Not only is this my weekly landscape 52 shot it is also my entry for the Strobist boot camp III, Assignment 3 competition. HMQS Gayundah was a flat-iron gunboat operated by the Queensland Maritime Defence Force and later the Royal Australian Navy (as HMAS Gayundah). She entered service in 1884 and was decommissioned and sold in 1921 where it was used as a sand and gravel barge and was later run aground at Woody Point, Redcliffe to serve as a break-wall in 1958.

I had arrived at 4:45am so I had plenty of time to setup the gear and try a few compositions. I ended up using 2 Cactus KF36 stobes set at full power and positioned down the side on the ship.  These were fired with Cactus V2 remotes. It took a little time to position the lights so that there was an even distribution of light.  I started with capturing the correct flash exposure for the wreck and I then dialed in a longer shutter speed to bring in the ambient sunrise.

To really appreciate the size of the wreck and get an understanding of the light setup I have put together a small video. I would love to hear your comments and critique on both the shot and the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the year of disasters Queensland has had this year, with the massive floods and cyclones, I wanted to shoot something that stood for the great work done by Queenslanders to clean up and move forward.

XXXX Gold is brewed about 10km from where I live. It is the most iconic beer of Qld here in Australia. They put some great advertisements out congratulating Queenslanders on their great fighting spirit after the disasters. What’s more Australian than a good Aussie Beer?

And as usual here is my set up image. The white paper behind the bottles made a massive difference to the colour of the bottles. Such a simple addition but so key to the final image.

I have also put together a short behind the scenes (BTS) video of the shoot explaining my lighting and set up. You can expect many more of this in the next few months as product photography is really appealing to me. So keep your eyes out and feel free to submit ideas of things you would like to learn how to light and shoot.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Coffs Harbour Jetty was originally built in 1892 . It was used for Commercial shipping until 1974 when trade ceased to run from the Coffs Harbour port. The Jetty slowly fell apart which led to its eventual closer due to public safety concerns in 1990. But 6 years on it was restored to all of its glory using the same construction methods and materials used 100 years ago.

This week I decided to try my first ever DSLR time lapse. And to make it a little more interesting I decided to make it a HDR time lapse.  I setup the tripod with the composition I liked and  set my intervalometer to take 3 bracketed exposures (+2, 0, -2) every 12 seconds. You can see that early on the sky certainly wasn’t anything spectacular and that the vibrant colours did not arrive till almost 20 minutes after sunrise. It realy proves that you should stick around and see what happens on bleak looking mornings.

I batch processed the HDR files with Photomatix and then using Adobe Lightroom 2 I made a few changes and then exported the images as jpegs so that I could open them in Windows Live Movie Maker. I set the individual images display time to 0.1 of a second.

I hope you enjoy my first ever DSLR time lapse and I would love to hear your feedback on it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So what do you think?

Canon 40D @10mm, f5.6, ISO800, 45 minutes of 30sec exposures stacked with StarStax

I have taken about 4 other star trails but still hadn’t been happy with the finished images. Heading out I knew I wanted to make sure I pumped my ISO up to at least 800 and that I wanted a fairly clear landscape. Ballow view offered the best bet with some amazing trees that had been ring-barked over 50 years ago.

This week I want to share with you some quick tips on shooting star trails but I will be concentrating on how I process my star trails with photoshop and a great new free program I use called StarStax. I will have a video post latter this year on the technical side of star trails from the field.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I couldn’t be much happier with the way the image turned out. My gamble on the rotation of the stars was spot on and I have a few more tricks up my sleeve for the next star trail adventure. Here are a few more shots taken the following day just down from my location the previous night.

Canon 40D @85mm, f5.6, ISO800, 180sec

Canon 40D @17mm, f4, ISO800, 250sec

]]> http://www.thephotojourney.com/2011/06/24/star-trails-ballow-view/feed/ 2 http://www.thephotojourney.com/2011/06/03/self-sportraits/ http://www.thephotojourney.com/2011/06/03/self-sportraits/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 01:35:40 +0000 Scott http://www.thephotojourney.com/?p=1822 After weeks of organising, designing and shooting I have completed my first ever body of work. My Self Sportraits. Since my first ever Self Sportrait back in July of 2009 the series has received many questions and compliments. Today I want to share with you my journey and a few behind the scenes moments.

It has been a personal project inspired by two of my most idolised photographers, Chase Jarvis and Zack Arias. Chase and Zack have always been advocates for setting yourself personal projects to help develop your creative skills and to extend your portfolio. Chase is also a great believer in sharing your knowledge. This prompted me to create my BTS video which after just over 1 year has been viewed over  21,000 times and I really have to thank one of my favorite bloggers Udi Tirosh who featured the video on his blog diyphotography.net. His website is a great inspiration to make the most of your gear and budget.

Seamless White Background @ Home Tutorial from Scott Bourke on Vimeo.

I have had loads of emails asking for more BTS from the series. So I have decided to put together a timelapse video from my rugby shot. I’m really getting into the timelapse stuff of late.

So thanks to everyone that lent me gear or gave my words of encouragement. Whilst it is my first ever body of work I still plan on adding to it over time so stay tuned for plenty more shots, who knows ping-pong may be on its way.

To finish off here are a few of my recent setup shots you guys seem to crave.

After putting my skateboard shot off for long enough due to the fact I had no idea how to execute my idea, I finally gave it a crack and it came out better than expected. I think this could be one of my best ever Self Sportraits.

After the success of my Tennis Sportrait int he stairwell I decided to give it another go with a few modifications for my AFL shot. These setups take much longer to position the camera angle and lights and even more time to get an image I’m happy with. The shadow has been dropped-in in post.

This week I have put together an in-depth (28min) post processing tutorial where I take you through Photomatix, Lightroom 2 and Photoshop. Because it is a little long I have also created a 1 min fast forward so you can get a quick glimpse of what I will cover to gauge if the tutorial will be of interest to you.

Many people have been inquiring how I manage to keep my HDR images looking so natural and fairly noise free. These tips are shared in the full length video plus a few other tricks.

Here is the 1 min fast forward teaser.

Here is the full narrated tutorial.

Canon 40D @ 14mm, f16, 30sec exposure on ISO200 with Tiffen HT Circular Polarizer.

We setup on the edge of the South Bank walkway as low down as possible to the water. This allows for capturing the city reflections in all its glory. Brisbane’s river front buildings like the Treasury Casino (Green building)  have a great mixture of colours that make for a very interesting effect.

Continuing on from last weeks post about the Effects of white balance this weeks night cityscape has been improved by selecting the Tungsten WB setting as opposed to the Auto WB because who knows what it will select. This setting will also give an interesting effect to any white lights by turning then into more of a blue light.

Once again this week I have a quick Behind the scenes video explaining my setup and settings.

If you are enjoying the tips and tricks from the site please join the Facebook fan page here.

Canon 40D @ 14mm, f16, ISO200 with Tiffen HT Circular Polarizer. HDR +2, 0, -2 merged in Photomatix

After some rather poor weather I decided a mid week sunrise shoot was in order. So I headed out to Wellington Point about 30 minutes drive from Brisbanes CBD at 4:30am to see what would be on offer. Wellington point has some great subjects to shoot like its small jetty, rockpools(as seen in this weeks video) and who can forget the mangroves.

The on location video this week shows you how changing your white balance can boost your sunrises or sunset shots. It is also interesting to play with your WB when shooting cityscapes at night as settings like tungsten can really make your city jump off the night sky.

So this week try shooting the same location with differing WB settings as see how you go.

If you are enjoying the tips and tricks from the site please join the Facebook fan page here.

Canon 40D @14mm, f9.5, ISO200, 6 sec with Tiffen 0.9 ND Filter & Tiffen HT Circular Polarizer

This week Anna and I headed off to Bellbird Grove at the Brisbane Forest Park. We had not explored the area before so I was unsure of what I would be leaving with however I knew I wanted some running water. The rocks in the area are very interesting with some amazing patterns and grooves in them.

I have done a short BTS (Behind the scenes) Video on how to use a Circular Polarizer to cut out the glare on the water. I’d love to hear your comments and hope that you are finding these videos helpful. I plan to bring you more as the year goes on.

If your enjoying the website please join the Facebook fan page here.

Its not the most amazing subject to be shooting for the weeks image but it will have to do considering the devastating flood Queensland has been hit by. I haven’t had another chance to go out shooting this week with volunteering to cleanup some of the worst affected areas in Brisbane by pushing mud out of homes.

This is a 3 image stitch taken with my Canon 40D and a 50mm f1.8 prime lens. The real trick to a good stitched panorama is to make sure that there is at least a 25% overlap from 1 image to the next. All this and more is explained in my first of many video tutorials for the Landscape 52 Project.

If there is a post processing tutorial you would like me to do please drop me a line on the contacts page.

]]> http://www.thephotojourney.com/2011/01/21/stitched-panorama-video-tutorial-252/feed/ 0 http://www.thephotojourney.com/2010/12/27/inspired-by-sound-bts-video/ http://www.thephotojourney.com/2010/12/27/inspired-by-sound-bts-video/#comments Sun, 26 Dec 2010 21:20:00 +0000 Scott http://www.thephotojourney.com/?p=1411 Here is the last video in the series of videos of how I took my photos for this years Canon Photo5 Competition. Check out the other photo5 blog posts here.

Brief 5 was to listen to a sound clip from the Canon website and use it as inspiration for the final image.

The sound reminded me of my grandfather snoring so I had the inspiration and now I just needed to come up with how to setup the lights and camera to match my minds eye.

Once again it was recorded and edited all on my iPhone 4. Interesting exercise. Love to hear your comments.

Brief 3 was to incorporate confetti in motion. This was going to be 1 messy shoot

I wanted to capture the cleanup after the party. I put together a short video of the setup explaining the lights used and the way I rigged up the vacuum cleaner. Over a month after the shoot I have still managed to find confetti all around the house.

Once again it was recorded and edited all on my iPhone 4. Interesting exercise. Love to hear your comments.

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