These days the chemicals are gone and trying to replicate that awesome black and white print in pixels is sometimes a never ending challenge. Since the dawn of the digital darkroom I’ve constantly been on the look out for a way to do what I used to in the darkroom. Not a Photoshop wiz by a long stretch I tend to keep a lookout for the best ways to acheive certain results. I’ve never been overly happy with some of the tutorials and examples of some Photoshop people out there until now. I happened across a tutorial by fellow photo friend Erin on her blog which looked to be the goods as far as my taste in B&W imagery was concerned. I worked through her instructions and ended up with the above image of my daughter Lana.

This little technique is definitely going in the bag of tricks. Thanks Erin!

The day was cold and bleak – perfect for suburban football some would say. The Rovers were taking on Old Hailerbury which has the likes of ex-AFL starts Robert Harvey and Brett Voss. Harvs wasn’t in the action for this game but Vossy was and it was great to see the ex-Saint running around the paddock again (bias of being a St Kilda supporter I guess!).

The Rovers put up a great fight and came out victors in the end.

Last Sunday saw us head to Montsalvat in Eltham, Victoria. Montsalvat, founded by Justus Jörgensen, is Australia’s oldest artists’ colony and is home to practising artists. Set on 12 acres the historic buildings include charming mud brick cottages and the impressive Great Hall and the photographer’s best friend, the Loft.

I’d been wanting to take some portraits of a friend of mine, Ed, for some time now and thought this would be a great location as well as provide a subject for the rest of the group attending to photograph. Ed did a stellar job considering he’s not a model and has never done this sort of thing before.

It was also great to catch up with the 5MP guys as well. It’s never a dull moment when we’re all together.

Hope to have some more updates soon.

I’ve done a couple of maternity shoots prior to this one (the main one being my own partner Kylie) and jumped at the opportunity as they are a lot of fun and something that doesn’t happen everyday.

Kate, Neil and Lottie were all a pleasure to work with and I was humbled to hear they felt relaxed and comfortable with myself and how professional I came across – always a nice thing to hear.

Thanks again guys and hopefully all goes well on the big day!

I had the fortune during the week to get my hands on a copy of David Hobby’s (from Strobist.com) much acclaimed Strobist DVD series. Pouring through it just got me all excited to get out and try some off camera flashing! Well Sunday being such a nice day I decided to rope in my daughter to pose for some outdoor type shots.

Well, I was given all of about 2 minutes “face time” with my model. In messing around setting up the shot she had grown bored and I only managed to get a couple of keepers out of it all before Abby decided there was much more interesting things to do in the back yard. Prima donnas… I dunno…

For the photo geeks here’s the setup: Shot in my backyard during the afternoon with Abby standing in the shade. Camera left has a Nikon SB800 mounted on a stand with a shoot through umbrella plus a black backing on it sort of turning it into a softbox. It’s a bit more cumbersome than a standard shoot through but decided to try it out. Camera set to manual and metered for the sky – should have dropped the ambient by a couple of stops at this point but was trying to get everything else set up as well so missed that. SB800 is set to 1/4 power and fired by PocketWizard II’s.

I really like this type of lighting and the results show in this image when viewed in full at hi-res. It’s just a nice even light that gives the image a different feel. If I can plant the kids down long enough I’ll try some more otherwise i’ll try and rope in some willing models!

(ps there was a delay posting this due to computer issues… more on that soon!)

More ramblings soon…

Managed to catch up on Saturday with a group of people I deal with regularly through an online forum as part of Shelton Muller’s wonderful site Five Minute Photographer.

We decided to head into the city and meet up at Fed Square and take it from there. 8 of us in total made it along and the experience levels ranged from newbie’s to those working in the industry. It was great as we could bounce ideas off one another and learn and share as we do on on 5MP (hence the silly title of this post).

I guess a big thanks to Richard Annable for organising it to begin with but also to all the others for coming along – except Shelton (no Shelton I haven’t forgiven you yet!)

Looking forward to the next one.

Managed to get my hands on a new Nikon D300 not too long ago and let me just say it handles like a dream. I’ve had the D200 for quite a while now and it is an awesome camera that just feels right and Nikon have done all its followers justice by delivering that same feeling in the D300 plus adding in some awesome advancements. Aside from the standard updates the big kicker for me is how well the new CMOS sensor handles the high ISO range. The D200’s CCD sensor was not the greatest when you started pushing the boundaries of ISO 400 and was pretty awful for anything over ISO 800. Enter the D300 with it’s big brother’s, the D3, awesome sensor and Nikon have delivered something that competitors are losing out to.

The above image was shot handheld (1/80th @ f2.8) at ISO 1600 with available light in an dingy office environment that would have otherwise warranted a flash setup or tripod to achieve a similar result.

You can see in this above crop of the top image how little noise there is at this ISO. There is no editing to these images except cropping and resizing and are straight out of camera.

Short of my old Hasselblad 503cx this is one of the best cameras I have ever owned for not only the high ISO handling but just how good it feels in the hand as well as the additional features (which I might go into in another post). I’ve not had a great deal of time testing it out but hope to do so over the next month or so, so stay tuned for more!!

More ramblings soon…

My other aim was to get the camera out for the weekend too and have a much needed shoot with hopefully some wonderful settings. I was having too much fun on the toboggan with the kids to drag the camera out so only got the happy snaps as far as that was concerned but did manage to duck away on the Friday night to Stephenson’s Falls, which was very close to where we were staying, and is also one of the highest falls in Victoria.

It was getting on to dusk and stupid me had forgotten to pack the tripod for the weekend so hoped for the best with my shaky hands. Found some solid ledges to lean on and the light was really nice so pulled out the slow shutter speeds to enhance the effect of the falls.

There was also plenty of friendly locals (of the feathered variety) who would come and greet us each morning. The kids had a blast feeding them fruit, biscuits, seed, chips – whatever was around these birds tended to eat it!

Not too far from where we were staying was a somewhat famous sculptor by the name of Bruno Torfs who has an amazing property filled with over 200 of his sculptures in the densely packed grounds out the back of his workshop. One of those places that you could go back to time and again and find something new on each visit. I managed to get quite a few good images of his people sculptures – some look almost lifelike.

After driving up and down the mountain for the two days beforehand and seeing some wonderful photo ops (tired kids don’t get the need for a photo op!), I decided to venture back up the mountain early Sunday morning to a lookout point that boasted a fantastic view back towards Marysville and Melbourne. I think it was about 4 degrees celcius when I got the point but the scenery didn’t disappoint. I snapped off a couple of quick frames and realised that my trusty D200 was disappointing me. A nasty black smudge was appearing on each frame I had taken – change of lens showed the smudge in the same spot; not good! I realised that something had gotten onto the sensor and I was not prepared to do major surgery in the back of the station-wagon half way up a mountain side. I did manage to salvage a shot that I quite like.

Apart from one of the kids being sick in the car on the way home (gotta love that smell), a good trip was had by all. I think I missed a few opportunities as a result of not bringing my tripod (something I realised about 45 minutes into the drive). Will just have to make the effort to head back again soon.

More ramblings soon…

Berk

There were a huge amount of police present for this game and their presence was seen very early on with Knights supporters asked to move to the other end of the ground away from the South Melbourne supporters. Everyone behaved from a spectator point of view which was good.

With the game underway I quickly got to shooting anything and everything. Whilst understanding the rules and knowing the general flow of the game I find myself struggling to stay up with the action in some cases. I guess I was trying to liken it to AFL shooting where I can predict the flow of the game and each play is a bit more smooth than soccer. I found the game would suddenly take off and I would miss a header or a kick that would have proved a great shot. Lessons well learned though which is all part of being a good sports photographer – understanding the sport you are shooting.

I eventually got into the swing of things and even managed to try out one of my newer lenses – the Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8. I’ve had this lens for a little while now but have not really had much of a play with it. I must admit I was very impressed. The focus was fast and the zoom dial very smooth and easy to turn. I was able to zoom into action as it moved away from me and keep the players framed without getting too much background in and the constant f2.8 is just awesome for keeping up the exposure the way you want it when zooming in and out. Highly recommended if anyone is in the market for a mid range zoom.

In the end I couldn’t let my trusty Sigma 300mm f2.8 prime go unused. The light began to fade but still some good action was played out right in front of me (one of the downfalls of a long prime is this type of action is hard to capture).

Please have a browse around the new site and come back regularly to see what we’re are up to.

More ramblings soon…