How did you spend your Australia Day?

I spent it taking photos with Elaine =)

I’ve got a wedding coming up in a few weeks for a couple coming from overseas. I’m really excited about the challenge of providing them some uniquely Australian images, so I conducted one of my regular scouting trips for “location” venues.

We started in Duckboard Place, an alleyway just off Flinders Lane. It’s got some crazy poster up on the walls which give it such a cool vibe.

Further on from that we headed across a couple of streets to Little Collins Street, and then down further to the Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens.

We got an absolute treat while taking our photos as there was a really outstanding band playing an outdoor concert for most of the afternoon. Their mellow tunes were only briefly interrupted by the roar of the RAAF Roulettes who were putting on a show for the people on the banks of the Yarra.

The last stop was Brighton Beach to grab some photos of the famous bathing boxes. Heat combined with a public holiday equals a packed beach. I didn’t stay long at the beach because, well… I didn’t feel terribly comfortable taking photos of the beach without a bridal couple standing next to me! It’s a strange world we live in nowadays…

Early last week I had planned to catch a glimpse of the McNaught comet which had been dubbed the “Great Comet of 2007″. I had been told that at sunset it would be visible like a bright torch held in the sky. Unfortunately I didn’t get around to the task of trying to shoot the comet until Thursday, the fourth day of the comet’s appearance. Nevertheless, I grabbed my camera gear and headed out to the Studley Park Boulevard to get at least some relief from the light pollution ever present in suburbia.

By the way, Studley Park Boulevard used to be a great place to visit late at night when I had my Ford XR6 Turbo (and when the speed limit wasn’t 50kmph). It was like my own personal Mount Panorama =)

Back to the comet story…

On the way to one of the lookout points I got sidetracked by the view of the Eastern Freeway with the sun setting over the city in the background. Here’s the resultant shot:

I don’t do much landscape shooting at night, so I was pretty happy with the result (22sec at f/22 with ISO 100 for the camera nerds).

Further down the road was a paper mill, and they had all the safety lights on, so I pulled over and set up the tripod again. Here’s the resultant shot:

Again, I thought it wasn’t a bad effort considering the amount of night time landscape photography that I’ve done recently.

After stuffing around for so long, I finally decided that I need to focus on just getting to the lookout and capturing the one key shot I was after. With a stern resolve I drove that last 200 metres, and was actually getting quite excited. When I got to the lookout, I jammed the brakes, grabbed my camera gear and just about bolted from the car.

Quickly gathering myself, I immediately got my bearings and started searching the southwest skies. Then it was like,

“oooh”

“…there it is!”

“…that’s it!”

“…that’s it??”

“…oh”

Yes, well it would appear that I was a little late for capturing one of the great comets of our generation. It had diminished from the great splendour you see below (taken by John White) to a mere smudge in the sky.

So, you could say that even after a rather adventurous night, I still came away with McNaught… haha… ahem…

Photo credit: John White

The last week has been so hectic… I can’t believe I forgot to tell you guys that I’ve finished Bonnie and Kie’s wedding album pre-designed draft!

For those who are new to this: as part of the standard package, THIA Photography wedding couples get the first draft of their album completed while they are away enjoying their honeymoon (cool eh?). I would have just absolutely loved it if my wedding photographers presented me a nearly finished album as soon as I stepped off the plane.

I’ve given Bonnie and Kie what I hope they think is an amazing cover. The first image you see below is the dust jacket (just imagine it lying flattened out). The writing on the back is from a passage of the Bible that was read during their ceremony, so it’ll have special meaning for them. The other two images at the bottom are random pages taken from the album. They each represent two sides, which equals a spread (it’s what you’d see if you laid the book open).

>>>click to see Bonnie & Kie’s wedding album draft<<<

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Kez before on this blog… she’s a good friend that I met a few years ago through mutual acquaintances. She’s spent a fair chunk of the past few years living and working overseas, so we haven’t got much chance to catch up. But about a week and a half ago a bunch of us headed out to the Queen Victoria Market to celebrate Kez’s birthday since this is the first birthday she’s had in town for a while.

They’ve got this really cool night market thing going on at the Queen Vic during summer, which includes a huge selection of world food that you can eat at your leisure under the stars. However knowing how summer has been in Melbourne this year it wasn’t terribly surprising when it started raining, forcing us to take retreat under the overly-crowded market sheds.

Ange on the top and Kez… umm… er, on the bottom

The outdoors, which was soon to become the…

…indoors

Mon catching non-existent snowflakes on her tongue

The shopping was good, the company even better. What could top that? Well only perhaps three of Melbourne’s finest up-and-coming artists creating a one-of-a-kind birthday-tribute masterpiece =P

Prue making sure everyone knew who the painting was dedicated to.

Words cannot begin to describe…

I haven’t been out for drinks much this year (I know my mum reads this blog, so she’ll be happy to hear that), mainly because I’ve just been way too busy with albums. But two weeks ago Elaine and I managed to make some time to catch up with Dave at the Melbourne Central Lion for his birthday drinks. Dave’s seriously one of the happiest guys I know, and I’m really stoked that I’ll have the chance to be working with him soon.

Elaine, me and Dave

Dave’s crazy cousins from NZ

Jaeger bomb

Luke and Cindy (!!!)… and Elaine

I wanna be like Mike

“I think my head is spinning”

“I’ll tell YOU when I’ve had enough…”

The drink deals were good there considering it was a Saturday night, with $10 jugs and $10 Jaeger bombs.

The third and final birthday celebration of the month (not in chronological order) was Carl’s birthday lunch at Thai City (again, not to be mixed up with this Thai City). He had a huge turnout from all his Telstra friends who had gathered from around the CBD to be there. The food’s always great at Thai City, so great in fact that I missed out on taking any photos. Paul missed a chance to take photos? Yeah, I was pretty shocked too…

In lieu of a photo from Carl’s birthday,
here’s a photo of Carl at Dave’s birthday.
(that’s close enough in my books)

Happy birthday to all the January babies, and I hope you all got really good pressies because it’s going to be a whole eleven months until Christmas rolls around! =P

Rhys is a friend of mine who has a wonderful photographic eye. He’s got an ability to make a visually stunning image out of what most people would consider a mundane environment.

Recently he’s moved away from his digital camera and has increasingly been using real film cameras. I know, what a trip… real film! The last time I bought a roll of film was for my brother’s wedding back a few years ago. I think I’ve forgotten how impressive real film can sometimes still be. It’s got this wonderful ability to resolve a staggering spectrum of light intensities, and produce images with an indescribable organic quality. Photo buffs will understand what I mean.

Anyway, back to Rhys. A few weeks ago we had a coffee and he brought along his Yashica twin-lens reflex camera. For those who aren’t familiar with what that is, here’s an example of what TLRs look like.

You can see why they’re called twin-lens cameras. The way they work is that the bottom lens is used to capture the image (as per standard), while the top lens is used by the photographer to frame the image via and image projected on a translucent screen on top of the camera.

Anyway, back to the coffee. Rhys bravely decided to hand me the camera, and with the slightest hesitation I carefully ran my hands around the foreign controls, slowly familiarising myself with a type of camera that I had only ever seen in pictures. What a wonderful experience… and I hadn’t even taken a photo!

While I may not have had the balls to fire off a frame of 120 film, Rhys thought that I would make a suitable subject for his collection. Below is the wonderful result.

What an amazing mood that’s been captured (I mean the overall image, not my rather plain facial expression). That’s film for ya.

Anyway, if you’ve got the time you should really really head over to his flickr site here. He’s got some stunning Holga shots there too.

PS: If you don’t know what a Holga is, don’t worry because not many people do. I’ll have to do a post on those wonderfully badly-made pieces of work soon.