From the road

Finally had some time this week to start working through the backlog of shots from recent trips away. Funny what you come across! the waterfall pic above shows a rather strange experience. Picture the scene, an out of season, road less travelled with a 30 minute hike through mud and streams to the promise of a spectacular waterfall shot - sounds like perfect Kodak moment material eh? Unless of course 3 other photographers got there before you and are standing right in the middle of the falls - very dedicated of them I thought. If you are out there guys, I would love to see what you came up with! For me it was plan B, head down river to a less 'crowded' scene to take a river and forest shot instead!

Another image I came across was this one of the Moeraki Boulders. My wife however is not impressed that it perpetuates the myth (as she sees it) that these boulders are huge! So, here's my disclaimer (confession if you like) - yes they are only just over a metre tall and most of the time they are covered by swarming tourists... but the incoming tide soon takes care of that little problem....wooo hahahaha (and other evil cackling sounds)!

Both of these shots had me reaching for the trusty ND filter... and polariser... and graduated ND filter! It's a wonder any light actually made it into the camera!

Jumping Jack Flash

Things have been a bit more local this week and the bags have stayed in the closet. Been good to regroup and have some time to go through images from recent trips. Might even get as far as putting them in to my stock library... you never know!

I finally got to go ahead with a shoot that had been waiting on the weather for nearly two weeks. The sun shone but boy it was a fresh 5ºc...I know, I know I'm getting soft! The shoot was for a business at a viewpoint that overlooked their local area. You don't get much time for this type of shoot, especially when your subjects are likely to get permafrost! Kept things simple with a couple of radio triggered Canon flashes to give the images some spark and fill the shadows. It meant we could keep things moving swiftly.

Sometimes business people need a little relaxing in front of the camera and Steve who was directing the shoot came up with a great idea. Jumping jacks, yes you read that right. Watching the photographer leaping up and down made people relax, crack a smile and had the bonus of keeping me nice and warm!

That's the bonus of putting the camera on a tripod and using a cable release. You are free to interact a whole lot more with your subject and even keep fit on the job!

When good flights go bad

I've been pretty lucky with my flights lately, but my luck ran out on Wednesday this week when a 1 hour flight turned into a 30 hour saga! Bad weather in the South Island meant planes were grounded, leaving everyone high and dry in the north.

I was lucky as I could drive back home and wait it out, but plenty of people didn't have that option. The next day I tried again and got bumped from 1.30pm to 3.30pm to 5.30pm, eventually taking off at 6.30pm - 30 hours after my original flight time. Needless to say there were many many phone calls to rearrange schedules. Bad weather can't be avoided of course, but keeping your passengers better informed would have been nice Jetstar!

I couldn't get round as many locations as I'd hoped, but thankfully my client is fantastic and VERY understanding! So it was a bit of a flying visit (excuse the pun) to Wellington, racing straight from the airport to the first location with not a minute to spare - no time to work out where 'reverse' was on the rental, so I had to park accordingly! Got the shots and finally made it to my hotel around 10.30pm...just in time to fall asleep in my dinner!

Up at 6.00am to beat the morning rush hour en-route to my next location on Willis street in Wellington. By 9.00am I had done my dash and had a little time to breathe and take in some sights. It was an awesome day to view the city from Mt Victoria, so that's just what I did and got some panoramic shots with great cloud formations.

From there I headed out to Titahi Bay with its colourful boatsheds and the wind whipping up some pretty decent waves. Followed a sign to Whitireia Park on the Te Onepoto Peninsular and what a gem that turned out to be. A single lane road out onto a headland with fantastic vistas out across the Porirua Harbour to Mana Island as well as the South Island.

The wind was absolutely howling here and actually blew me over at one point as I clung on to my tripod. It was just so wild, windy and wonderful, made even more so with spectacular views down on the windsurfers and kite surfers at the end of the headland.

I had just enough time to flatten my 'hoover head' hair down for my last shoot at Porirua before racing back to the airport and flying home, with no delays this time - Yesssss!

Blown Away

Plenty more kms on the clock again this week - 1200 over 4 days and masses of fantastic scenery. Winter has a firm grip now though and so grey skies and rain hindered the Kodak moments en route. Actually I wonder what moments we have now Kodak has filed for bankruptcy?

Being out in the elements is all good though and I had a great experience just north of Palmerston North. As you might have seen from a previous blog entry, I do like a wind farm and just north of Palmy is a whole smorgasbord of them!

The shot here shows some of the turbines at Te Apiti. It was a brief moment in between the rain and cloud with a magical glimpse of light. What the picture doesn't show is how incredibly windy it was - I could barely stay upright it was so strong.

I managed to wedge the end of the lens against a fence post just long enough to fire off a couple of shots before being blown over. The force of the wind was staggering and the sound of the turbine blades cutting through the air was quite surreal.

After an hour or so of being wind blasted I drove down into Woodville, to a wonderful cafe called Yummy Mummy's for a recharge. Mmmm caramel slice blaarrghhhh (and other Homer Simpson noises)! It took me a while to work out why everyone was giving me funny looks 'til I caught sight of my reflection and saw my 'attacked by a rabid hoover' hairstyle - some might reckon its an improvement of course!

Inner beauty

You win some, you lose some. In amongst this weeks work was a job I quoted for, but didn't end up getting. I decided to go ahead and create some shots of the subject and see what spin I could put on them.

The subject happened to be green, hairy and not altogether attractive on the outside! No it wasn't the Incredible Hulk and I'm not being rude either. It's only when you slice them open, that the Kiwifruit reveals it's inner beauty! It was a bit of a struggle at the veggie shop to pick which fruit was going to be the most attractive on the inside. Then it popped into my head that maybe I could use both the ugly and the attractive sides and create a couple of different looks.

So my plan was hatched to create a Kiwi scene with err... kiwis! A gold Kiwifruit became my sun and some green kiwis cut at various sizes became my hills. I backlit them with a gridded strobe to get some nice edge lighting, with a large soft fill light to keep texture on the front. I really liked the contrast of the rough hairy exteriors with the stylish gold interior.

Version two had me slicing up all the kiwis and backlighting the segments. Once I put these together it gave a much more graphical and stylised image. Finally I couldn't resist adding in a cloud for a bit of fun to complete that iconic New Zealand feel.

In the end i'm not sure which version I like the most, I'm pleased with them both. Which one do you prefer?

Time lapse

OK can somebody tell me where that last month went? I must confess to gross blog neglect, but it came down to the choice of family, food, sleep or blog with the schedule I've been on! 

Over recent weeks I have seen more sunrises and sunsets than ever with my continuing travels around the country, getting shots for my client outside of business hours. It's fun but tiring and I just wish I could squeeze more time out of my day to get some extra landscape shots from all the locations! The 'sweet spot' light wise for these shots is very slim at this time of year, probably only around half an hour depending on weather conditions.

In between the travels I have been getting to try out one of Canon's tilt shift lenses, the 24mm TSE to be precise. Been dying to try one out and when a client asked for some fairly radical angle product shots that required a good depth of field front to back, I knew this was the tool for the job! Thanks to the good folks over at Kingsize I was able to hire one and was not disappointed! It is just incredible how good the images are even at full tilt settings, really sharp and perfect for the job. Would be really good on architectural work too and great for surreal selective focus shots. A big thumbs up Canon and another one for the wish list... which is getting very long!

The shot above was taken last weekend at Mount Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty. It looks lovely and serene which belies the fact that it was taken whilst racing to the next location before the light went! If you see someone sprint past you with a tripod that will probably be me!

I am not target practice!

I think I'm going to sell my house and buy a motorhome. The last week on the road around the South Island has been amazing and I've loved every minute of the 1,500 km trip. You cannot beat the stimulation of fresh places, experiences, views and people on a daily basis.

The assignment was to photograph a number of retail stores around the country outside of opening hours, which meant working at either end of the day and travelling in between to the various locations. It had it's challenges I have to say! For some reason the middle of the road was always the perfect spot for the shots I needed. More than once I had to run away rather swiftly with tripod, camera and a Holden driving hit man hot on my heels! My sprint times are starting to look impressive!

On my travels I managed to get shots of mountains, lakes, beaches, waterfalls, roads, Tuataras, seals and penguins. My face hurts I've been grinning so much... it probably explains some of the strange looks I've been getting!

The job is far from over, with the rest of the country to go over the coming weeks. So if you happen to see a madly grinning photographer standing in the middle of a road junction near you, please don't aim for me!

Travelling light

This week's post comes to you from 30,000 feet. It's been a week of hopping on and off aircraft with more to come! It's a lot of fun, but logistically quite challenging with all the packing/unpacking of gear. It's extremely hard to stay within the weight allowance and not be convinced you've left a vital piece of equipment behind that you're bound to need!

Earlier in the week I had a great two day shoot in Wellington with my good friend Dag from Platform29. A busy shot list saw us shooting in large open plan building interiors, intimate restaurant settings and dark alleys at night! Never a dull moment with Dag! It was a great mix of photography and problem solving with small flashes for speed and portability. Even the Wellington weather, which had promised gales and rain, decided to do an about turn and give us blue skies on the second day. Love it when a plan comes together.

Next week will be a full on seven day road trip covering 1,500 kms to get a variety of retail store shots for a client. I'm hoping the weather gods will smile on me again so I can squeeze in some landscape shots along the way. Well it would be rude not to!

Cash liquidation

As anyone who earns a living as a photographer knows, work always comes in waves. This week that was literally the case! I had an assignment to photograph some kite boarders for an editorial piece. Luckily for me the wind was very obliging... in fact, downright over-enthusiastic! So perfect conditions for the shots, unfortunately also perfect for sand/salt blasting all my gear. About now I was wishing I had purchased a marine housing for the camera. Still, photography is all about problem solving.

I always carry several zip lock bags and elastic bands, so a bit of a McGuyver session had me ready to go in no time. Now obviously, the kite and kiteboarder are a considerable distance from each other. So the options were to shoot from a distance or get in close and go wide angle. So in I went, up to my knees and got the guys to come as close as possible. At some point I found myself rather deeper than my knees and realised I still had my wallet in my pocket! Ooops.

A good mix of shots were achieved in a relatively short space of time. I liked this shot because although it was another 'border's kite, it gave the image a nice triangle of elements, with the windsurfer coming into the frame on the right.

Next time I will have the marine housing and get in amongst it more, I have a cunning plan! Who knows, my wallet might even be dry enough to purchase one!

Hanging on the telephone

This week has been all about chrome, buttons and shiny bits. Mobile devices to be precise. How hard could it be I hear you say? Plenty hard would be my reply! Whilst not looking like the most challenging subject, they are a technical exercise in lighting...and patience!

Because you are dealing with chrome, shiny and matt plastic all at the same time with a multitude of colours and bizarre shapes, things can get interesting! Some people throw small devices like this in a light tent. I personally don't think this is the way to go, as you have so little control over the shape of your reflections, the detail doesn't look as crisp and edges look soft. So for me it's all about multiple lights and moving pieces of black or white card all over the place. Somehow you have to squeeze a camera in there too...which of course is bound to show up in the reflections. Hello Photoshop! Quite often the key to lighting these devices can be in lighting what they reflect and not actually the device itself. All in all the clock ticks by fairly rapidly on these shoots.

No matter how much time, effort, patience you bestow on a device, ultimately you will end up in Photoshop. I use canned air, anti static cloths, brushes and much swearing, but there is always dust and dirt to contend with on the final capture! Bearing in mind these images can be used up to 2 metres tall in shopping malls, they need to look pretty perfect.

So that was my week, kept in the dark talking to Mr softbox... I think I need to get out more!