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.

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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.

A Mo for a cause

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.

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Fstoppers has produced a fantastic interview and behind the scenes (BTS) video with New York head shot photographer Peter Hurley. Peter has built a name for himself over the last 8 years by specialising in headshot photography and currently works out of two studios; one in LA and the other in midtown NYC.

I find it particularly interesting  to see how Peter interacts with his subjects. He oozes with confidence and maintains a running banter with his subjects that enables him to put them at ease and capture a relaxed and engaging expression in his images.

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Alasdair is a friend of mine who is leaving the shores of New Zealand to spend a few years living back in his homeland of whisky, tartan skirts and roasted sheep’s guts; yip, he’s heading to Scotland. I caught up with Alasdair for a beer before he headed off and took the opportunity to take some urban portraits while we were out.

We stopped for a beer at His Lordships – a really neat little place in SOL square, which is styled as a historic English pub. SOL Square is one of the collections of lane-ways within Christchurch that has been gentrified. These areas makes for great photographs and I have blogged about similar urban portraits that I have taken here before.

EF28-70mm f/2.8 L lens at ISO800, f/2.8, 1/160. Ambient light only.

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Lens Flare is your friend. Point your camera in the direction of the sun and see what happens.

Sharon and I were out on a portrait shoot this evening. When we arrived home the sun was setting at the end of our street casting long shadows and awesome bright sun streaks along the pavement and down the street. We took the opportunity to take a few portraits against the fence outside our house.

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I have posted images of Seb on my blog before. He’s the child of some good friends Dave and Jos and he really is an especially cute child.

These images were taken in November last year, but I had not looked through all of them until now. I was shooting with my partner Sharon, and we were wanting to capture images of Seb in his home environment. You can see some images created on the same day by Sharon on her blog.

This was a really fun shoot. Seb was relaxed in his familiar surroundings, and it was fantastic to be able to capture images of him interacting with his parents and just generally playing and having a good time.

Whilst working inside, an SB26 flash was wirelessly triggered and bounced off the ceiling to supplement the ambient light and provide fill. The key light is still provided by light coming through nearby windows. The images taken outside were created using available light only.

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Christchurch is a fantastic city. With a population of around 380,000 it’s fairly small by global standards, but New Zealand is not a very big place. Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island and is the second largest in the country after Auckland with a population of 1.3 million.

Over the last several years, Christchurch has undergone a significant amount of gentrification. This has led to a large number of alleyways and old buildings being revamped – which is great for us photographers!
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These images are from earlier last year. My parents are currently trekking around Australia driving a giant Ford F350 dually (dual back wheels) with a 23 foot Bush Tracker in tow. This rig allows them to be self sufficient and to head off road into some of the more remote parts of Australia – pretty awesome!

Last year they hopped over to New Zealand to come for a short visit with us in Christchurch. I took the opportunity to get a few nice images of them while they were here. Hopefully we will get to go spend some time with them in the Australian outback with the Bush Tracker sometime soon, and then I will be able to post up some images from that.

These images were taken in the lounge at home using two speedlight softboxes, further technical info is below the images.

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Sharon and I have both been swing dancing for about 5 years. There is a regular dance scene in Christchurch where we go out and dance on a weekly basis. We teach for the local Swing Dance club for large group classes, as well as private teaching for individual couples who are planing a dance for their wedding, or for those who just want to learn how to dance!

Occasionally, you will also find Sharon and I performing as Sweet ‘n’ Hot. We do dance performances for corporate events and private parties. There is a bunch more information and some awesome photos and videos on our website www.sweetnhot.co.nz – go take a look!

Every year, the local swing dance club organises a weekend away at Hanmer Springs. The weekend is aptly named ‘Hanmer Swings’ for obvious reasons. Hanmer is a really neat place and it is less than 2 hours drive from Christchurch. Hanmer’s claim to fame is natural thermal pools – which are fantastic. Many hours can be lost soaking in the hot water.  Hanmer is also a great place to go walking and mountain biking and draws large crowds of tourists seeking to experience New Zealand. Our weekend away involves a lot of dancing to live bands, hanging out in the sun and soaking in the hot pools. It is always a fun weekend away.

This year we took my camera along and took some photos at the Friday night dance. The Friday night dance is smaller because people are still arriving. It is held is a small hall and we dance to recorded music (rather than on the Saturday night where we have a large dance in the town hall with Sideline Swing, a 16 piece big band.)

Here are the images that I created. Technical / Strobist info is below the images.

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Sharon and I joined our friend Jos and her child Seb to go on an adventure to feed the ducks. We organised to meet in the botanical gardens in Hagley park – which is the main central park in Christchurch. The park is, most importantly, abundant with ducks who are all eager to be feed – although, what duck isn’t?

Seb is one of the cutest kids you will ever meet so we took along the camera to grab some photos while we were out. Seb is just over one year old now and he has recently begun walking, so it was quite entertaining to watch him totter around after the ducks.

All the images below are shot on the Canon 5D with the 50mm f/1.4 lens and ambient light only. All images are shot between f/3.5 and f/5 on ISO800.

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