You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything new on this website or blog for a while. Well, there’s a good reason for that. I’ve been busy building or new website for our new joint photography brand – Image Workshop, which is operated by myself and Sharon Blance.
The website is now live at www.imageworkshop.com – please head on over and take a look!
Friday Five is a roundup of inspirational tutorials, articles and videos that I stumble across in my everyday browsing.
This week, a look at the work of Chris Crisman and see what grandma can do in the Mamika series. A look also at some great sports silhouette’s by Cole Barash, a TED talk by Chris Orwig on The Poetics of Pictures and some black and white technique via Chase Jarvis.
Enjoy!
Every year, we go away to Hanmer Springs for an annual Swing Dance social event. Part of this weekend away always entails a dress up theme for the main Saturday night dance, and this year the theme was ‘dress as your teenage self’.
Now this is a theme which is guaranteed not to disappoint! We decided to take along the camera, and not miss out on the opportunity for some great photos.
Swing Dancing is a partner dance that was the predominant dance craze through the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Sharon and I are both avid swing dancers, and we teach at the local public swing classes as well as taking our own private classes and swing dance performances. (On a side note, we will be teaching and performing at the upcoming Jambalaya festival in March 2011, so if you are in Auckland around that time you should come along!)
The local swing dance club here in Christchurch is called The Swingtown Rebels. The picture on the right here is a picture I took of Sarah and Becky, who run the club. Sharon gave this image the royal rebel treatment, and I think that the end result is awesome.
If you look carefully, you will find a picture of me in the photos below… but I am not telling you which one is me – you will have to guess.
It’s that time of year again, where I seem to be met by an unusually high number of scraggly looking men with scruffy facial hair and fu manchu moustaches.
If you don’t know what I am talking out – it’s Movember. Each year, Movember is the excuse used by men around the world to grow facial hair – much to the general disgust of their wives or girlfriends who have to walk around with him whilst he proudly struts his Mo.
Luckily, it’s all in the name of a good charity and secretly I think the ladies like a little bit of facial hair (if only a little bit). Those partaking in the facial-hair-fun are encouraged to seek donations from friends and family to help raise funds for mens health. In New Zealand, the money goes to mental health and prostate cancer awareness, amongst other men’s health related things.
I have been a part of Movember in the past, but this year I have not let my facial hair run wild; however, a group of people that I work with have been hard at work growing some fancy Mo’s.
Today is the last day for Movember, so I gathered the team together to take some portraits of the finished moustaches.
Sharon and I have recently returned from a 3 week adventure in North Vietnam. Vietnam is a crazy place. The culture is radically different to that of the west and our visit through Vietnam was met with a mixture of amazement, fascination and frustration.
The primary reason for our visit to Vietnam was for a holiday – to experience a different culture and to feed our adventurous side. The last 18 months have been pretty tough for us, with a sick family member necessitating numerous long and stressful trips half way across the globe. Vietnam was an opportunity for us to go away and have a little fun.
Today we were rudely awoken at 4:35am by a massive earthquake here in Christchurch, New Zealand. We were lucky and our house did not sustain any massive damage – and thank god we had left sandbags on the studio lights!
All the camera gear is stored on a shelf about 5 feet off the ground. The 70-200mm f2.8 had taken a tumble, but looks like the lens is OK. Luckily the rest of the gear did not fall off the shelf!
We took a walk through town, and there are a number of buildings that did not fair too well - mostly old brick buildings, which is really sad. At the end of this post are some of the photos I took during a walk through town this morning. My Partner Sharon has also posted images she took on her blog.
So far there have been no reported fatalities, which is a miracle considering the amount of damage. We were very lucky.
Friday Five is a roundup of inspirational tutorials, articles and videos that I stumble across in my everyday browsing.
Recently I assisted my partner Sharon Blance with a photo-shoot to create promotional dance images for Jess, who is a swing dancer.
The photo-shoot was really fun and Sharon produced some amazing images – you can see all the final images over on her blog.
On her blog, she has included extra information about the purpose of the photo-shoot and the specific goals that needed to be achieved with the final images – it is well worth a read.
During the photo-shoot I filmed a bunch of BTS footage to capture details about the setup and how Sharon interacts with the dancers to achieve a really polished end result.
In my opinion, having the right gear and knowing how to setup the lights and use the gear is only a small part of what is needed to create amazing photography.
This short really drives home the point that you don’t have to have all the latest and greatest gear to produce something great. What really matters is your creative vision and how you use it.
The HD video below was shot and edited entirely on the new iPhone 4. The video also includes some behind the scenes footage so that you can see how they did it.
I was impressed with the professional result that they achieved. Why is it so good – is it because it is shot with high definition video? Not really. It works because it has a good story, good acting and an emotive score. But the thing that makes it looks professional – and sets it apart from the video that you shot on your iPhone – is that they handled the equipment professionally – using dollies, panning and interesting camera perspectives that give the video that polished professional edge.
Sometimes I look out the window and see amazing clouds and feel a compulsion to photograph them. This was one of these days. The clouds had a sense of drama and an ominous dark quality to them. I grabbed my camera and took a walk around the block down past a local park and grabbed a few interesting pictures along the way. This is the result. The images are all shot on the canon wide angle 17-40mm f4 L lens on a 5D. I have used Photoshop to do selective highlighting and darkening and in some cases have blended 2 bracketed images to retain the details.
