Shopping List

Here's my wish list:

Wide Lens: Tokina 11-16mm ATX Pro DX + Filter
Adorama: $569 US
Priority: High
Reason: need a good wide angle for real-estate photography, and just really want a ultra-wide angle... :) I was originally going to get the Tokina 12-24mm because the Nikon equivalent was twice the price, but then the 11-16mm was announced. Seems to still be in short supply as it's listed as out of stock at both Adorama and B&H.

Colour Profiling: X-Rite Eye-One Display 2
Adorama: $210 US
Priority: High
Reason: need to get colour management happening. The mac calibration seems a bit hit & miss. It was the Eye-One or the Spyder3 Pro, but this one seems to have a better reputation and gets better reviews.

Lens Cleaning Kit
Adorama: ~$10 US
Priority: High
Reason: to clean lenses properly... duh!

Filter for Nikon 80-400mm
Price: ?
Priority: High
Reason: Filter that came with the lens causes weird artifacts/striping in the out of focus areas.

D300 Battery Grip: MB-D10
Adorama: $240 US (total + shipping [~$30] + currency =~ $282 AUD)
DDD: $299 AUD (total + shipping [$16] - gst = $287 AUD)
Priority: Medium
Reason: makes portrait shooting much easier and natural, plus of course extended battery life and higher burst rate. Would like it for when I do my first wedding, but not essential.

Memory: 16 or 2 x 8GB Compact Flash cards
Wholesale: ~$150 for 16GB
Adorama: $189 US for 16GB
Priority: Medium
Reason: need at least 28GB of storage when I do my first wedding... you can never have enough memory. The speed of the Extreme III's and IV's are a bit confusing, but I think that either is fast enough.

Macro Lens: Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX DG APO + Filter
Adorama: $589 US
Priority: Medium
Reason: Really need a macro lens to supplement what I already have, plus makes a good fast telephoto. Other choices were the Tamron 90mm, Nikon 105mm, Sigma 100mm, but chose the Sigma 150mm because of the better working distance and it is internal focusing.

Speedlight: SB-800
DDD: $449
Adorama: $315 US
Priority: Medium
Reason: coupled with the external power, is an ideal speedlite for weddings. Gotta get the SB-800 for the external power connector.

External Power for SB-800: SD-8A
B&H: $139
Adorama: $149, or $139 Grey
Priority: Medium
Reason: faster flash recharge time :) Much cheaper than the 3rd party solutions, and arguably better because it takes standard AA's.

Flash diffuser: Harbor Digital Ultimate Light Box Kit (to fit SB-800)
Adorama: $65 US
Priority: Medium
Reason: need some good diffusion for wedding shots. Still looking around at other options.

Tablet: Wacom PTZ-631W
Wholesale: $495inc (total + shipping - gst =~ $460 AU)
Adorama: $370 US (total + shipping ($30) + currency =~ $425 AU)
Priority: Low
Reason: Make editing in photoshop (and Lightroom 2 when it's released) easier, faster and better. Choose a middle of the range tablet, and went for the wide aspect ratio to match the MacBook Pro 17" wide screen.

Photo Albums
Adorama: A couple of Photo Albums for portfolio, weddings, etc.
Priority: Low
Reason: to both display my portfolio and show as example wedding albums


Ok, so quite a shopping list - there's over $3000 worth of stuff there so I'm not going to splurge in one hit. It's a shame that most things need to come from the US... why can't the Aussie shops be a little more competive, then I could save on the shipping costs :)

August Projected Images Comp.

Somehow I got all confused and thought that the deadline for submitting images for the August Projected Images Competition at the Canberra Photographic Society was Saturday night. I was originally going to submit a set of photos with a water/reflection theme, but didn't feel the images were good as a group and some were not too strong. Instead I picked out some pictures of leaves - they're all the same aspect ratio, obviously themed, and pretty colourful and strong.

Progress

Yes, some progress is being made:

- It looks like I'll be getting about an average of one day a week assisting. Did a half day today at some construction sites photographing good OH&S practices.

- I'm now contracting at my day job, and have the boss's blessing to do photography jobs on the side. Of course I have to give some notice, but the understanding is that the photography assisting work will be an average of one day a week.

- 2nd wedding under the belt (as an assistant). Unfortunately I was still a bit sick (damn can't shake this cough), but the photo shoot after the ceremony was great fun; we shot the wedding party in the front garden of an old house with the paint peeling off in Manuka, a couple of shots between The Lodge and Parliament house, and then some shots in Civic at night.

- I've printed two of my shots of Brandy Flat Hut at 32"x20". They looks pretty good, but a little soft - I should have sharpened them some more, but not bad for 12.3 Megapixels.

Wedding Shoot followup

I went and saw the photos from the wedding shoot on Friday, and I was pretty blown away - they were fantastic. Ben was entering one into a competition; the groom was looking out of a window, down to the bride below; the wall was covered in ivy leaves which had turned an autumn red.

Ben had a total of about 1200 keepers, and out of mine there were 200. Not bad for a first effort I reckon. Obviously most of my photos were "his" setups, but I was just happy that technically there were some good ones in there.

I almost helped with another wedding last Saturday, but was meeting my potential first wedding clients, and was feeling a bit off too. Sunday was sick all day in bed with a stomach bug... hopped on a plane at 7:30am the next morning and helped Belinda all day on a shoot in Sydney for an accounting firm. Was pretty hard work (especially trying to engage accountants all day), and was a pity I was under the weather, but a good learning experience none-the-less.

Wedding Shoot

Just finished assisting at a Wedding. 11:30am to 6pm non-stop. Even got a sore arm and finger from taking so many photos and blurry vision from peering through the viewfinder for so long.

Anyway, was an awesome experience. Ben (from Fusion Photography) is a great guy. He certainly knows his stuff... has heaps of gear and gave me pretty much a free reign to photograph anything I wanted (as long as I didn't get in his way). I went through two and a half 8GB cards... probably around 750 photos. Ben was changing cards what seemed like every few mintutes... he's pretty click happy! :)

A few things to remember:

• Tell people what to do, pretty much all the time
• Take many, many photos especially when in dim light with a slow shutter speed
• Have a lot of ideas of where to put people or the actions they should take
• Take detailed pictures of invitations, decorations, dresses, shoes, etc.
• Take photo of the dress hanging up, and shoes before they're put on.
• Take photos of the family dog :)
• Find a good room for the bride to get dressed in
• Show people how to stand/walk, loosen them up a bit
• Tell MC to mention the photos of the table as the last bit of "housekeeping"
• Get a flash that refreshes quickly...
• 17-50mm f/2.8 lens worked well, but need a longer lens occasionally
• Have plenty of (fast) memory cards
  

Too tired to write any more now; going to sleep well tonight!

Bombed

I bombed my first portfolio comp :(

The photos I displayed were the worst set in the room. And I didn't need the judge to tell me that (but glad he was honest)! The competition was extremely tough, and the winners and highly commended were very deserving. The quality was outstanding - the photos I submitted were clearly not up to the standard.

But...

I learned a lot. Saw some great photos. Had some good chats. And am now more determined.

Some lessons were:

• Matting is very important. Each set (except mine) were very well matted. The mats were matching, and generally enhanced the images. I need to work more on this aspect...
• Although the competition is called "portfolio", it should have been called "theme". The photos weren't judged individually, but were judged as a set. I was aware that there should have been some overall theme, but didn't just realise how well each photo had to fit the theme.
  
• Only strong photos - never put a mediocre image in a portfolio. Each photo has to be amazing.
  
• The competition is fierce - to have any chance of winning the portfolio has to be awesome.
  
• Go big. Big photos do well.

My "beach" theme had various pictures of different styles, different matting, one monochrome, six colour, one portrait, a couple of macros, and a landscape. Next time I'll do better :)

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 :)