One hour until I go shoot today’s wedding. It’s a bit windy at the moment, but at least it’s bright outside. The couple have chosen St Peter’s Church in Toorak, so it’s going to be fabulous. Elaine and I visited there a few days ago and it looks pretty grand. I love the courtyard, and the lovely red doors they have everywhere.

There’s four or five of these huge red doors around the church. They’re going to make beautiful backdrops for today’s photos.

I love these windows.

In the courtyard you feel completely surrounded by this grand old sandstone building.

That’s Elaine simulating the 80 people that will be in the group shot this afternoon.

During a wedding I take about 1,500 photos. It’s only possible thanks to digital media, because in the good ol’ days that’d be the equivalent of 42 rolls of film! To ensure that I never run out of memory cards, this week I topped up my collection with two Sandisk Ultra II 4GB cards. That brings it to a total collection of 21GB!

If you own a digital camera (who doesn’t nowadays?), there’s no excuse of ever running out of memory. In the last six months the price of memory cards has dropped so dramatically. Last year I paid about $100 for an Ultra II 1GB Compact Flash card, this week I paid just under $110 for an Extreme III 4GB. That’s a drop in the per GB price of almost 75% in six months - and for a faster model!

Memory cards are cheap, memories are priceless.

Today marks one year of marriage to my sweetheart Elaine. It’s been an absolutely wonderful year.

Elaine’s present to me was a great weekend away. After a trip out west a few weeks ago, this time it was a trip east to Warrigal. I’ll post some photos soon!

Tradition says the present for a first anniversary is paper. In recognition of that, Elaine also got me a stunning Ken Duncan panoramic book. It’s huge, and it’s hopefully going to give me some inspiration for my landscape photography.

It doesn’t stop there. Elaine’s third present to me was a Sudoku game. She always beats me at all the word related games, so maybe this time with a numbers game I’ll have the upper hand.

Last night when we got back, we hacked into our wedding cake. After spending a year in my parents’ freezer, it came out still tasting delicious. For those who don’t know, it’s also a tradition to keep the top layer of your wedding cake until the first anniversary. Just check with your cake chef that it’s safe to do so first!

For my gift to Elaine, I found this really cool section of Myer in the city called Rouge. They have a huge range of synthetic flowers with some really nice assistants who can help you make a custom arrangement. They really helped me through the process by taking into what Elaine might like, while also ensuring that it would match the surrounds when I took it home. The creation process took about an hour, and today I picked up the finished product.

Of course, a big shout out to my beautiful wife Elaine… happy anniversary sweetie!

These are so long overdue.

Here’s just a few quick snaps of what my albums look like. I took these ages ago, but never got around to putting them up.

Many of you know I get these produced in America. Why? Quality, it’s that simple.

I haven’t seen another photographer in Australia able to offer this style of album to such high quality. They’re true fine art coffee table albums.

This is why these albums rock:

• Digital design allows for every album to be completely different, completely customised for the couple. There’s no restrictions on the number (average over 200 for 80 side album), size (up to max dimensions of open book), orientation or layout of images. If you can imagine it, it can be done.
• Protective hard case with embossed names.
• Full bleed (borderless), full colour hardcover, dust jacket and pages.
• Printed on archival quality paper, using archival quality inks which means they’ll last for generation without fading.
• Pages are coated with a gloss laminate for extra protection allowing for heavy use. You shouldn’t be scared of flipping through your album.
• Comes in 80, 60, 40, 30 and 20 sides, and in sizes of 10″x10″, 8″x8″, 7″x7″ and really cool 5″x5″ BRAG books. BRAG’s are exact mini replicas, and they’re small enough that you can stick them in your handbag – not that I own one – and BRAG to everyone at work!.

Hard cased & embossed

Various sizes are available

Beautifully hand bound albums

I’ll get around to doing some proper shots of the albums before my new website comes online… oops, did I say that out loud?

I just stumbled upon the following website which is really useful if you want to take really stunning photos that will impress your family and friends. It’s got the really uninspiring name of Sunrise, Sunset Calendars and Local Time, you can visit it by clicking here.

What you can do is find out the sunrise and sunset times for your local area (as the name subtly suggests). So how’s this going to help you with your photography?

Ever notice how during the last few hours of the day the whole mood of the sky changes? Ever notice that the sun takes on a really bright orange glow, and clouds take on all different shades of blue, purple and red? That’s really a superb time to be taking photos of landscapes, portraits, or whatever if you’re looking for something different.

Apparently the same thing happens in the morning… or so I’ve been told.

The problem is that ideal lighting conditions can sometimes only last for as little as 10 minutes, which means either a lot of guesswork and waiting around or you can use the Sunrise, Sunset Calendars and Local Time to find out when it’s all going to happen (I think I’ll just abbreviate it to SSCLT from here on in).

At the SSCLT site you can print out whole months of information that’ll provide you the start/end times for twilight and sunset/sunrise. Just be sure to use the Civil twilight times if you’re using it for photography. If you’re into sailing or fishing you can use the Nautical times, or if you’re into stargazing the Astronomical times.

Here’s a few random shots that I just quickly dug up…

This is the ONLY sunrise shot I have. It was taken in Torquay with a point-and-shoot camera. The reason why I was up so early (approx 6am) was that I had to go to the toilet.
Too much information?

A slightly overexposed image (pulled in post production) taken in Fiji. It’s still nice though.

A surreal photo taken somewhere between Singapore and Thailand.