It is very nice when your work is noticed. There is an article about me in the March 2011 edition of America’s Professional Photography Magazine. The article features a personal project of mine that celebrates people who offer their time and skills to make a difference. The project is called gratis.
Last night I photographed an function at Victoria’s Government House where Professor Graeme Clark was awarded the prestigious Lister Medal, the most distinguished award in surgery, for his pioneering work with the cochlear implants.
Ever since I started using speedlights for almost all of my work, I have used the Nikon CLS infrared system which for most purposes worked very well. The main limitations were when the infrared failed becuase of bright light like daylight and distance.
I grew up in Canberra, and the school Narrabudah College, where I went to for years 11 & 12 was pivotal in me choosing my career as a photographer. This was mainly due to the inspiring photography teacher I had, Les Kovacs.
My parents and sister live there and I wanted to visit home, so I recently organized talks in Canberra for the ACMP at the Canberra Institute of Technology. I presented a talk on Photography Pricing as well as my Speedlight Talk & Demonstration.
When I first started shooting with Nikon speedlights, one of the challenges was finding a professional looking way to rig up the speedlights to shoot through softboxes.
I eventually asked a question on the dpreview forums and within 30minutes, someone had replied about a guy in Sydney called Elvis who makes these beautifully constructed brackets.
In the past I used custom painted canvas backgrounds for portrait shoots. I worked with some talented artists who had a great understanding of how different textures appeared when shot out of focus as a background. When using these canvases, numerous stands were required: stands for the canvas background; and stands for multiple flashes, all taking up more space, more time and budget.
I love the variety of subjects I get to shoot on editorial stories. A recent shoot was for the Women’s Weekly written by Erin O’Dwyer. The story was about Muslim women wearing the Burqa and how European countries have been debating at banning them.
Photographers love industry events that are social, inspiring and affordable. Whenever I travel somewhere I look at the possibility of creating an event with either myself or somebody I “volunteer” to be the speaker.
This particular job I was working on had a very pressing deadline with local and interstate shoots needed to be done within 5 days while working around already booked jobs. I ended up shooting one of the trucks from Midnight to 5am 2 hours drive out of Brisbane, and having the owner of a major trucking company meet me at 5am to drive the truck along the local freeway.
I have worked with the Victorian Institute of Sport for over 10 years, outlasting 3 marketing teams. One of their events I shoot is the annual Awards of Excellence where they announce the Athlete of the Year. This year we decided to get individual shots of as many athletes as possible on their way into the event. Possibly 300+ athletes in about 45minutes. The client was happy with flash on camera but I though it was a perfect opportunity for a fast Strobist setup.