Abandoned Homestead

Last Wednesday night, I joined the team from www.creativephotoworkshops.com.au and had the opportunity to photography a couple of models around a 1859 blue stone cottage. It's been long abandoned and the sad thing is the wonderful government has acquired the land to build a freeway straight over this old cottage.

We had four models, Lauren Busacca, her cousin Daniel, Richard Connon and Natasha Humble. The light was simply beautiful as the location and it gave me a chance to experiment with different ideas I had in my head. With Lauren having a more summer dress on I thought I would photograph her with a lot of backlight, blowing the colour and contrast and ending up with what I call a Country Road type feel to the images, light, airy and fun.

Natasha came all dress in bridal gown and veil so this was a good opportunity to hone my wedding style shots. If only you could shoot wedding images in these locations with perfect light all the time. I've photographed Natasha before but being a landscape photographer this location had me jumping. You just can't beat a great location with perfect afternoon light.

Later as the sun went down was the perfect time to find a location to use the setting sun. Being a old farm are there were some great machinery that had seen better days but it made a great spot for a bridal shot.

This workshop had no theme, except a great location, great models and great light. I enjoyed this, makes you think more about the images you want and helps to stir the creative juices inside, after all your not always going to have a mentor, tudor next to you all the time. My mate Shelton has taught me so much in such a short period of time, more than any book, video or the internet will teach you.

Well thats about it for now, more images can be seen on my facebook account

Shooting the Elderly- A Lovely Experience

You know every now and then you do something that moves you inside and makes you look at things very differently than you normally would. Well Saturday was one of those days. How did this come about?

Shelton Muller is a guy I am so honored to call a friend, he's a great portrait photographer and a great mentor. He runs, with a business partner, Creative Photo Workshops and together they had an idea of shooting the residents of a aged carers home. Seemed like a nice idea so I thought that I'd join them and about 7 photographers and go a shoot at the home.

So off we went, all in the minibus and heading a couple of hours out of Melbourne to a small town called Benalla.

I'm not going to talk to much about what we set up and how we shot, but more how the experience effected me and the way I tried to shoot during the day.

I guess you can see through these couple of images that each one of the residents had their own personality and character, some a little shy, others maybe a little crazy but each one was very different.

One of the things that my friend Shelton seems to do very well is see and capture the heart and soul of a individual and translate this through their eyes and expression and then ultimately through the lens of his camera. I'm sure this comes from experience and is the one lesson I myself am working hard to achieve. These images I captured this day are the closest I have come to doing this. Each one tells a story of many years and it's this that has touched me in shooting these images.

I've already shot some nice models and enjoy that side of portraits as well, but this has been the most rewarding. These images are not posed, there not staged, they are natural, a little serious in some, a little fun in others and a little crazy in others but each one is special. Some of the residents laughed, others cried but every one of them enjoyed the special day.

Have to say thanks for those that organised this, thanks to my great mentor and I look forward so much to do this all again.

More images will be posted on my facebook page but here's one more laugh

Bruny Island, Tasmania

Wow what a busy last month, working in the retail camera business certainly gets out of control this time of year but it's all over now. As I haven't really been doing much in the last month I thought I'd just post a couple of pictures I took last year when I visited the southern area of Tasmania.

These were shot on Bruny Island. This is a great spot and well worth the visit. I'm a landscape nut and getting myself out of bed at stupidly early hours comes naturally. I was up again very early, jumped in our hire car and shot off to find a location for the sunrise I knew I'd get. I look for a clear horizon but with clouds in the sky, and this morning was perfect. 

I looked for the reflections in the water and exposed for the foreground reflection. This of course made the sky too bright and I used a

combination of Neutral Density filters to control the sky. I had a total of 4 stops of filters on this image.

This next image was shot within 5 minutes of the first image. This to me pinpoints the need to be patient and stay at a location until the morning light has finished (same applies at sunset).

Again I exposed for the foreground reflection and used a combination of Neutral Density filters to control the sky. This image had the camera swing a little more right than the first image. The clouds here really started to glow with the morning sun.
Now Bruny Island seems to be a spot a lot of people miss going to. It's on the western side of Hobart and you need to take a ferry trip to the island. My point about Bruny is, that while its not the most simple place to visit it has some very unique features. We took the charter tour around to the most southern area of the island. Well worth it and can highly recommend. You will see both Australian and NZ fur seals, as well as masses of sea birds, so take along a long lens. If you're really fortunate and go at the correct time of year, Southern Right Whales and maybe Humpbacks as well. We were about a month to early.

One other creature on Bruny Island and one I really wanted to find was the White Bennett's Wallabies. These are not Albino, being about 2 generations off we were told. Finding these wallabies isn't hard but they are only on the southern tip of the island, so be prepared to have a walk. These wallabies really show off the remoteness of the place as they have no natural predators. In fact I'm sure they also must not have the best eye sight as the one we found didn't hop away but came out and posed for us.

This was only a small part of our trip, more to come later, but I hope this gives you an insight into this wonderful island that if you plan a trip to Tasmania you will add this to your plans.

As another year comes to a close I hope you all had a great 2009 and lets look forward to what 2010 brings us.