2degreesofseparation's Blog

Tag: photography

Moving from Canon to Fuji

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

My first portrait shot on the Fuji

Do I really need a new camera?

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

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

Blinded by the light

How deep is your love?

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

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

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

Shallow Inlet

Dollars and sense.

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

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

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

Zack Arias told me to do it.

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

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

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

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

Country wedding

Clicks and mortar

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

That new camera feeling

Post-purchase regret

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

Yurts and universes

‘I stop and think, this is Australia’

Four months in

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

Shaz & Lofty

Suns & daughters

April 8, 2016
Top 8 photos from #8in8in8

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

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

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

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

#1 The before shot

A few days before 8in8in8

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

#2 The swim in Sydney

Gotta love the GoPro

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

#3 The power of words

When John Maclean talks, you listen.

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

#4 The painful reality

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

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

#5 Getting ready for the run at Cronulla

‘You’re still here mate?’

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

#6 The cheer squad at Prahran pool

This group of kids cheered Craig’s every lap.

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

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

Tommy and his Mum.

#7 Midnight in Melbourne

Running on the Albert Park Grand Prix track.

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

#8 ‘You know I’m going to do this!’

‘You know I’m going to do this!’

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

Now for the movie

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

March 23, 2016
An open letter to Zack Arias

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 11, 2015
Shooting your first wedding

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

Preparation

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

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

Improvise

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

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

Carry a shot list and ideas for shots

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

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

Go with what you know

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

Future bride and groom

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

The Gear

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

Perfect…apart from that creepy photographer in the background.

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

One of the few shots on the 50mm

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

Eating and drinking

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

November 28, 2015
Shooting the Tour de France: An amateur’s perspective

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

Travel light…but not too light

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

Sagan tightening the straps for the descent

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

Geschke on his way to a stage win at Pra Loup

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

Use a motorbike.

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

Providing valuable info to fans, riders…and photographers

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

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

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

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

Don’t ‘spray and pray’

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

More good luck than good planning

Don’t shoot the same shot every time.

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

‘That’s close enough’

The peloton roll out of Modane

Do the boring stuff.

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

A quick look to see who’s coming

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

August 9, 2015
Fitness and photography

A couple years ago I spent 12 months focussing on being more ‘creative’. I spent more time writing, taking photos and making videos…hell, I even took singing lessons. The net result was that I think I became a happier human being. I had a creative outlet (even if the world probably preferred it when I didn’t), my problem solving improved (although admittedly the ‘problem’ was normally someone asking me not to sing…and my ‘solving’ was agreeing and apologising) and I started to see creative options where I hadn’t seen them before. But for the last year and a half I’ve been training for the Ironman (well admittedly I’ve spent the last 2 months basking in the afterglow of having completed the Ironman) and I’ve been amazed at how focusing on keeping yourself physically fit, can have massive benefits for your creative endeavours.

The basics

Granted, the actual act of pressing the button on your camera, looking at the screen on the back, sighing, and then dejectedly deleting the photo, is not all that physically taxing (the emotional and psychological onslaught is of course another thing). So you could argue that increased fitness won’t make a big difference to your photography. But a bit of cardio fitness may have meant you walked a bit further to get a better vantage point, a bit of endurance work may have meant that you carried an additional piece of gear in your bag that helped make the shot and a bit of muscle may have allowed you to elbow your way through the scrum and get the best shot of your daughter’s dance recital (Oh sorry other parents, maybe if you’d spent a little more time at the gym you would be the one taking this awesome shot…instead of rolling around on the floor moaning ‘My nose, my nose…I think you broke my nose!”).

Location, location.

While training for the Ironman (and yes I will continue to drop that into conversation wherever possible) I would often head out on 1.5 – 2hr runs. Now don’t get me wrong, running along main roads and having the local bogans loudly question your sexuality as they drive past is pretty awesome. But eventually you will want to get off the beaten track and run somewhere different, and this will open up a world of new photographic locations. Old buildings, new bridges, creeks, graffitied walls, velodromes, rolling hills- you never know what you will find, but you can bet that it’s not something that many other people have used for a photo.

I stumbled across this one morning while out for a run…then scampered back to get my camera.

The early bird

Do you know what’s awesome for photography? Early morning light, deserted streets, sunrise, frost and that crossover between late night revellers and those who get to work early. Do you know what sucks? Getting up early to take these shots when on any other day you’d still be asleep. But if getting up early is now part of your daily routine (because it’s the only time you can work your fitness regime into your family life or work schedule), then getting up early on another day to take some shots really isn’t that tricky.

Admittedly this photo wasn’t taken superearly…but it was early when we started!

The people you meet

I’m firmly of the opinion that the most important factor in taking a great photo is not your skill level…but being there. A photographer with basic skills who is actually there, is going to take a much better photo than an expert who isn’t. But the problem is, how do you meet people to take photos of? How do you hear about events that would be great to photograph? How do you hear the stories that would translate beautifully to the captured image? In short you have to get out and meet people and do things, and getting involved in a sporting group or club is a great way to do this.
Plus, if you are actually doing an activity, you will have a much better idea of where the best photos are going to be. Everyone is going to be at the finish line, but where will the race be won? Where will the hearts break? Where is the bike most likely to stack? If you are actually doing these activities day to day, you will be able to walk up to any event and have an advantage over the other photographers.

Footjam Nosepick,

Confidence

OK, if you’ve made it this far into this post then you’re probably willing to let me get a little tangential. If you are exercising regularly, you will be happier with yourself physically. When you’re happy with yourself physically, this tends to manifest itself in greater self confidence…and you know what is an incredibly powerful tool when trying to convince strangers to let you take their photo? Self confidence. It makes no sense, but I know that for me personally, knowing that I could run 20kms on any given Sunday, gave me the confidence to approach Luke and ask him to pose for a portrait.

Admittedly he does look a little like he’s regretting agreeing to let me take his photo.

Time to think

If you’ve got kids, or a full-time job, or remarkably persistent cats, you’ll probably find that you don’t have a whole lot of time to think about your photography. But head out for a swim, ride, run or gym session and you suddenly have time and space to think, although for the first couple you will just be thinking ‘Christ I hate running!’ and ‘Why am I doing this?!’ and ‘Who the hell put the Wiggles on my playlist?!!’ But eventually you will be able to do the physical side of things on auto-pilot, while you use your newfound firing synapses and endorphins to come up with some stellar ideas.
The best ideas I’ve had for photos, videos and blogs have been while I’ve been out exercising.

Selfish portrait.

In conclusion, your Honour…

Having swung the pendulum between focusing on creativity and focusing on fitness, I have settled on the idea that I need to have a balance of 60% fitness and 40% creativity…with that additional 20% focus on fitness leading to more than a 20% improvement in my creativity. So go out and try find your balance. Before you buy that next bit of gear, buy a a decent pair of runners instead, before you book a photo-tour, go for a run around your local area and see what you find, and instead of putting your head back on the pillow at 5.30am get outside and break out of your comfort zone…your photography will be the better for it.

June 23, 2015
The photographic waiting room
It can be very easy to think that the modern photographer’s life is one of instant gratification. After all, Ansell Adams often had to wait weeks before he knew if that shot of a rock had worked as he wanted it to…nowadays we can take a photo of the rock, add a few filters and send it to an uninterested world in a matter of seconds. But much like a young tradie being sent to the shop to get a ‘long weight’, there are still a few times that photographers find themselves waiting, and then realising that they are too embarressed to tell anyone about it.

The time between taking the photo and getting to work with it in Lightroom

Pretty much every photographer has had the experience of looking at a shot on the screen on the back of the camera and thinking ‘Nailed it!’, only to get the photo onto a larger screen and realise that in fact it’s soft (slightly out of focus), or noisy (ISO too high) or shit (shit). So there is always a degree of paranoia about your shots until you can load them into your computer and see what you’re really dealing with. After all softness can be sharpened, noise can be reduced and shitness can have 100% clarity added to it and passed off as ‘HDR’. But you just don’t know what you’re working with until it’s loaded onto your computer…and so the wait between clicking the shutter and clicking on the mouse can seem like an eternity.

Last year I shot my first ever wedding. By the time I got home that night and loaded the photos onto my computer it was late and I was too shattered to do any work on them. But then the next day was chock-a-block with family activities, and the day following that involved a 5 hour bike ride. So I spent over 48hrs freaking out that I had no idea if I actually had any decent shots…it was torture.

So if you live with a photographer and want to be nice to them, give them an hour off other duties and let them load in their photos and have a look at them on a big screen with access to some software that can hide their mistakes…it will make them a lot more pleasant to be around.

Waiting for feedback

I think that people who don’t take photos can underestimate just how much a photographer invests in a shot. As the photographer you’ve chosen to take a photo, you’ve composed it, you’ve chosen your settings, you’ve forged a brief alliance with your subject, you’ve taken the shot, you’ve spent time doing post-production on the shot, sent through the final product, and then…well then you’re in the hands of the recipient, and the longer you wait for a response, the more you become convinced they hate it. It can be soul crushing. It’s a bit like finally plucking up the courage to call someone you have a crush on, but getting their voicemail and having to leave a message and then having to wait them to call you back. Or maybe you should call them…to make sure they got the message…or maybe I should I see if they’re available on Facebook…wait, it says they’re logged in on their mobile…why didn’t they answer my call then?… Oh God they must be trying to think of a nice way to say ‘No’…Oh God I feel like such an idiot!…but why don’t they just let me know? Why do they just leave me hanging? What sort of psycho are they?! Screw this, I’m going to send them a really nasty text message telling them that I can’t believe I ever I had feelings for them, but not to worry, I can take the hint, and I’ll never bother them again!
Meanwhile, in the time it took to go to the bathroom, the subject of your desires has received one voicemail message followed a few minutes later by a bafflingly angry text message.
In short, you are a tad vulnerable when you put a part of yourself into a shot for someone else’s judgment, and paranoia + time = teenage boy.

So if you have the misfortune of living with someone who fancies themselves as a photographer, or someone has taken some photos for you, here are a few things you can do to assuage our fears:
- Let us know you got the photos. Even if you haven’t had a chance to look at them yet, just let us know they’ve arrived. Sometimes, due to the vagueries of the internet, photos don’t make it from sender to reciever, and there is nothing worse than waiting for feedback on photos when the other person is still waiting for them to arrive.
- Give feedback. Look, I know we’re all time poor, but I’ve had photos that I’ve taken hours working on, uploading to a gallery on Flickr and sending through, only to recieve ‘Great, thanks’ as the feedback. What was great?! Which ones did you like? Why?
  When I did the recent photoshoot with Luke from the Cobblers Last he actually went through and listed the photos he liked and why. It was awesome because going into a shoot you have no idea what people are hoping for, so it’s great to know how close you came to what they were after.
  Oh, and if I’ve seen you write ‘Cute pic’ or ‘That’s so great’ to someone’s clearly out of focus photo of their child on Facebook, your feedback has no weight with me.
- Tell it like it is We are precious flowers…but sometimes we need to hear what you don’t like. Yeah, it hurts and we will probably spend the next couple of hours in a huff, but we need to know why you didn’t like a photo. I can pretty much guarantee that if there’s a photo you don’t like it’s either a photo the photographer had doubts about themselves, or there is a specific reason why they included it. As a photographer you take a lot of photos…the real skill is culling them down to the ‘good ones’. The more informed we are about what constitutes ‘good’ the better we’ll become as photographers.
- Be our muse Yep, standing a spot while the photographer stares blankly at the display on the back of their camera and then adjusts the the off-camera flash for the umpteenth time can be boring as batshit. But consider it an investment in the ultimate prize; a photo of yourself that you actually like!
So there you go. We photographers are in fact incredibly misunderstood and under-appreciated geniuses who thoroughly deserve your respect and admiration. Just please tell us we’re good…please!
June 2, 2015
My first and the Cobblers last
One of the sad realities of getting involved in photography is that you start to see everything as a potential photo. That old guy at the train station is now someone who would make a great ‘street photography’ shot, that derelict old building is now a great potential location for a shot, and that camping trip with the family is now a great opportunity to take some long exposure night photography shots. So when a new shop that fixes shoes opened next door to work, and had guys who work there in clothes that look a tad Dickensian and had two amazing old school shoe shine seats…my first thought was ‘That would make a great photo’.
Now that is normally where the idea stops. After all, the unbridled success of my idea could only be sullied by the reality of me attempting to actually take the photo. But in keeping with my new motto of pushing myself out of my comfort zone, I decided to bite the bullet and ask if the guy who was working in the shop would be interested in posing for a portrait.

Hello complete stranger…can I take your photo?

I have no doubt that once you have an impressive portfolio and you genuinely know what you’re doing, then asking a complete stranger to give up an hour of their time so that you can take a photo of them becomes relatively straight forward, as you know that in return for the hour of their time, you are going to give them a photo that they will like. But when you’re still learning your craft, there is always the fear in the back of your mind that you may be asking someone to give up their time for a substandard reflection of themselves. Fortunately I had an ace up my sleeve, I had some shoes that needed to be fixed, so I could use that as a justification for striking up a conversation…and then smoothly ask ‘Would you mind if I portrait a photograph of you?…I mean take a photo of you?…I mean not now, that would be creepy, ha ha ha…maybe when there’s no-one else in the shop…no wait…I mean…that would be worse…what I meant was, can I take a portrait of you?’
As I said…smooth.
Fortunately the man behind the counter (Luke) said he was more than happy to do it (but I suspect he was mainly saying that to get me out of his shop so that he could press the ‘panic alarm’ button). So we locked in a time a date.

The idea

As I mentioned earlier, Luke had two shoe-shine chairs in the shop, and so as Buck 65’s track Craftsmanship looped in my head I had a vision of getting a shot of Luke on the shoe shine seat- the artisan and his tools. Similar to the shot of took of my father-in-law, I would use an off camera flash on an umbrella.

Sir James,

The execution

We had arranged to do the shoot on a weekday after work. So in the morning I trundled off to work with my camera bag (550D, 50mm, 17-55mm, flash, remotes, battery charger & grid), my work bag with my lunch and drink bottle, my lightstand, my bag with my ironed shirts for the week, my tripod and an umbrella (it was raining).
It was at about Northcote that I realised that the pivotal piece of equipment, the reflective umbrella was still at home under my bed. Perfect. I eventually tracked down a shoot-through umbrella and figured that may suffice.
Then when I got to the shop I realised that the shoe-shine seats were actually a lot higher than I had realised, which meant that it was nigh on impossible to get the flash up high enough to create the light that I wanted. But that was fine….because the shoot-through umbrella wasn’t capable of getting the light that I wanted anyway (in short the spread of the light was a lot broader than what I wanted). So I set about getting a few shots of Luke in action, in the hope that I might have a moment of inspiration in the meantime.

Luke at work buffing a shoe…my shoe incidentally.

The hands of someone who does actual work.

Eventually I took the plunge and took a couple of shots of Luke up on the seat

Up on the seat

but it wasn’t until Luke suggested sitting down at ground level as if he was going to be doing a shoe shine that it all started to work. In hindsight, it was never going to look natural with him up on the seat…as that just doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if the guy who has been doing this for years knows more about it than the photographer who has just swanned in to take a photo…weird.

Suddenly it started to work. It was nothing like the photo I had in my mind at the start of the shoot…but it was starting to feel like it made sense.

The peaked hat was giving me a few problems…but looking to the light always helps.

Yep I’ve seen one of these before…it’s a shoe.

In the midst of a few shots, I got this one…and it’s my favourite.

Of all the photos, I think this one carries the most weight.

So what did I learn?
- Well first and foremost, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is definitely the best way to learn…but this is a hell of a lot easier when you’ve got someone who’s patient and understanding to work with. Luke was happy to wait while I faffed around with the camera and flash, provided suggestions, and not once did he say ‘You know, I really do have better things to do with my time!’ (so if you’re in the city you really should get all your repairs done at his shop he’s a pretty awesome dude!)
- Also, if your shot is reliant on a piece of equipment…then actually bringing that piece of equipment is a really super idea. If you fail to heed this piece of advice, then you need to be able to adapt pretty quickly to whatever you have at your disposal.
- From a technical perspective, I really have to let go of this idea of shooting everything at ISO 100. The 550D doesn’t do high ISO all that well, but shooting at 200 or 400 isn’t going to be a big problem, and does give me a much faster shutter speed.
- I’m slowly growing out of the ‘shoot everything at the lowest f-stop because that always looks so cool’ phase. But I’m not there yet.
- Presets in Lightroom are still my go to…but they are teaching me a lot about how to use post to make an image pop.
- Go with your strengths. My photography still has a long way to go…but my chatting to people skills are pretty good. So no matter how bad I may think the technical side of a shoot is going, I need to maintain that dialogue with the person I’m photographing. Even if I take a really good photo, I won’t be invited back if I act like an aloof dick.
- I took over 100 photos for about 20 ‘keepers’ (and in all honesty 5 that I was really happy with)…the Washington Generals have a better shooting percentage than that!
- The constant soundtrack for this photoshoot was ‘Craftsmanship’ by Buck 65. So it’s only fair that I finish with a line from that song:
  ‘There’s a right way to go about your job and a wrong one
  I find this way is much better in the long run
  It ain’t about the dollar or trying to go fast
  Unless you take pride in what you’re doing, it won’t last
  Craftsmanship is a quality that some lack
  You got to give people a reason for them to come back’
You can see the full gallery of shots here.
If you don’t already own a copy of Buck 65’s Talkin’ Honky Blues, then go out and buy one…it’s genius.
And once again thanks very much to Luke for his patience and enthusiasm.
May 17, 2015
My top 10 photos for 2014

2014 has been an interesting year of photography for me. On the one hand, training for the Ironman has left very little time to get out and take photos. But on the other hand taking part in The Age’s ‘Clique’ photo competition has meant that I’ve been forced to really push myself out of my comfort zone in terms who and how I shoot. Plus I shot my first wedding (there’s a blog on that coming soon). The net result is that I shot a lot more photos that I was happy with this year…so here are my top 10 in no particular order (if you’re having trouble viewing the images you can also find them here.)

#1 X & A

X & A. ISO 100, 50mm, f1.4 1/200

Probably the biggest change to my photography came with my purchase of the Zack Arias video series ‘Onelight 2.0’ It transformed me from someone who swore he would never shoot with a flash, to someone who suddenly saw the opportunities a flash presented. Like capturing that moment when a couple of 2 year olds give each other a big hug. On my normal settings I would have missed this. They would have been slightly blurred…or a little out of focus. But with the flash they were captured in this moment, and they both just look so freaking happy to be in each other’s company.

#2 Lightspeed at the roadhouse

Light speed at the roadhouse. ISO 640, 24mm, f2.8, 8sec

I owe a pretty hefty debt to Luke Vesty for the idea for this one. We were on a two day roadtrip in regional Victoria and had decided to take some long exposure shots. Luke got an amazing shot of a truck driving past so all you could see was a road sign and the trucks red lights disappearing into the distance. Clearly I couldn’t steal his idea…but I could appropriate it! So this is my remix. I set up my shot of the roadhouse and then waited for a truck to come past. When it was about 500m away I took and 8 second shot…and this was the result.

#3 Selfish portrait

Selfish portrait. ISO 400, 17mm, f3.5 and 6sec

One of the Clique challenges was to ‘shine a light on something you are passionate about’. So I had the idea of getting a shot of me out on the cycling trainer with a long enough exposure that my legs would look blurred. In theory the idea was pretty straight forward…but it took about an hour of setting up the camera, pressing the button, then running over to the bike and pedalling until the shot was done, then getting off the bike and back to the camera to see if it had worked. Eventually it did and I love the final shot (the light on the back wheel is coming from my phone which I had set up against the trainer)…but was it worth the numerous mosquito bites? Probably not.

#4 Down at the Nieuw Amsterdam

Down at the Nieuw Amsterdam, ISO100, 17mm, f2.8 & 1/6sec

Another Clique challenge was to take a photo of someone who worked from dusk til dawn, and you had to use available light (ie no flash). I have a friend at work whose husband runs a restaurant in the city called Nieuw Amsterdam and I asked if I could come in and take a photo, and she said no worries. So I traipsed into the city one Wednesday night and headed down to the cocktail bar at Nieuw Amsterdam, and discovered that while the bar had an awesome ambience…it was freaking dark. So I asked the barman if there was any way of getting some more light in to the bar ‘Will this do?’ he asked and put a brulee torch to a block of sugar. *snap* ‘Yep, that will do nicely.’

#5 Maxim

Maxim, ISO 100, 24mm, f2.8 & 1/80sec

This shot was taken at Josh’s birthday party. My children pretty much refuse to do anything that I ask in a photo…but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask other, more polite children to stand under a skylight and look up towards it. I originally wanted to use as a colour shot as there was heaps of brightly coloured lego in the background…but it worked so much better as a black and white.

#6 Show me the boy at 7 and I’ll give you the man

Josh, ISO 800, 55mm, f2.8 & 1/100

As mentioned in #5, my kids have pretty much decided that my interest in photography is just a ploy to annoy them. As such, I have at best 10 seconds to get any shot of them before they walk off…and, no, they won’t be taking any direction…what you see is what you get. And sometimes that is pretty awesome. There’s nothing special about this as a photo…but as a parent it’s exactly how I see Josh, and how I think I’ll see him in about 10 years time. So I’m so glad I’ve got this as a keepsake.

#7 Sir James

Sir James, ISO 100, 24mm, f2.8 & 1/160 (with flash bouncing off an umbrella)

Another big lesson for this year was ‘Don’t be afraid of autofocus’. I had always assumed that pro-photographers eschewed auto focus and manually focused all of their shots. But having spoken to a few photographers about this, they all had the same reaction ‘Wow, you’re focusing everything manually…I don’t do that!’

For this shot I was in near total darkness and had no scope to manually focus and so trusted the autofocus…and lo and behold the shots came out beautifully.

I had hired some flash gear for the weekend to take these shots, so I was shooting with gear I’d never used, following a technique I had just learnt from a video and I was taking photos of my father-in-law. So the scope for disaster was pretty spectacular, but if this year has taught me anything it’s that the more you push yourself, the bigger the rewards. My challenge with any portrait is to try and capture the essence of the person, and so in this shot I think you see someone who is content, confident, a bit cheeky and incredibly comfortable with a glass of wine in his hand. Which is pretty much exactly how I see James.

#8 The big sister

The big sister, ISO 200, 85mm, f1.8 & 1/200sec

Similar to the photo of Josh, this photo is incredibly important to me as it serves a record of how close these two are. Holly’s patience with Xavier is biblical, and Xavier’s adoration of his big sister is equally epic. In time this may change…but I’ll always have this photo.

#9 Harry Potter

Harry Potter, ISO 200, 17mm, f6.3 & 15 secs

I can remember in my late teens I was having guitar lessons, and my teacher had given me a series of scales to learn. He explained that I could play the notes in pretty much any order and they would all work with each other as they are in the same scale. I worked on those scales for weeks…then one day I suddenly started to see the patterns in them and was suddenly able to create little solos by using the notes from the scales. It was like suddenly seeing how the magician did the trick. Suddenly things made sense.

This photo was a similar experience for me. I knew what I wanted to do with the shot, but couldn’t get the camera to do it. So I went to full manual mode and realised what I had to do. I changed lenses, I put the camera on a tripod, I manually focussed on the church, cropped the moon just out of the shot so that the overall shot was darker so that I could use a longer exposure, and I got this shot. Suddenly things made sense.

#10 Footjam Nosepick

Footjam Nosepick, ISO 200, 42mm, f4.5 & 1/1,000sec

The final Clique challenge was to take a shot using a fast shutter speed, which again was something I’ve never really done before. So we headed to the Edinburgh gardens, and after watching the skaters for about 20minutes, I saw this guy on the BMX doing a few runs. He was pulling off some pretty awesome tricks, and so I decided he was my star. I watched him for a bit longer to work out where was a good place to take the shot (ie where I was close enough to a trick to get the shot, but not in the way of anyone else). Then I shot in bursts of 1/1,000. I got a couple of pretty good shots of him doing airs, and one of him grinding…but this was the hero shot.

I really like photos where the more you look, the more you see, and so if you look closely you notice his tatts, you notice the two skaters in the background watching him, and if you look really closely you see that he’s not using a hand-brake to keep his front wheel from moving, he’s jammed his foot between the tyre and the fork – a ‘footjam nosepick’.

In conclusion

So that’s my top 10 for 2014. I was really stoked to have my portfolio of photos for Clique make the final for the grand prize. But I was much happier with how many risks I was willing to take this year to work on my photography. From approaching relative strangers to be photographed, to taking on my first wedding, to trying new techniques and equipment…every risk I’ve taken has given me some reward. Now I just have to work out a way to get paid to do this on a regular basis so that I can afford to get some of these printed.

Thanks for following the blog this year, I know that it’s been pretty sporadic. But once I’ve got this Ironman done (in March 2015) I’ll have much more time to devote to creative pursuits….and hopefully 2015 will be an even better year for photography.

December 23, 2014
‘No flash photography’

I’ve always hated using a flash when taking photos. It conjures up horrible memories of washed out images, of people taking photos at concerts in a way that only illuminates the heads of the people in front of them (and not the performers on the stage 50m away), of menu boards in cheap restaurants where you end up ordering the ‘special’ because thankfully they don’t have a photo of that, and of people and pets who look demonically possessed due to red/yellow eyes. In short, I didn’t see how using a flash could add to an image.
But I’ve just embarked on my first ever shoot with a flash…and I am so happy with the results that I felt the need to blog about it.

The good flash and the bad flash

I can still remember my first really good Pad Thai, my first really good Pinot Noir, and my first really good bike, because I had that moment where I thought ‘Oh…now I see why so many people rave about this!’ It was still just a combination of ingredients, or elements or parts…but it was done by someone who knew what they were doing and so it worked. What I realise now is that I simply hadn’t seen flash photography done well (or perhaps more accurately I hadn’t realised that some work that I really liked was the result of a flash). Thankfully a friend of mine Tim Arch (check out his website…he’s awesome!) introduced me to the work of Zack Arias and suddenly I wanted to try to take some photos with a flash!

If you’re even vaguely interested in taking photos using flash then I highly recommend downloading his ‘Onelight 2.0′ videos. They basically take you through how the flash works and then takes you through different photo shoots where he only uses one flash and get’s some amazing photos. They are beautifully filmed, he’s an excellent host and best of all you LEARN a hell of a lot! The boring bits are still interesting, and and the interesting bits are inspirational!

Off camera flash

The biggest difference between what I had seen as flash photography and what Zack was doing was that instead of having the flash mounted on his camera, Zack was mounting the camera somewhere else and then using a wireless transmitter to fire the flash when he took the photo on his camera. So instead of having someone who looks like they’re about to be hit by a car…you have someone who is lit in an artistic or nuanced way. Also he is using something to diffuse the light (a softbox or an umbrella).
I should also add that this is nothing new…it was just new to me.

So I decided to bite the bullet and hire a light stand, some wireless camera triggers, a reflective umbrella and a flash (about $100 for two days) and take as many photos as I could.

Shoot 1 – The brick wall

If you’ve been to our place post-renovation you will know the brick wall we now have in our dining room, I really wanted to use this as a backdrop and so this was my first place I set up the gear.
Now one thing I learnt very quickly is that it’s really difficult to set up the shot without someone sitting in the spot while you take numerous test shots and ask yourself questions like; How powerful the flash should be? Should I be closing down the umbrella to try to focus the light?, How far away should the flash be from the subject? and What’s the sync speed on this camera? (the correct answers for these shots being about 1/16th, yes, about 2ft and 1/160). So you will need to coax someone to sit in while you take the practice shots. Be warned that children have very low tolerances for such things when they could be scooting around the house…and that pleading/needy look in Dad’s eye is just becoming tiresome. But if you can keep one of one of them in the seat for a couple of minutes, you can get something like this

I really like this shot…but because the ambient light was so low I had to rely on the 550D’s autofocus because I couldn’t really see the face clearly…which I find tends to be a more hit than miss. In this case the focus is on the lips rather than they eyes…but it still works. I also later learnt that I could have had the ambient lights up a lot brighter and still got a good shot as the flash was going to drown out any ambient light…but it’s little things like this that are great to learn in front of a non-paying client.

If the kids have been bundled off to bed, then can try to take a photo of your spouse. They may need to be plied with a cup of tea…but it’s all worth while when you can get a shot like this.

Shoot 2 – The Cellar.

I’ve been promising to take some photos of my father-in-law (James) for a website for his wine racking system (I’ve also been promising to build this website…but first things first). So I packed the gear and headed over to his place to take some photos in his cellar.
Again there was a fair degree of faffing around with the gear and setting up the shots…but I’m really happy how they turned out (and best of all he likes them enough to let me stay married to his daughter!)

How old? Very old.

Shoot 3 – Outside

This was a purely impromptu shoot at about 5pm in the backyard of Chateau Righi. Basically we had finished shooting in the cellar, I’d had a glass of something cool and delicious, and I decided to try shooting just as the day light faded. What really surprised me with these photos is how the flash overpowered the ambient light. They look for all the world like they were shot in darkness…but it was dusk at the latest and there was still plenty of light in the sky.
What I really love about these is that in using the flash I was actually able to capture a few moments that I would never have captured shooting as I normally do. In that light, even the slightest movement would have meant that the faces were blurred…but the flash captured the moment perfectly.

Where’s this bat that you’re talking about?

So in summary, did I like shooting with the flash? Yes I did. Have I completely changed my tune on flash? Yes…but I still won’t use the flash that’s built into the camera. Am I going to buy the gear so I can shoot like this whenever I want? No. At this stage it’s still too expensive…but it is definitely on my list of things to buy…along with the 5Dmk3…and the 85mm lens…and the Fuji x-T1…and the ND filters…oh, and the food for my family…but in that order.

May 6, 2014