Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

What a year it's been. Revolutions, Earthquakes, Tsunami... I can understand anyone looking forward to a more settled 2012. I've had a year of changes myself - plenty of work and growth as a photographer, a book project to stretch me, and a new business involving lots of video shooting on my DSLR's.



To see the year out, I'll be playing with my band Bluestone in Dunedin's Octagon tonight and I'm looking forward to it. Soon I'll be camping with family at Glendhu Bay, Lake Wanaka, near this delightful spot at Diamond Lake. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures to share while there, and a trout or two on my new fly rod.  I also hope that despite the upheaval everywhere that your 2011 has been good, and that your 2012 is even better.  See you then.

Yellow Eyed Penguin

Thanks to some very special friends, I was able to get close to some nesting Yellow-eyed penguins and their chicks last week.  It was a privilege to get this close to the world's rarest penguin and I'm so lucky to have them just 15 minutes from my back door. I was shooting video for a special project, so here's a very, very brief taste.



This is just one of the species Martin Bailey and I plan on showcasing on our Southern New Zealand Photographic Tour next April. I do hope you'll join us.

Closed Set

If only I could show you the pictures from my latest shoots. In due course I can, but you'll have to wait until they're published first, since they were for the Fortune Theatre's 2012 Season catalog. What I can show you is the closed set below for one of the productions. Closed because one of the plays features quite a bit of nudity so my wonderful models were baring all for the shoot. Another revolves around the invention of a certain ...personal device - and I ain't talking about your iPad. Needless to say once the ice was broken, we all a lot of fun during these shoots.



As you can see I was shooting with my big strobes and softboxes and a few camera flashes for lots of big, soft, flattering light, and had the camera tethered to the laptop running Adobe Lightroom so I could show the creative director what we were getting.

If the shoot is anything to go by, next season at the Fortune will be highly... stimulating. And as Al Swearengen says, that's all I have to say on the matter.

Moving Pictures

Once again I've been so busy with a number of other things that I haven't had a lot of time for my own photography lately. Hopefully the Xmas and New Year vacation will remedy that. The new startup business I'm involved in is starting to take up more of my time, and while I can't say too much about it for now, it is picture based - its just that the pictures happen to be moving ones. So in lieu of some lovely stills, here's a very little taste of the motion pictures I'm making.



All rather exciting. I haven't stopped shooting stills completely though. In fact I've a theatre shoot next week that proves to be very interesting. More anon.

Another day, another sunrise

The thing about sunrises is, every one is different. Same spot, same time, different weather.



A nice little sun-up, but not nearly as much colour in the sky today. Oh well, one of these days I'll get the shot I'm after. At least it's just a 10 minute drive from my house. Ansel Adams didn't have it so easy.

Lighting the Sunrise

My good friend Producer/Director/Writer Mark Strickson has a wonderful phrase: "let's not over-egg the pudding". It's sort of another way of saying 'gilding the lily'. It came to mind this morning when I was out trying to light my sunrise shots. I just needed the foreground rocks lifted a little, so was downslope with a 580EXII flash and CTO gel, while I had a remote trigger on my camera. There I am with the flash in the corner of the shot below:

Not quite over-egging the pudding I hope, just adding a little light to bring out the lichen pattern in the rocks, while the sunrise did its thing. Unfortunately it wasn't the spectacular one I was hoping for, but I did get a little colour and was ready when the colour in the sky peaked.



A few minutes later and most of the colour had gone.




So after my setup I got a few unlit shots, while listening to the Yellow-eyed penguins calling on the beach below.



There was also a sealion playing in the waves. Guess I'll be carrying on down the track in a few days to see if I can get any pictures of the wildlife.



Between shots I checked for twitter updates on my smart phone (as you do). Looks like the Otago Daily Times has decided to show an interest in the local Occupation and have run an interview with Kieran Trass this morning. Shame they couldn't get a better picture of him.

In other news, Mike and Fran Thorsen have ended their sojourn on St Helena. You can read their final post from there in their Banzai Chicken blog. It's going to be interesting to see where they wash up next. I'm guessing we could be seeing some cool shots of post-earthquake Christchurch one day soon.

The shrubs around these Highcliff rocks?  Coprosma crassifolia. Thanks for the botanical steer Mike. And thanks Jaq Tweedie for proofreading services. Gilding the Lily.

The Occupation

This all started after a brief correspondence with my friend Andrew Read, a Professor at Penn State. Andrew mentioned the students were close to rioting over  the tragic situation over there regarding football coaches and allegations of sexual assaults. It made me think.  I'm not that much of a rioter but I think the worst thing you can do is to ignore some stuff, especially when it's in your neighbourhood.  After a couple of weeks of being pretty dismissive about our local branch of the Occupy movement, I decided I owed it to myself to go down to the Octagon and talk to people there, so I could at least be entitled to my opinion. And of course, I could take my camera.




           

My uninformed position was that here were a bunch of people jumping on a bandwagon, protesting against a whole bunch of social ills - wanting financial and political reform, but perhaps not being the ones directly affected by all of those problems. After all, there's a lot of nice camping equipment, smart phones and laptops in that campsite. It looks like a bit of a lark.

I had short chats with Michelle above, and with Kieran and Anton.





OK the lark part was the first thing I was wrong about. Nobody's having that much fun. I can't conceive of camping without some beers and a barbecue any more. Chuck in the sleepless nights in the open, noisy city centre, the occasional bit of abuse, hassle from the City Council, and being away from the comforts of home. It's a little like something a family member said about the notion that being Gay was an unwise lifestyle choice: "With all the crap we go through, why do you think anyone would choose this?"



So what's their point?  What do they want and when will they be satisfied to pack up and move on? That's hard to answer. The financial reform agenda of the original Occupy Wall St event has attracted a whole bunch of people with different issues to voice. What they do agree on is that in the current political and financial state of affairs, our democracy isn't working as well as it should. They feel that dissenting views on a whole range of issues - from deep sea oil drilling to fluoride in the water and the cost of our new stadium - aren't being given a fair hearing. What they all agree that they want is a better dialog between ordinary people and those who represent them.  Who can argue with that?




Aaron, Jesse and Miche

Sure, there are plenty of young people here, but this isn't a crowd of benefit bludgers and bleeding hearts. There's a fair smattering of ordinary people who have put aside their own businesses for a while, taken time out from their jobs, or leave home and family for a few hours a day to lend weight to the message that they'd like to start a discussion. I also presumed that a lot of the Octagon business owners would be putting the heat on the city council to move them on, but while I was there, a few local business people were sending over food and messages of support.



I'm no journo. I'd really like to see our local media get inside this story a lot more than they have. So far the coverage of this event seems to focus on how these peaceful protesters are disrupting events in the Octagon and when the DCC will harden up and find a way to evict them. The official police line is that they have a right to peaceful protest and they're not in favour of a forceful eviction. When will this all end? I guess when these guys feel they're being listened to in a meaningful way. When will that happen? I really don't know. But at least I have a better idea of what they want. A better public conversation.

Is that a bad thing to stand up and ask for?

Landscape - step by step

Today I finally got out for the dawn start I've been waiting for. The weather wasn't perfect, but I really want to start nailing my Peninsula landscape locations, and that just means going there again and again until I'm 100% satisfied I can put my clients onto great shots. I was actually a bit late for the best of the sunrise. I only just got there as the sky was reaching peak colour and after a few minutes it was gone. Still, I got a lot out of the visit.

I keep returning to this spot because I've got some good shots here, but not yet the great ones I know there are. The problem is, I'm not sure what those shots are yet. My subconscious knows, that's why I'm attracted here, so I just need to spend more time until the pieces come together. Today it started. It's about bringing all the elements together - the right light, the great backdrop and the boulders. I need to go Strobist on the landscape. By the time this dawned on me the sunrise had peaked, but I did a few test shots with flash on camera anyway, just as a step in the right direction. Next time I'll be there earlier with a good plan, maybe a couple of light stands to get the flash off camera, experiment with some coloured gels and I'll be a step closer.

Thanks to some great work by my friend Tourism Consultant James Hacon, Martin Bailey and I are ready to go live with our Southern New Zealand Photo Adventure. We're taking bookings here on Martin's site, so check out the details. It's going to be the trip of a lifetime.

The Boulder Field

Yesterday I popped over the hill to Highcliff to get in a little more practice shooting video with my slider and think about including the spot on my Southern NZ Photo Adventure with Martin Bailey. Unfortunately the wind was a bit strong and despite my best efforts I just couldn't hold my gear steady enough to get any smooth camera movement. As well as the rig shaking, the wind was actually buffeting my arm so much I couldn't move the slider with a nice fluid motion. Never mind, another good lesson learnt - things have their limitations. I did manage to get a few nice shots of the place though. Nothing award-winning, but fun to get.

It's a magic spot, even on a less than ordinary day. The round basalt boulders and their lichen patches are so intriguing. I even found one that had split, which seemed fairly rare.

What caught my eye yesterday though was the hardy little shrubs that grow between the boulders. It's a very windswept spot, and these are the only things higher than grasses and lichens that grow there. I think they're a Coprosma species, possibly Coprosma propinqua? I'm hoping my botanical photog mate Mike Thorsen will post a comment to put me right here. When not running photography workshops for the locals on the island of Saint Helena, Mike is photographing and helping conserve the local flora.

 

I recall hearing at school that NZ Coprosmas evolved a handy way of protecting their leaves from browsing by giant Moa birds by keeping them on the inside of the body of the bush, rather than on the tips of twigs. An interesting story - I'd be tempted to believe it's an adaptation to coastal wind.

 



There's an obvious relationship between the shrubs and boulders, I'm guessing the boulders provide just enough shelter for the young shrubs to establish. As they grow, they mould into the rocks, but ones that are especially rocked by the wind seem to have an additional bit of personal space, while still moulding to the form of the rock.

 

 Adaptation, isn't it grand?

Sliding on Otago Peninsula

I had a couple of spare hours yesterday so went out with my latest piece of kit, the Glidetrack Shooter SD. Its a set of slider rails for smooth video camera movement. Yeah, we're almost getting off-topic here: Video. But with the convergence of DSLR and Hi Def video, in my opinion stills shooters need video skills up their sleeves. And I'm not just a stills shooter, I like to think of myself as a content creator.

Anyway, I popped out to a couple of my favourite spots 10 minutes drive from my house on Otago Peninsula, Sandfly Bay and the derelict farmhouse on the Nyhon track, Hoopers Inlet. The slider is only 75 cm long, but gave really good results on the ground or mounted on my Induro tripod legs. I was so over television, but this could get me back into moving images again! Very brief Youtube test clip below.

The music is from "Our Universe" by Professor Kliq. Shots taken on my Canon 7D with the EF-S 10-22mm and EF L 24-70mm 2.8 zoom lenses.


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Now Santa, can we talk about that fluid drag head, follow focus and set of LED light panels? LCD monitors never offend...

Southern New Zealand Wildlife and Landscape Photography Tour

Are you up for a bit of adventure?



If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that when I'm not out shooting as a working photographer I'm out shooting for pure joy - mainly the fantastic landscapes or wildlife we have here in New Zealand.



After a bit of thought, some hard work and a lot of help from some wonderful people, I'm ready to share it with you and offer a Southern New Zealand Wildlife and Landscape Photography Tour. For 12 days next April, we'll tour the southern South Island, taking in its scenic and wildlife wonders, from great white sharks to mountain parrots, from Milford Sound to Otago's tussock high country.



We'll be catering for photographers of all abilities, and will be offering workshops on camera craft and post production along the way. I say we because I've invited Japan-based photographer and web presence Martin Bailey to join us.  If you don't already know Martin's work or subscribe to his podcast, I suggest you do.



We'll be finalising details and coming up with all the information and booking details soon, so keep a close watch here, tell your friends and set your camera dial to adventure!

Lightroom fix

For ages now, I've been struggling with an annoying feature of Lightroom. Whenever you make any change to a picture in your catalog, if it's been published to a service like Flickr, it marks the shot for republishing, and does so when you next publish anything to the service. In republishing the picture, it looses titles and other info, but most annoyingly, the links I use from my blog here all get broken and I have to go into the dashboard and fix them all up. Not any more, thanks to this handy little free plug-in from Rob Cole. Thank you sir!

 Taking a little break yesterday, I headed up to Nenthorn for some fun. Nenthorn is up in the hills between coastal Otago and the Strath Taieri Valley. It was the site of the last quartz gold rush in about 1889.



There was a thriving little town up here but it only lasted for about 5 years. Now there are only a few ruins left, the one above (the old St Bathans Hotel)  being the most intact. It's a grand place on a Summer's day, but I'll bet the winters were hard up here.

 I didn't exactly have golden hour light for landscape photography, but it was so nice to get out of town for a day. More on the place here.

 



The highlight for me was the simplest thing, getting close to a common skink with my 100mm macro - as close as I could get before he bolted!



I tried to get close to some more, hoping to find a Grand or Otago skink, but all I saw were wriggles disappearing into tussock as soon as I approached. I did manage to sneak up on a rabbit though. Not exactly endangered in these parts, but good practice for wildlife photography. I'm hoping this is going to be a great summer for getting out and shooting.


















I've got a lot of wildlife and landscape trips planned - including a very special southern safari package that I'm putting together. If you want to take the ultimate southern New Zealand photographic tour, stay tuned!

Get Over Yourself! - Discipline for Photographers

It's been a busy couple of weeks again. There's been the final bit of shooting for the book I'm working on, and a few jobs around town. It would be impossible to say what's been more enjoyable or instructive, but this one was great to do:

 
That's my old boss, Michael Stedman from NHNZ. Another environmental portrait for my book that I lit to serve the story. In a nutshell, NHNZ is at the cutting edge of TV technology - a leading producer of 3D documentaries. Hence the techie looking background colours on the video bank in the background. I lit Michael with a single flash, up high and snooted to restrict the beam. I have to admit, I had a nervous moment at the start. I had a definite plan for this shot, based on my last visit. At that time though, the place was still being fitted out, and there were a lot more gaps in the bank for beams of light to stream through. Never mind, I got something we liked fairly quickly.


Another fun shoot involved a tour of Dunedin's water pollution control (sewage works) and water treatment plant. Run and gun shooting there, as my bandmate John Mackie was leading me around and when not laying down his powerful grooves in BlueStone, he's a busy city engineer. Just to show I can get portraits in available light, here's one of the lads up at Mt Grand, looking into a drinking water treatment vessel:  











 






There have been a couple more visits to Emerson's Brewery, first to shoot famous Dunedin sound muso David Kilgour lend a hand dry-hopping the new "Tally-Ho" brew. Run and gun again.

 

And a calendar shot of the brewery's big three, Bob, Richard and Chris.

 

The lads were lit with a small softbox and filled with my Orbis ringflash adapter, a setup that's quick to do and pretty versatile in terms of the looks it'll give. The Orbis also gives you great speculars in the eyes. Then there were some head shots for local Accountancy firm JW Smeaton, a great bunch of people who all had a good time and made my job easy during the shoot. I used the same setup there. Here's Neil Stevenson:

A good little spread of shooting styles and conditions. High concept, run and gun, and bread and butter portraits and I loved every assignment. Especially the bread and butter stuff. Funny thing is, lately one or two of the photography students I've been helping to tutor are finding their bread and butter assignments hard to get motivated about. Not enough creative challenge. One of my most talented pupils is disillusioned with being asked to hand in technical exercises and is getting behind in his work. I really hope he gets over this, but despite his talent, he may not make it.

 To make a living at photography (or succeed at anything), you really need discipline. It's not always sunsets, big lights and action. It also takes a bit of experience to know that even shooting heads against a wall, there's enormous scope for creativity and talents beyond composition and exposure. You have to embrace and overcome every challenge, not just the technical and creative but the personal as well.

You think it's easy for busy accountants or CEO's to look relaxed in the middle of a business day while their colleagues are watching?  It isn't, so you have to engage people to help get the best out of them. That wasn't something that came naturally to me. I had to learn it like lighting, and no two situations are the same. I used to dread engaging with subjects. Now I relish it. I hope my students go the distance and learn to bring all they have even into their routine shooting.

A huge part of the creative challenge lies in overcoming yourself.

Newspaper photography

Here's a niche job:  Newspaper photographer. Not shooting for newspapers - just shooting newspapers.

So many newspaper movies and TV shows are about the journos and editors.  Guess why.  They're the ones who write the stories. After my recent visit to Allied Press though - home of the Otago Daily Times, I can see there's just as much potential for drama in the operations side of the newspaper business.  It's seriously industrial.



These are the ODT's old Goss letterpress machines.  They've been replaced by a new offset press, so they sit there in the dark, waiting for someone to find them a good home.  I love these industrial giants.  And in a strange way, I even love the black grime that inevitably coats any photog who lingers near them. To get the shot below, I put a couple of flashes to the sides and rear to backlight the press as well as one inside and one aimed at the face from an angle to light it and give a little shape.



Once upon a time the newspaper business was filled with fag-addicted, cynical journos, foul-mouthed, grimy printers and massive, noisy presses.  I'm glad to say not much has changed, apart from the process of making the plates that do the printing.  Below is an old linotype machine that the paper keeps around for display purposes - and a good deal of nostalgia on the part of a senior manager ODT or two.



The two Hals below are the machines that now make the plates for the new offset printing process. Where the  linotype machines needed molten lead and compositors who'd declare a demarcation dispute if a journo dared empty the rubbish bin, today it's all digital: image servers, laser etchers and polymer-coated aluminium grapholiths.



You'll already know I'm a huge Strobist fan, so it'll come as no surprise that this was my favourite shot of the visit.  The ambient orange light is what the operators switch to when they have to open up the machines and inspect the light-sensitive polymer-coated plates inside.  It seemed like the perfect light to use, but to add some interest, I shot a little blue light around the back of the room, and shone a bare speedlite on each of the Hals to get rid of the orange wash from the room.



Here's something that hasn't changed: The news still needs paper - kilometres of it every day.  The store here holds just enough newsprint for about three daily editions. No funky colour here, just a speedlite popped behind some of the rolls on the left and one aimed at those on the right to add a little shape.

When the paper finally meets the ink in the offset press, it travels at approximately a bajillion metres per second.  I was lucky enough to be lining up this shot as it gathered pace.  The noise is like being strapped to the wing of a B-52 as it takes off - kinda thrilling, kinda scary - and that's with the earplugs the printers gave me.



Some would say this technology has killed the romance of print.  Others would say the only time the ODT failed to get out in its 150 year history was because of an industrial dispute.