Saturday, April 26, 2008

First Wedding

Looks like I've booked in my first wedding (!!!). I responded to an ad in the All Classifieds photography section, and quoted the very cheap price of $500 to photograph the whole wedding and post process about 20 photos. Obviously, that price is not going to cover my time but the couple are willing to give me a go as they can't afford an established wedding photographer. This will certainly help me build up my portfolio - I'm really looking forward to it, but it's going to be scary too!

Brandy Flat Hut

This is the first excursion I've done (not as part of a group) where I've specifically gone somewhere to take photos. Everything else, so far, has been taking photos opportunistically :)



Hind and I drove to the Namadgi Visitors Centre and enquired about huts in Namadgi National Park. The ranger told us about a couple of huts, and we chose to visit Brandy Flat Hut. It was a short drive, and then a four hour walk. We walked in from the southern side, which I thought would be quicker because it looked like a shorter distance on the map, but it was very steep terrain and very hard walk. On the way back we took a shortcut through the bush and cut off about 40mins :)

The Hut is quite "modern" as it's been recently rebuilt (the original hut had decayed over time). There was a fireplace, matches, candles, visitors book and a sturdy table inside. There were some fairly tame kangaroos that were hopping around outside.

I took heaps of photos, but struggled with the light. It was late afternoon when we got to the hut (about 4pm, sun goes down at 6pm), and most of the shots were outside the dynamic range of the D300. I bracked most shots, but I haven't yet tried to HDR the images. The compositions I were happy with turned out not to bad colour and light wise once I had tweeked the photos quite a bit in Lightroom. At the time I was too concerned about burning out the sky so that it stayed blue, but I've come to realise that a white sky is generally more applealing than a blue one. I've printed two of the photos, and they look really good printed. This is my favourite shot - I especially like the sun coming through the trees:

Canberra Flickr Stobist Meet



The Canberra Flickr group had a "strobist" meet the other day. The idea is that you get to practice using strobes (flashes) by shooting models. The afternoon was a bit of a mixed bag - there were some positives and some negatives. It could have done with better organisation (at the venue - the pre-organisation was very good) and some kind of goals to work towards. Unfortunately the beginners were all lumped together, so there was really no-one to offer instruction or help - it was the blind leading the blind. I knew how to get the lighting right, but I really struggled with directing the models. I really didn't know what sort of pose I needed, so generally relied on others to get the model into an interesting pose.

I ended up with some shots I was happy with. Here's the flickr gallery.

First time assistant

I did my first photography assistant job the other day. It was interesting, and a little boring (!). It was boring because it was photos of a computer rack - even though I'm a geek, two hours of photographing computers does get a little tiresome. The good part was that I learnt a lot, mainly through watching how a professional works. I was surprised how long everything took and the volume of photos taken (the client only wanted 6 images). The lighting equipment used for this shoot was one reflective umbrella, one softbox, two strobes running off a battery pack. Everything was connected by PC cables. There were quite a few cables running around - I reckon my wireless setup would have worked quite well :) I also helped with the selection and post processing of the images.

So, hopefully this will be the first of many assistant jobs!

I've since emailed about 20 photographers in Canberra asking if they want an assistant. I've had quite a few responses, ranging from "I don't use assistants", "no thanks", to a meeting with someone :)