Posted in General Ramblings, Outdoors on October 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Today was spent doing things with Barry… We drove around and did some shopping and generally just hanging out. While setting up the BBQ area, some Rainbow Loriketts dropped by for some water. I grabbed my camera and quickly took a few frames. Images below…
Rainbow Loriketts drinking water... taken on my 200mm lens.
A quick frame by Barry of me writing these posts. Taken on his 85mm F1.2 lens.
Posted in Flash, General Ramblings, Outdoors on October 11, 2009| 1 Comment »
The sun rises and it is a beautiful day here in Melbourne! Barry suggested we drive out into the country side… Barry knows best and off we went. Wow!!! The country side is so awesome around here. We drove through small towns and the views from the mountains were quite stunning. We travelled through the areas where those huge fires were about 8 months ago. Very sad to see these huge trees in a densely populated forest that had been burnt, but amazing to see Nature fight back with new growth.
We stopped by a remote coffee shop and had tea with scones in the wilderness. Very relaxing and a very nice place. Barry and I decided to get our cameras out for a few shots. We played with the dogs and had good fun with our cameras.
This is where we had tea and scones. Lovely garden...
The front of the cafe...
Playing "throw the stick" with the dogs.
Me taking photos of the garden. Photo by Barry Johnston.
After tea… we headed off again through the country side. Some really nice views…
A house off the main road... Driving through the country side, there are many houses off the main road like this.
A dam on route...
These trees are huge!!!! You can see the size of the car in front...
These roads are popular with motorcyclists.
There are S shaped roads at nearly every corner.
The trees on the right side of the frame are burnt and are showing signs of life once again.
A close up of a burnt tree. It feels strange to be standing in a spot where there was a raging bush fire with flames 60 meters above the trees!
Now for the fun part! Photography is a hungry and thirsty business! So off we went to a Brewery for a fresh pint of beer and a ploughman’s lunch. I looked around and thought, man we could take some nice images in the place. I spoke with the barmaid and asked if was okay to take a few pictures? Well… Out came all the toys!! Stands, umbrella, multiple flash units, cameras, the works!!!
But before we get to the flash shots… here are some normal shots of the location.
Where the beer gets made...
The bottling of the beer...
The White Rabbit Brewery. Barry getting the kit out of the 4x4...
Then it was time to setup the venue for the shots we had in mind. We setup 2 flashes to illuminate the background. Flash off steel edges works really well. A flash to the right, and a flash to the left. We setup another flash about 10 feet away from from the subject of the frame (i.e. one of us). The barmaid had gone home unfortunately 😦 She would have made a good model! 😉
Me reading a magazine called "Beer" 😉 hehehe Photo by Barry Johnston.
Barry is the model... 😉
Then it was time to head off again and stopped by some vineyards where some Australian wine is made.
Fields of grapes. I used a 3 stop Neutral Density Gradient filter to balance the exposure of the sky and ground.
I placed the sun in the top left corner deliberately in this frame.
Then we stopped by a small picnic area for a short moment and there were some Rainbow Loriketts birds. Very colourful!
Eastern Rosella's flying off...
Very tall trees!! Probably 50 meters...
Finally the day ended with meeting up with family. Kyle met Barry and I in Melbourne city center. We had a beer and a meal and chatted all night. We had a lot to catch up on…
Barry, me and Kyle in the JP O'Brian pub...
Kyle standing next to the good stuff 😉 I've been told that beer has all sorts of good things, like vitamins and minerals. 😉 hehehe
Posted in General Ramblings, Outdoors on October 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Today my photos are from my 3 mile walk into the town near where my cousin Barry lives. Let go…
Lovely dappled light covering the path I was walking on. The houses on the side of the street give you an idea of how the streets and houses are laid out.
Continuing my walk from the above shot...
The plants and flowers in the various gardens make a very pretty scene.
A playground area in the open spaces amongst the trees. Perhaps not visible in this shot, but there are homes within the trees also...
Dappled light on a small flower...
The steep inclines on my walk into the town.
A small water fountain in Eltham.
Where I had coffee...
Posted in General Ramblings on October 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
On Day 6, I met one of Barry’s friends, another photographer Marcela who runs a photography business (link). I spent the morning going over how I use Adobe Lightroom and how it simplified my workflow and in the afternoon, we just chatted about all things photography… yeah!! 🙂
For Day 7, I mostly chilled out and processed our images from Saturday (Day 5) and caught up with email etc… In the evening, I met an old friend of the family going right back to around 1977. Its amazing the stories of the old rhodesian days, crocodiles, the war, etc… Had a thoroughly good evening and enjoyed a few beers also…
Posted in Flash, General Ramblings, Outdoors on October 4, 2009| 6 Comments »
Day 5 started off with waking up very early! Just what I needed!! Not!
Barry suggested we head into Melbourne and go to a community festival. As it turned out, this was a big deal because a famous Australian cricketer, Merv Hughes (link) would be there. We got there with our cameras and Barry had brought the big guns! His 400mm F2.8 Canon lens. This lens is huge!!! Trust me when I tell you that everybody gets out of the way when this massive lens walks with you! So cool…
There was some Bollywood Indian dancing, food, bag pipes, dance music, etc… around the festival.
Here are some images from the festival…
Merv Hughes before he played a fun game of cricket with the community.
Shooting action shots is quite challenging. This was the best of the bunch. Merv Hughes about to catch the ball...
Hmm.. is this a confused Merv Hughes? Nah... 😉
Barry with his 400mm F2.8 Canon lens!
I love this frame because in the UK, it is now troublesome to photograph police officers. When I saw this view, I very quickly took the photo as it has police officers and a very big lens!! Obviously, its fine to photograph police officers in Australia as I wasn't arrested! ;-),
Indian Bollywood dancing...
Indian Bollywood dancing...
Indian Bollywood dancing...
Indian Bollywood dancing... Photo by Barry Johnston. Taken on a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N with a 400mm F2.8 lens.
Bag pipe band practicing.
Bag pipe band practicing.
After a very active shooting session, we headed back into down town Melbourne for something to eat (with a well deserved beer).
Barry and I having lunch...
After the pasta lunch, we headed over to 2 locations to shoot with flash. First up was a car park right opposite some of the large sky scrapers of Melbourne. We set up our gear and took a few frames.
Barry with the Melbourne sky scrapers.
Yes.. its a photo of me... 🙂 Photo by Barry Johnston.
Another more colourful photo of Barry.
All the above city shots were taken with Barry’s camera with a wide angle lens (16-35mm F2.8 L). Oh man… I really need one of these!!! My widest focal length is 24mm on a 1.6x cropped sensor which makes it around 38mm. 38mm is simply not wide enough for shots like this. Dam I need one!!!
We then headed over to some graffiti and only had time for a single setup. I’m sure we’ll go back there as there’s loads of other shots to be had. Barry asked a lady if she would pose for us and she happily accepted. Excellent as it makes much more interesting pictures than just Barry or I. Actually, there were about 3 or 4 wedding shoots at the same location.
Location photo 1. Photo by Barry Johnston.
Location photo 2. Photo by Barry Johnston.
Yip... its me again... Photo by Barry Johnston.
We got home and I was very tired! I had been up since 2:30am and by 8pm, I was finished. Time for sleep…
Posted in General Ramblings, iPhone, Lightroom on October 2, 2009| 1 Comment »
Today has been about catching up with Barry and of course “cameras” was a topical subject! 🙂 First we had breakfast at a lovely little place called “volumes”. They had a backdrop that would work great using a pair of flashes and a suitable model!! 😉 Then we popped over to the Apple store in a shopping center close by. Very nice!
The shopping center with the Apple Store. Photo taken with the iPhone.
Same location... Image processed with the Best Camera application on the iPhone. I deliberately went for an overexposed look.
Barry saw this guy sleeping in the chair and I couldn't resist not taking a photo of it! Image processed with Best Camera and Lightroom.
After the shopping center… we went off had coffee at a lovely location not far from Barry’s home. Definitely have to go back with my gear for a portrait session! So many photographic opportunities there!
This is where we had coffee. Image processed with Lightroom and a Wonderland preset (Creative Catalyst 11).
Posted in General Ramblings on October 1, 2009| 8 Comments »
September 29th (Day 1) was a very busy day! Getting up early and organizing the last minute things for my 3 month trip. Actually, its taken the best part of the last month getting things sorted! Preparing for a long trip like this takes a lot of planning. Booking the flights, booking accommodation, transferring money, getting travel visa’s, travel insurance, etc… the list goes on. All this might seem easy and individually look like small tasks, but in reality, all the small things add up. Getting my Philippine visa took 2 days in London for example.
Anyway, I digress, we got to the airport, checked-in, had coffee and my parents went on their way home. I was initially 2 Kgs overweight and that would have cost me £70! So I took out some goodies and all was ok-to-go. I flew from Manchester to London for the long hall flight to Sydney.
Unfortunately, the flight to Sydney was delayed 4.5 hours. We all got seated in the aircraft before a fault was discovered in engine number 3. After 1.5 hours, things were heating up! No air-con and the temp had risen to 30 degrees C. The pilot negotiated with Heathrow and we were all off. I was very impressed with the Qantas pilot. He kept us informed regularly about exactly what was happening. When we were all back in the departure lounge, a Qantas representative (looked like he may have been the co-pilot?) went to every single passenger and told them in person exactly what was happening and apologized. I’ve never seen this kind of attention to passengers ever when I’ve been on a delayed flight. Very impressed!!!!
The fault turned out to be an electronic controller for the bleed air system. Once this was replaced, all was good…
Day 2 was mostly sleeping during the flight. We stopped off in Bangkok for a few minutes before getting back on the aircraft and off to Sydney.
Day 3 was landing in Sydney. As the flight was delayed, it landed about 2 hours later than expected. Not too bad given how much the flight was delayed. However, this meant that my connecting fight to Melbourne was changed to depart at 10am (instead of 7:30am). Unfortunately, immigration and customs took over 2 hours and I missed my 2nd connecting flight. Immigration and customs was very tough! Nearly all my queue at immigration was sent for further questioning. I wasn’t, I went straight through… Customs was extremely tough!! I had to declare my asthma pumps (medicine) and the mints (food) I took from the refreshments on the aircraft. There was also notices that filming for an Australian TV show on border security was taking place.
The crew and service on the Qantas flights was superb!
Getting to Melbourne from Sydney was a little more problematic. As I had missed 2 connecting flights, getting a seat on another flight was difficult. There was exactly one seat left to get to Melbourne (at 4:30pm) for the whole day. My cousin Barry picked me up from the airport and we chatted all the way home. I’m glad to have finally got here and look forward to spending some quality time with family.
Posted in General Ramblings on September 2, 2009| 3 Comments »
Welcome to my blog!
I’m a photographer in mid-Wales in the United Kingdom and I’ll be blogging my photographic journey… I’ve decided to start this blog for a few reasons. Firstly, I’ll be travelling aboard soon for a while and wanted a way of documenting my experience. Secondly, having a photo blog will force me to keep focused on taking photos, hopefully good ones!
So what do I write about in my first post? How about… how I started down this photographic road? Yeah.. that sounds like a good idea! Let’s go for it…
How did it start?
I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, but I never knew anything technical and used Nikon point-and-shoot cameras for everything. The camera went everywhere with me (on my belt buckle) and got the occasional lucky photograph that was really worth keeping. Well… it all came crashing down on October 26th 2007. We had put on a surprise 50th Birthday party for my brother and all of us took pictures all night with our point-and-shoot cameras. On the Saturday morning, we looked at all the pictures and they were all crap! I simply said, “that’s it! I’ve had enough”. That very morning, I found an article on the Internet that spoke in laymen’s terms (but in enough detail) about Canon lenses. I spent a few hours reading the article to ensure I really understood as I didn’t know anything about lenses… (here is the link) I reviewed my choices over the next few days with my cousin Barry Johnston in Australia who is also a photographer (and has shot many sporting events professionally – including cricket matches such as South Africa vs. Australia). With Barry’s guidance… I was happy with what I was about to purchase. Exactly a week later, I received my first delivery of £1,900 worth of camera equipment on November 3rd 2007. This is what I got:
My next steps was to get some general guidance on all aspects of photography. A friend in work lent me his Scott Kelby book titled, “The Digital Photography Book” (link). This was immediately useful and I bought my own copy. My next purchase was “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson (link). This was the corner stone for me as it really introduced me to some useful metering techniques. The next book was “Learning to See Creatively” also by Bryan Peterson (link). These books set the foundation for all my next adventures. I have bought many books since then. Most have been very useful…
Also at this time, I started following professional photographer blogs. Scott Kelby (link), Joe McNally (link), David Ziser (link) to name a few… This was a hugely rewarding exercise!
So what happened after you started taking photos?
You are so happy when you take your first few photos! I can say looking back in time, they were not that great at all… but… it’s a necessary step to getting better! The first 7,000 frames was about getting to know my camera and its settings. I would shot anything! The camera was with me at ALL times. I’d stop off on the side of the road and take a picture of something, or some swans in a river, a landscape, friends and family down the pub or on an outing somewhere… I tried taking photos in as many different lighting conditions as possible. The real key was having a mentor! I have a lot to thank Barry for… the number of appalling photos (which I was quite happy with at the time) that Barry must have received during that time! He always took the time to explain in detail how I could have taken the shot better. His mentoring is always inspirational and never demoralizing.
The next step forward was flash. I purchased my equipment when I thought I was ready for the next step. Around March/April 2008 I purchased a Canon 580EX Mk II speedlite. This changed everything! From knowing nothing about flash, you realize how hard it is to work with. Even with books, I was going nowhere fast. So I purchased David Hobby’s DVD seminar (8 DVDs – link) which was the best thing ever! He’s goes through the theory of flash light and he often repeats what he’s trying to say in different ways until you understand it. What I learnt from these DVDs I carry with me always. In case you’re not aware, David Hobby started the “strobist” community of working with small flashes (link).
I took around 5,000 frames using flash to understand it better… to the point I could take a reasonable picture (well… at least by my early standards of my ability).
The gear?
Well… once I started getting better, you buy a whole load of equipment!!! Stands, umbrella’s, backgrounds, support systems, reflectors, well… let’s just say simply, you tend to get everything (almost – within reason). You try it out and get some nice results. You try different things and you learn a lot!
By the summer of 2008, I was getting infinitely better results! I’m sure my mentor Barry must have been relieved! I was reading books everyday, reading blogs everyday, and trying stuff out everyday! You could say it was studying full time (except I was actually working as a software engineer during the day). But the evenings were packed with studying…
By November, I purchased a Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM lens and a Canon 430EX Mk II speedlite (my second flash). You could say that getting this batch of equipment was when I decided that this was a commitment and a move towards my goals of going “pro” at some point.
The Lovegrove moment!
One day in mid-November 2008, a friend in work pointed out this blog that I might find interesting – http://www.prophotonut.com. This changed everything!!! A lot of the photos I wished I could take were taken by photographers in the America. I hadn’t actually found a photographer in the UK whose photos I desired… Until this moment! AND… this chap Damien Lovegrove did training!!! I knew instantly I wanted to go on a workshop with him. But… I believed I was not ready for such training by a photographer such as Damien Lovegrove… that’s when I decided I had to get even more serious which (in part) lead to my decision to get the 70-200mm F2.8 lens and a second flash. My evenings were already packed with studying this stuff, but I doubled my efforts and I literally went as far as books could take me.
To be very honest… I was very excited and quite nervous by the time the 28th April 2009 came round. Damien usually takes 4 delegates on his workshops and I was not a professional photographer. I was nervous about being in the company of 3 other professionals and I would look like a desperate wan-a-be amateur photographer. Damien says on his business website “Maintaining the gap between the professional image makers ability and that of the keen amateur has never been more important”. I completely agree with this statement. It offered reassurance of what I was getting into, but it was also a little scary…
The 28th April started out by meeting up with everybody in a coffee shop in Bristol. Damien was very friendly and so were the other 3 delegates. By the time I had my coffee, I couldn’t see the fuss about being nervous! Everybody was very friendly and we got on just great! We walked out of the coffee shop and not even 4 meters out the door, Damien quickly pointed out an aspect of lighting. I knew that the day was going to be packed with information! I can’t remember how many different setups we photographed that day, probably 20 different setups around the Bristol Harbour. I can remember one of the other delegates, Rory, saying after he took a frame with Damien’s guidance, “yeah!!! that’s what we paid £400 for!”… If Rory didn’t say it, I was going to! In fact, I had many such moments through the day.
The biggest impact that I got from this day was learning to “see”… This is something that cannot be taught through books. Damien shares his camera techniques and is very generous with information. This is why I will go back again and again for more of his workshops. His Prophotonut blog makes much more sense to me now that I’ve been on one of his workshops. My photography is obviously influenced by what I learnt both in natural lighting and flash.
Out of the 4 delegates, 3 of us are in constant contact sharing each other’s experiences since the Urban Portrait workshop. You can see Ian’s website here (http://ianfreelance.com/).
This is the link to the shots that Damien took on the 28th April on his prophotonut blog.
What’s next?
I will soon be on my way on some overdue travels to see my cousin and mentor Barry in Melbourne. Then on to Brisbane to see my brother and family. Then finally to Boracay Island in the Philippines.
Although I’m still fairly new at this (just 2 years)… I feel that I have come a long way forward and feel that I can hold my own.
Photo Rebel 