prior to this didn’t have the bird flying through…the bird really makes it.
    Kids in trees…always good.
    Families in trees…also good.
    Photo of the photographer…with thanks to Katie!

    But would I buy one?

    Well first and foremost I would like to thank Fuji Australia for allowing me to borrow the camera. Outside of some bizarre ‘You’ve seen this camera in the hands of the best…now see it in the hands of the rest?’ angle, there really was no reason for them to take a chance on me. I can’t imagine there is a huge demographic of my readership with $20K burning a hole in their pocket just looking for a camera to spend it on. So I can’t imagine sales are going to skyrocket after me writing about it. But to Fuji, and in particular Neil, thank you so much for this. You were fantastic to work with, and I really appreciated this once in a lifetime opportunity.
    But would I buy one? No. If I had the money would I buy one? Yes. Would I hire one to shoot a wedding or a proper photoshoot? Yes. Is Fuji likely to loan me gear again after saying this? Probably not.
    But this is not a reflection on the camera, it’s a reflection on where I am with my photography. When I was training for the Ironman and the 3-Peaks, I could never justify buying a new super-fast bike, or super-light wheels to get myself some ‘free’ speed, until I knew that I had done everything in my power to make myself as fast as possible (train more, lose weight, race smart etc). Not surprisingly I never bought a new bike…because I never got to the spot where the only thing holding me back was my gear. Similarly, there are still SO many things that I can improve with my technique, my discipline, my willingness to approach complete strangers etc that will result in better photographs. I need to get them sorted before I can look to better gear to raise my game.
    I have also had my x-T1 for nearly 5 years now. I’ve shot a documentary on it, multiple videos, weddings, award nominated portraits and even a photo where 9 children are all doing what I wanted them to at exactly the same time!
    If, in the process of trying to get an epic shot, my camera got hit by an errant skateboard, or fell into the ocean, or was eaten by a surprisingly fast and aggressive turtle…I could live with it. I certainly wouldn’t be happy about it, but I could live with it. And that gives me a level of freedom that simply doesn’t come with holding a camera worth more than a family holiday to somewhere NICE.
    Plus, if I take a photo with my x-T1 and the 35mm lens and it’s an abject failure, people think ‘Well, he only has that little camera that looks like it’s from the 1970s…what did you expect?!’ But if I take a great shot, suddenly I’m a genius who may get upwards of 7 or 8 likes on Instagram! Follow me a @sumo_21 😉 But if I take a great photo on the GFX people will think ‘Well yes OF COURSE he took an amazing photo…he has that amazing camera.’ Worse still, if someone sees one the of MANY crap photos I took with it, they’ll think ‘Why does he have such a fancy camera, when his photos are so average?!’
    I. DON’T. NEED. THAT. SORT. OF. PRESSURE!!!

    Plus, every photographer knows about Gear Acquisition Syndrome, you always need something to aim for, and if I had a GFX 50, what could I possibly have to look forward to after that?! It’s not as if Fuji are going to do a GFX 100 that has a 100 megapixel sensor…I mean that would be insane, and…what? They have made one?!

    Oh.

    Excuse me…I have to change the entire tone of this blog…and then make a grovelling call to Fuji!

    • Sunrise fishing at Lorne
    • Despite having a lock on each dial…I still managed to shoot this one at ISO12800. Well played Chris…well played.
    • Don’t make a fun guy joke…don’t make a fun guy joke
    A selection of shots from the Fuji GFX 50S