My Twenty-Cent's Worth

When I was looking for a new 'point and shoot' for the times when the lovely-but-large Nikon D300s is too inconvenient to lug, Canon's cameras stood out from the crowd. After reading the forums, it was a toss-up between the S90 and the G11... I was almost ready to flip a coin, 'cos I couldn't decide from reading the tech-specs alone... but when I held them side-by side in the store and popped off a few test shots, the superb macro capability of the Canon G11 won me, hands down!

Platform 2, Central Railway Station:

The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Grandmothers Grandsons

Photoshop Post-Production

After reading an article on New Photo Pro Blog today about Photoshop Post-Production, I was inspired to give it a go and deepen my (currently ripple-thin) understanding of Layers. I took some lovely textured art papers, scanned them into jPegs and then spliced them in Photoshop with some of the images we made on the shoot with Melinda. I feel like I learned some useful things. Here's my first three pieces:

Tonya and Jess - Happy Valentines!

Here's a really sweet portrait of Tonya and Jess, from a photoshoot we did at Coogee Beach.

Picture Postcard Family Photoshoot

My friends asked me if I could do a family photoshoot so they could share some pictures with their family and friends. So we went to Bicentennial Park at Homebush where the kids could run around with lots of lovely peaceful landscaping. The day was over-cast, making perfect soft light for portraits. I worked this one in Lightroom to create a 'post-card' effect. Thank you my dear friends, for such a fun day and for making such beautiful and heart-warming photos!

Family Photoshoot

Family Photoshoot - Jenni

Family Photoshoot - Emma

Wise Eyes

Scooter!

Flash-Test Dummy

Determined to learn how to use off-camera flash, I enlisted 'My Li'l Helper' - the child mannequin I got 20 years ago from the closing-down sale for a children's clothing store. Usually she works as a hat-stand for my Vietnamese farmer's hat, but tonight, we ran a brush thru her 'Ranga wig and voila! a model that will stand still while I move the lights around.

So for this exercise, I actually read the manual (yes, really!) and discovered how I can use the built-in flash on the Nikon D300s as the commander, so that the SB900 flash will act as a wireless 'off-camera' remote light source. The trick to it is to go into the camera's flash menu, select commander mode and then dial the on-camera flash down to -- and set the off-camera flash setting on TTL (through-the-lens) way up, to around +3. Then flip the switch on the off-camera flash to commander mode also, and you're ready to go. I played around with various positioning, pointing the flash vertically straight up at the ceiling to bounce the light, or angling at 45 degrees, and then placing it at different places around the model: on the floor, on a table, left, right, front, behind. Here's a few frames - the last one I ran thru Lightroom to get the 'Sigorney Weaver / Alien' effect. So now I think I'm good-to-go with some real children! - which is just in the nick of time, as I have a family photo-shoot booked for next weekend - wish me luck!

Elsewhere - An ABC Radio Travel Programme

ABC Radio National has a new Travel programme in the making called Elsewhere, presented by writer Beth Yahp to broadcast every Saturday at 4pm. Beth asked me to make her a head-shot suitable for the web-page, so it was a great opportunity to test out my new glamour Ray Flash extension - and I'm impressed!

The Elsewhere programme details can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/elsewhere/about/
The program comprises documentaries, features, interviews, readings, performances and talks drawn from ABC Radio's vast back catalogue, but will also include new work, blogs and essays from travellers near and far.

For those keen on tech specs:
Camera: Nikon D300s
Lens: Sigma 150mm macro at f3.
Flash: Nikon SB900 Speedlight on-camera with Ray Flash extender.

Here's a Ray Flash video link, if you want to see the flash unit in action - the ring light info is about half-way through the video. It is available in Australia from DCW in Canterbury.

Photoshoot for Melinda McDonald

The 2010 Portrait Project got off to a great start. Jeremy was in town for the weekend so we met my friend Melinda at Coogee Beach at 6.30am and the 'paparazzi' got going! Melinda was keen to have some portraits made for her web-page for her work as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine. She was a fabulous model, keeping her serene smile glowing for the whole two hours, all the while experimenting with different styles and settings. Here's a handful of the day's best:

2009 Wrap-up! and Plans for 2010

Here's a mosaic of my best 16 portraits from 2009 - a tase of things to come via my Big Plans for 2010.

The creative agenda is for 2010 to be a year of portraits.

So hear ye, hear ye, friends, Romans, Country/Citypeople: step right up, get your portraits while they're hot! (and for a limited time, free). I've lined up a bunch of friends to model, (don't be shy, there's still room for more!!) and a loose collection of keen and like-minded photographers, and we're ready to start rolling early in the new year.

So Watch This Space...!

Afro Moses Concert Sydney Opera House

The multi-talented Brad Robinson of FIG also moonlights as the guitarist in the Afro-Moses Band. They recently had a series of gigs at the Sydney Opera House, playing back-to-back concerts to large groups of two, three, four and five - year-olds in a kind of African version of The Wiggles. They invited me to make pictures during some of their concerts. I lacked a really fast lens, so some shots are a bit fuzzier than I'd like, but the energy of the performers more than made up for it.

The Afro-Moses band members include:

Afro Moses Baidoo singer/ leader
Sibo Bangoura on percussion/ djembe drum
Wendy Anggerani on keyboards
Aicha Keita dancer Rebecca Bryen dancer/ singer
Victor “Worldwide” on drums
Junichi Shiomi on bass
Bradford Robinson guitar.