The Photo Journey

Back at the start of the year I did a photo-shoot for an Australia Clothing label called Donnie Bishop. Starting with the simple concept of wanting to bring an edgier style to the standard menswear market in Australia, owners Jason Sandhar and Viggaenesh Kanniah have spearheaded this lifestyle brand to encompass a hip hop style while working with underground and up-and-coming artists, models, musicians and sports persons like Brisbane Roar’s striker Reinaldo. The A-league  Brisbane based star is the new ambassador for Donnie Bishop’s Clothing.

I was approached by Donnie Bishop’s Co-Owner Jason Sandhar to come up with a theme for a shoot with Reinaldo. With Donnie Bishop Clothing being such a casual/dressy urban style, and Reinaldo being such a skillful professional footballer, I wanted to bring the two elements together with a Street Football feel. Brisbane has some great alleyways in the city, and these provided us a great environment for the theme. Anna and I inspected the alleyways the week before the shoot to formulate some ideas. Its amazing what you can learn about your city if you just go for a walk with your camera and get lost in the back streets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I shot, processed and delivered my first ever maternity shoot. It was partly due to a friend recommending me and the other part a kick in the bum from Zack Arias and his recent post – Call to Action. Zack has been inspiring us photographers that have been sitting on the dock to make the jump and push ourselves photographically.

Our friends Jayne and Simon are expecting the birth of their first child this Friday, September 11th 2009.  And before its a little too late we headed out for a maternity shoot.  Not only was it my first maternity shoot but it was also my first non family shoot and well my first ever outdoor strobist attempt.

Zack Arias has challenged us to Serve someone with our cameras, in such a way that we as photographers will break free from our self criticism of “ I’m not good enough yet.” Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite blogers, David Hobby that runs strobist.com is well know for running free assignment based workshops every now and then. Unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to participate in the past but last month he announced Strobist Boot Camp II. The idea of Boot Camp is for people to put the knowledge gained from his site about off camera lighting into action. The assignments are sort based off real world situations.

The first assignment for this year was to take a nice headshot of someone unemployed or similar that they could use on their resumé so as to stand out from other applicants.

So my subject for the shoot was my wife Anna who is just about to finish a Masters of Environment – Education for Sustainability. She has been applying for relevant jobs like crazy and has had a few interviews of late that she has finished up 2nd best even though the relevant HR Departments couldn’t give her a decent reason why she was just overlooked for the position considering she fulfilled all requirements well. I nice headshot on her resumé may be just what she needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Well I have seen plenty of self portraits of people in their bathrooms (Clothed thankfully) on flickr in the past. Mainly used for Avatars but also a way of finally getting their mug out there. So I decided to give it a go after doing some product photography the other night.

I wanted to have a photo that displayed the camera as the core subject and me as merely the driver. So a nice amount of DOF was required. The lens choice was easy, as for a greater DOF I needed a larger aperture setting. So out came my Canon 50mm f1.8 II.

Read the rest of this entry »