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.

A little "heads up"...

Hey everyone

Remember how I said that I had finally reached a gap in my schedule that would allow me a little time off and give me the opportunity to blog a bit more, make some more videos and share a bunch of stuff? Well, um… d’oh…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really loving the fact that my photography business has blossomed so much. I’m even more loving that fact that we have morphed our business from one very specific genre to become the one-stop-shop for photography. Call us “generalists” if you will. I love the diversity, the challenge and the rewards when I produce some really nice images for my clients.

The downside is that my spare time at the end of the wedding season has gone by the wayside. I find myself looking for alternative means to catch up on stuff, to keep up with the game. Which is a lame kind of segway into this blog post…

I just wanted to let you all know about a really cool weekly webcast by Scott Kelby and crew at Kelby Media called The Grid. It’s a live weekly webcast as I mentioned, so it actually airs at midnight here in Australia. Don’t fret however, you can download it free on iTunes and watch it later, which is what I do. It’s a really cool show, with lots of interesting topics and some great giveaways. Have a look.

Ok, that’s it for now. Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.

How well can you drive?

Well well well – just when you thought it was safe – I’m baaaack! So how have you all been? Man it’s been a while huh?

I’m finally getting the chance to come up for air for the first time in almost four months; and what a four months it’s been. A dozen weddings, a couple of dozen commercial shoots (where we were hired to photograph anything and everything from multi-million dollar properties to swimwear models on the beach to wood panel flooring) all topped off with a liberal serving of portrait and portfolio shoots. Never a dull moment.

In fact if I had to sum up this last four months with a single word, it would be “diversity”. This word is one that a lot of photographers are trying to avoid recently, and some at great length. There is good theory behind this aversion. That being, your clients need to know that you specialise in a particular genre of photography. This is all well and good, but it can be limiting at the same time.

Yeah sure, let your clients know that you will only pick up your camera if there is a newborn baby involved, or you will only make yourself available to shoot weddings. But is this really the kind of message you want to be pushing – to everyone? I mean at the end of the day, it’s all just photography right? Yes, there are different nuances that only work in one situation or another, but as best as I can figure these nuances come down to the way you interact with the client or subject. But as for the photography; the exact rules apply from one situation to another. Unless you are a superhero the laws of light and physics do not really differentiate between a plank of wood or a blushing bride.

“So what’s the key then huh?” I can hear you asking. Again, as best as I can figure it – the key to the whole shebang is knowing how to get the end result before you take the first shot. Otherwise known as know your gear inside-out, especially your camera. And know your technique even better.

I’ve had the benefit of seeing this first hand recently by way of the fact that I have had more new assistants working with me, all with varying degrees of confidence and ability. The most important thing I tell them is that when they are thinking about the shot they are trying to get, you need to know, well, how to get there. This directly translates to knowing how to drive your camera to steer the image in the direction that you want it to go.

Take a look at your camera. Do you know what all, I mean all the buttons, dials, knobs and control wheels do? And even if you do, how often do you use them? Know how to drive your camera and you will be ok. But if you don’t know how to, how will you be able to respond to a clients wishes or artistic direction?

Ok, that’s enough of a rant for me for now. Gotta ease back into these things you know... The more open minded of you out there will realise that I am being slightly facetious and maybe just a little bit general here but in essence I stand by my thoughts.

Keep shooting what you love and keep your eye out for more blog posts coming to a computer monitor near you.

A quick video...

Hiya everyone. I hope you are all off to a flying 2011 and having lots of fun along the way. This is just a quick little blog post tonight for the purposes of sharing a video I created the other week about how to use the new PocketWizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 ControlTL (i-TTL) triggers with your Nikon cameras and flashes. Without further ado, have a look at the video...

So there you go. It's all pretty straight forward in principle, and the triggers are accompanied by the most concise, straight forward and logical instruction manuals that I have had the pleasure of reading. Nice one PocketWizard.

All in all, there's some pretty cool technology here. In fact, it is a little easy to use the triggers in i-TTL mode all of the time, albeit at the expense of potentially frying your flashes if they are working hard to overcome bright sunlight for long periods of time. It is for this reason that I am hanging out for the AC3 Zone controller to be released.

I probably should preface that a little bit first. You see, what I meant to say is that instead of leaving the flashes in i-TTL mode all the time on a bright sunny day, the more efficient and friendly thing to do would be to set the flashes to manual mode, meaning that they do not have to work nearly as hard during the shoot due to the fact they no longer have to emit all those power sapping, flash-tube heating pre-flashes all the time.

This would usually entail walking over to the flashes, setting them to Manual output and then play a little dance up and down the power scale of the flash until you get the output correct for your camera's exposure settings, all the while walking backward and forwards from flash to camera position to keep re-checking the images before you are satisfied. The AC3 allows you to do all that right from your camera position. Cool.

But this is supposed to be a quick blog post so I think I'll leave it there for now. We got a few interesting projects coming down the pipeline so I'll keep you all posted about them as they occur - I don't wanna jinx myself!

Take care for now, keep shooting what you love and I'll talk to you soon.

Images revisited... and forgetting stuff...

Well hello boys and girls and welcome to another quick little blog post. I have to be honest and say that this blog would have been up several hours ago if it weren’t for a little mishap on my behalf…

You see, I have been posting these blogs from my favourite café for a little while now. I usually prep all the image files on my workstation PC at home; upload all the images to Blogger and copy all of the HTML code to a notepad file for re-arranging later. I then dump the lot onto a thumb drive and head to aforementioned café to relax, drink some coffee and arrange all the stuff into a (hopefully) meaningful format for this blog.

So there I was, sitting in my comfy seat at the café, laptop booting up ready for action, I reached into my laptop bag to retrieve the thumb drive only to realise it was still in my PC at home. Bugger. Oh well, at least I got to sit in the cool air-conditioning and watch the world go by for half an hour or so and just chill. So, not a total waste of time after all.

Anyway, to the images accompanying this post. I have been meaning to get around to posting some of the images I took at the various shows for this year’s Perth Fashion Festival, but time and clients always managed to get in the way of my good intentions. Well, seeing as I have had literally a couple of days off I took the initiative and prepped some images from the Re-Style show. I thought a lot of them looked a little familiar so I had a look on my Facebook Page and I realised that I had actually posted a few already from this show over there.

Not to worry – the images on FB were quickly thrown on to the net not long after the show, so you can think of these as a bit of a remaster of sorts. I guess I just like the portraiture aspect of these images, rather than them being just the standard full length head-to-toe fashion cliché shot of a model on a runway. Oh, the reason the show was called "Re-Style" is because all of the clothing was purchased at recycled clothing stores; you know, Vinnes, the Salvo's and so on. That’s it.

I’ll be posting a few more shows online soon, as well as sharing a few images from some great weddings we have done recently, and finally I am being hounded to put some new videos onto our YouTube channel; so keep an eye out for them. Of course I’ll post the videos on here too.

Which brings up a good point actually. If you want to see anything, have a technique explained or you have any questions at all, please keep sending us email to timography@iinet.net.au. Until I see you next time, keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon. Oh, and happy new year!

Oh, and just to check to see if you made it all the way to the end of this blog post... I tried something a little different with the color toning of these images. I'm interest to know what you think... or if you even noticed... Please let me know!