A rushed visit... and almost no noise...

Hey there everyone and welcome to another brief blog posting by yours truly. This week saw the Brownes Every Woman Expo back at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre.

I had hoped to get along to a few different parades that were on show during the Expo but alas my schedule had other ideas. So as it ended up I was only able to attend on Friday evening for an hour or so before having to head off again.

It was great to see the girls and guys from Metro Modelling Academy back again, and I was able to re-connect with a few old friends and models that I hadn’t seen for ages; so that was cool. It was also great to see that this year the organisers had finally got their acts together and they set up lighting for the shows that actually made the models look good.

In previous years the lighting had been everything from inadequate to down-right unflattering. One year I even resided to bringing my own studio lighting with me just so I wouldn’t be stuck with the awful ambient light “show”. This year however, they had set up flood lights pointing right down the barrel of the runway. And they had also thankfully gotten rid of those awful and large LED multi-colored floods along the length of the runway. But anyway, enough of that for now.

Now I realize that these images are by no means ground breaking. They’re pretty average actually. Let me qualify that. They are an accurate representation of the evening by the way the models have been captured. And I am proud to admit that I have not altered these images at all from how they came out of my Nikon D3s. Another qualification is required here for obvious reasons. Yeah I have resized them for this blog and applied my watermark – but that’s it – hand on heart.

Thankfully, because the organisers had got the lighting spot on, I was able to shoot the whole show in manual mode, 1/250^th second shutter speed, f/4.0 @ ISO1600. Oh, I had my Nikon AF-S 70-200mm G ED VRII lens, with the VR turn on, of course. In previous years I had to switch between manual and aperture priority depending on the particular show I was shooting and how the stage lighting was behaving. It really was like trying to shoot a rock concert with all the flashing lights and the stage going light – dim – light – dim; well you get the idea. But yeah, take a look at the images; they're pretty squeaky clean considering they were shot at ISO 1600.

Anyway, it was a great (albeit short) night and I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see more shows. But hopefully my schedule won’t be quite as busy next year huh. Take care everyone, keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you all soon.

Are you feelin' it...

Well hey there everyone and welcome to another thrilling blog post. Tonights installment comes to you via my iPad and a really big cup of coffee. Who said this little device was only good for watching movies? Shame on you!

Ok, to tonights topic. I have been thinking about a bunch of topics to share with you all; I even went as far as to make out a list so I wouldn't forget them (yeah, I made the list on my iPad also lol) but this topic wasn't one of them.

You see, as some of you may know we recently ran an online promotion that ended up getting a pretty good response. We were targeting Mr & Mrs Joe Public and their family to come on down to our little studio and have some portraits taken. Now, this usually creates all sorts of reactions from those participating in the shoot, from feeling a little nervous to being downright terrified. We've all seen it from our side of the lens or experienced it first hand as the subject of said portraits.

Now, as a quick questionnaire, who here has heard the saying "the camera doesn't lie"? One of my favorite quotes comes from the uber successful commercial photographer Chase Jarvis who says (and I'll paraphrase a little bit here for the sake of time) that as photographers, all we are - when it's all said and done - are button pushing monkeys. Sure, we can be lighting geniuses', creative guru's and technical experts, but it all comes back to that one thing - we push that little shutter button and we make a picture. But a picture of what? Just think about that for minute...

This applies whether it was a day like mine today which was full of portraits with people that (some of them) would rather be sitting in a dentists chair or if you are photographing some famous model to go into [insert glamorous label here] magazine spread. If your subject isn't "feeling it", it is never going to happen. You can take a picture, sure, but is it one that is representing your subject in the best possible manner?

So, how can we make our subjects relax, or make them get into a frame of mind that will produce a great looking image? For me, I have found that communication is the key. And by that I mean communication on all levels. If someone is feeling really nervous, it's pretty easy to tell huh, in fact most people will just come right out and say it to your face. Let me tell you, thats not really a great way to start a shoot!

It's right about then that I go into my talking mode. I'll spend the first half an hour of the shoot just chatting with them. Asking where there from, what they do, how their day has been and so on. Then we go through, in detail, exactly what I'm going to be doing, showing them how the lights are going to flash and so on. And I'll be really enthusiastic about it. Remember, we are selling the sizzle, not the sausage here. If you are really psyched to be doing the shoot for them and excited about getting some nice shots, 99.99% of the time your subjects will get in on the act. Be enthusiastic, even over the top (without being obnoxious about it) and you will be amazed with the results.

I'll finish with this little story of what happened to me. About 15 years ago I won a photoshoot at a studio in Brisbane where I was living at the time. I was nervous as all hell I can tell you. Anyway, I took my girlfriend along and off we went. I was actually hoping that most of the photos would be of her so I didn't have to participate. So we get into the guys studio. There were lights and soft boxes everywhere. It's all second nature to me now, but back then, not so much. He sat us down in the middle of the studio and turned the lights on and we sat there with the preverbal "deer in the headlights" blank looks on our faces. Then the lights went off, he took a photo and we survived it. Wow, who would have thought! And then he took another, and another. We started to really get into it and have some fun. After about 15 minutes of this he stopped and said "ok, I'm just gonna put some film in the camera now, and we'll get started..." That guy knew what he was doing.

Wow, that was quite a ramble. I'm done for now. Take care, keep shooting what you love and I'll talk to you soon.