Catch up

Well, it's been over two months since a post... so here's a catch-up post with the subjects I'll write about in more detail over the next few weeks:

• Shooting Social Pics for the Queanbeyan Age
• Photos for the Coca-cola Surf School
• Ryan and Kristine's Wedding
• Jody and Jye's Wedding
• Website overhaul
  
• CPS - winner of B Category aggregate competition
• Steve Parish - winner of Landscape photograph of the year
• Exhibiting at the Wedding Fair
• iPhone - yes, now I have one too
  
• New Year's at Kangaroo Valley
• Animoto - turn photos into movies
  
• Fredrick's Family Portraits in Wollongong
• Goals for 2009
  

That should keep me busy for a while - my goal is to cover one subject every day or two :)

Nicki & Chris

Long overdue post, so a belated congrats to Nicki and Chris who were married on 9th of October 2008.

This wedding was a little interesting... firstly the 1950's Rolls Royce that Nicki and her brother were chauffeured in from Gungahlin to Bungendore broke down. The driver had to make some quick repairs to the carby by the side of the road. Luckily they were only about half an hour late. During this time, I had plenty of time with Chris as we waited for his bride to arrive :)



Then, after Nicki has arrive, and just before she was going to walk down the isle, she realised that the celebrant wasn't around! A quick phone call and about 40mins later the celebrant arrived and performed the ceremony....



After the ceremony we did some shots in the lovely Carrington gardens, and then headed down to the Bungendore train station for some more shots.

People's Choice

I've got so much to blog about, but haven't had the time. Have done a couple more weddings recently which I'll add to the blog soonish I hope.

Last night was another competition night for the Canberra Photographic Society. What made this comp a bit different to normal was that as well as the judge giving comments and rating each photo, before the judging was a people's choice award. Everyone voted for their favorite 3 photos in B grade and A grade in a secret ballot. And I'm pleased to say that one of my photos was chosen as the joint winner in B grade.



I presented it as a small print with a black mat. It was taken near Mt Hotham in Victoria, right next to Dinner Plain Hut. I was walking around the hut taking photos from various positions and this little tree poking out of the snow caught my eye.

Syndey Harbour by Night

A few weeks ago (actually, maybe it was a month or two ago...) we were up in Sydney for the weekend. So, nothing like heading out and taking photos at night of the bay :)



Some more here.

Congratulations to Amy and Andy

I got the privilege of shooting Amy and Andy's wedding on the 27th September 2008. I was shooting Amy and the girls preparing, the ceremony and the posed group shots afterwards for Blurr Photographics. Although it was a pretty quick shoot for me, I think I got some great shots for the happy couple :)

Congratulations to Belinda and Dave!

Belinda and Dave were married on the 5th September 2008. Congratulations to them both! It was a great wedding in the Queanbeyan park with plenty of photo opportunities. The day got dark a bit earlier than I would have liked, but still got some great shots (and some very interesting ones too). I had the camera on auto ISO and this really helped a lot as I didn't have to keep fiddling things. Lots of shots were taken at ISO 1600 (@ f/2.8), which is a bit grainy, but it's better to get the shot than have hundreds of blurred photos IMHO.

Here follows some of my favorites:

New Job

I've given notice to my current job, and will be starting work at the Canberra Institute of Technology in the Photography section in the beginning of October. I'll be responsible for various IT systems, looking after the photography equipment and helping out teachers and students with technical photograhy stuff. Looking forward to it :)

Just another one of those amazing Canberra sunsets

Had I got the camera out just 5 mins before, the lines in the sky would have been a bit nicer (3 distinct lines instead of one fat one and one thin one). Spose I'll have to wait until tomorrow night :)

Congratulations to Gwen & Jason

Bit late with this post, but a big congrats to Gwen & Jason who tied the knot in Jindabyne on 10th August 2008. It was supposed to be a wedding in the snow, but due to blizzard conditions the ceremony location was changed to the trout hatchery just outside Jindabyne. And the amazing thing was that it actually snowed during the ceremony! I feel sorry for the bridesmaid who had a beautiful dress but not a warm one - she would have been freezing... everyone else was in thick ski jackets. Small selection of photos follow.

New webhost

I've been using GoDaddy for my webhosting for quite some time. The main reason I choose GoDaddy was because it was easy, no contract, cheap, and the WebSite Tonight template based hosting made it very quick and easy to put together quite a good looking site (oh, and my domain was registered with them). The bad stuff about GoDaddy though is that:

• WebSite Tonight is limited to 5 pages
• The ongoing fees are a bit steep for 5 pages
• The user interface is dreadful - mainly because it's so painfully slow

So, it was time for a change. After a bit of research, and quite a lot of R&D, I've successfully implemented the website using Google Sites. It took me much longer than I'd anticipated, mainly because Google Sites strongly encourages usage of the built in templates and prevents things like embedded objects, CSS editing and extra CSS files. To get the same look and feel as the old site I had to turn off most of the Google Sites features and choose a template that had styles that didn't interfere with how I wanted things. Then I did a lot of hand coding of HTML...

One of the major features that attracted me to Google Sites was the availability of a very large range of widgets that you can embed in the site - iGoogle Apps. These demo really well, but (so far in my limited experience) if they're not Google produced ones then they leave quite a lot to be desired. For example, I spent most of Sunday afternoon trying to get a slideshow of my portfolio images which are stored on flickr. There are heaps of iGoogle flickr apps, but none are very good and most are extremely limited and have almost no options. But, use the Picassa widget (made by Google) and it looks good, works straight out of the box, and is quite customisable (would like more, but hey, it's not too bad).

Another interesting thing is the ability to use Google Spreadsheet forms as feedback forms. When a user submits their information it goes straight into the Google Spreadsheet and you can set up email notifications. The moral to the story is if you're deep in the Google pot then things work well, otherwise forget Google Sites and look elsewhere.