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.

Fun with a Fisheye

I hear Canon's new EF 8-15mm f/4L USM Fish eye zoom is a lovely bit of kit. I may well treat myself to one eventually, but meantime I'm enjoying my new Peleng 8mm fisheye.  You can check them out here.  They're made in Belarus, weigh a ton and are fully manual.  It's a beast, a relic from the cold war.  It's just a fixed 8mm, can be prone to a bit of lens flare around the edges of the image, and suffers chromatic aberration and softness at the edges, but at about a fifth the price of the Canon, it'll do me nicely for a while.  Above is the nearly full circular 180 degree image it takes on my full-frame Canon 5D Mk II.  Below is something I popped into Dunedin's Octagon to shoot at lunchtime.  This was on the crop sensor Canon 7D.  It proved useful for the panoramic kind of pictures I want for the double page spreads I want to open the chapters of my book on Dunedin business.  Fun fun fun.

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Shooting The Emersons

Last week I'd arranged to shoot at Allied Press, the home of the Otago Daily Times in the morning, and shoot over to Emerson's Brewery for a team portrait in the afternoon. I should have known I'd find too much to have fun with at Allied to squeeze into a morning, so I needed to pull off the Emerson's picture as quickly as possible and get back for the 3.00 press run. Luckily, I already had a plan in mind, and was fairly confident that I could pull it off quickly. Richard Emerson has a boutique brewery that is really putting the big Beer Barons on notice about quality and passion in brewing. Since I'm running with a "Tartan Mafia" theme for my business history, shooting Richard and team as this upstart crew seemed like a fun idea. Of course, there were challenges to overcome, so I thought I'd do a little anatomy of the shoot to let you see the process. Challenge number one: The environment.

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Grey. Typical industrial setting: lots of fluoro light mixed with diffuse skylight, concrete and stainless steel. I had 20 minutes to make it mine before the staff would assemble. My first job was to add a little colour to the environment. Blue gel on flash, attached out of sight to a keg in the right background via an nasty clamp to colour those brew tanks. I was a little worried that all I'd get was a small specular reflection of my flash. That would have meant to get the whole tank blue, I'd need it to reflect a big blue reflector or diffuser, but the tanks were burnished stainless steel, and not only gave a nice diffuse reflection of the blue flash, they bounced it around each other.

  

Well, they started to, but I was confident that once I had my exposures between ambient and flashes balanced, things would work out the way I wanted. Another blue flash to cover the background from the left, and while Richard pulled a prop into place, I set my key light for him nice and high.

 

I wanted hard, high key lighting with no modifier to get a film noir-ish look, but without time and booms, knew that I'd have to settle for light that wasn't really as high as I wanted. Still, as I put some CTO gel on Richard's key, and another light up with one to light the rest of the assembling team, I was getting into the zone. Here's the lighting diagram if it means anything to you. With my sketching skills, I've got to say, it means little enough to me.

Nearly there. My 20 minutes of prep was up. Shooting in the middle of even a quiet work day, you just can't waste people's time, so I explained my mafia crew concept and started arranging the team quickly.

 

My instructions were simple. No smiles please, look directly into the lens, and hang tough. I arranged some groups, made sure I didn't have a straight horizon of heads and told everyone that straight arms would make them look like zombies, not mobsters. I guess I've been doing this long enough that I had my lighting ratios pretty good right from the start - good enough for a quick setup anyway. So I shot some frames and bada-bing:

 

I was happy, but it always pays to listen to your client. They know the business more than you do. Richard knew that the brewery is constantly being rinsed with hot water and is actually quite a steamy environment, so he wanted some steam. I had my doubts about how manageable that was going to be, but it was a good idea, and he assured me it would be quick to arrange. Minutes later, the floor was awash and steam was rising. Just not the way we wanted it. As you can see, it raised a smile or two.



Not a problem. I liked my clean shot, and knew a little digital steam would be a lot easier to work with later on. If this were one of those big Beer Baron budgets, this wouldn't have taken the hour it did. I'd put a couple of days into the shot. I'd probably shoot the background separately to get the lighting even better, and take everybody into a studio or at least in front of a clean backdrop and shoot them all separately, immaculately lit noir fashion with higher light, some hair lights and kickers. Then would come some heavy post to assemble a kickass composite But Richard Emerson and his crew aren't Beer Barons. Not yet anyway. Small is good for now, and for me, so is fast. Getting what I did in short order, I was pretty happy. Almost as happy as a couple of pints of Emerson's Bookbinder Bitter can make me.  

But there was no time to rest on my laurels. Back at the Otago Daily Times, the stories were written, the plates assembled and the presses were warming up...

Engineering your Light

Another day, another cool industrial shoot. This time it's Farra, a Dunedin Engineering firm with its roots in some of the earliest foundries in Otago. In contrast to Speight's Brewery, the combination of fluoro light, dull steel and concrete buildings made for some pretty dull surroundings, so it was time to get the flashes, clamps and gels and add some colour to the equation.



On the left, that's John Whitaker, Managing Director of the firm, and the first not to be connected to the pioneering Smellie family who founded Iron Rolling Mills Otago out in Green Island in the 1880's.

My Dad did this kind of work for over 40 years in shipyards, hydro projects, smelters and so forth.  I even worked alongside him in an Aluminium smelter for a few summers, so I get a real kick out of shooting in these environments.  It reminds me of the great era of postwar engineering when men with calipers and welding gear could do anything - or so little kids like me thought.  As well as the big stuff like building maintenance units, hydroelectric turbine components and specialist cranes, Farra make a lot of cool stainless steel stuff like home breweries and the small rotating screen here. Again, we didn't want to interrupt work for too long, so this was another run and gun job, but I think everybody's going to be pretty happy when they see the results in my book.