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.

Jury Duty

Not related to photography in any way... but, I've been called for jury duty in a couple of weeks :(

Some amusing comics below:

Lightroom 2 is out

I've been waiting for Lightroom 2 for quite a while. I played with the beta a few months back and some of the new features were really good. This is really going to enhance the workflow and further reduce shelling out to Photoshop (= a good thing).

July Update

It's been a very busy week-and-a-bit.

• I watched the judging of the NSW/ACT APPA competion (part of VIVID photography festival). Very interesting watching the judges score the photos, and even more interesting when they have mini-debates to convince the other judges one way or the other.

• Attended "Magicians and Travellers" conference (put on by AIPP also as part of VIVID). The standout talk for me was Phil Kuruvita. Peter Eastway had a good presetation, as did Phillip Andrews.

• Use DNG. I never really saw the point of DNG, but the main reason to use it is for better workflow going from Lightroom to/from Photoshop. I've gotta test this out soon. The other benefit is that you get around 20% storage saving over NEF files... which actually is a good enough reason in itself to use DNG. Now I've just got to convert all my photos...

• I've finally registered "t8 photography" as a business name.

• All my insurance has been finalised. I got a couple of quotes and in the end went with photoinsurance.com.au Quite good value and email communication was pretty smooth.

• I put an ad in the "A day to remember" wedding liftout in The Canberra Times. I was the only photographer who did so - I'm not yet sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing... it could mean it's a waste of money! I have had two enquiries from the ad so far though. I'm also advertising via Google Adwords, which seems to be more effective so far. I've had most enquires from people who have clicked on the Google ad.

• 5 weddings booked. Yay! Next wedding is in two weeks.

• I've moved my email from GoDaddy (which is attrocious) to Google Apps (ie. GMail). So far so good. I'm going to see if I can do the website hosting with Google Sites, then I can get rid of GoDaddy for everything except domain registar. As part of Google Apps you get Google Calendar - which imports iCal calendars and iCal can subscribe to Google Calendar (and still syncs the calendar to my phone). I would have prefered that Google Calendar do proper two-way syncs with iCal, but I suppose you can't have everything.

• Still doing photography work for ALVA media on the weekends. I'm now doing the team shots by myself (sometimes with a little help from George). Next weekend I'll be showing someone else the ropes.

• Sent in the form to join NPS Lite. Nikon Professional Services. You get stuff like priority equipment servicing, free CCD cleaning and a few other minor things. I'm not sure if they'll accept my grey import Nikon gear though. Does anyone buy from authorised Nikon resellers these days??

• Talking about grey imports - just got my first macro lens: Nikkor 105mm with AFS and VR. Looking forward to using it when I've got some time!

• Took some photos in the rain halfway up Black Mountain (the hill, not the tower) with a couple of the guys from the Canberra Photography Society. One I liked below: