Tag Archives: Canon

Invest in yourself

Today is not only my birthday but it also marks a new beginning in my photographic journey. It is a day in which 2 new Canon 5D IV arrived on my doorstep to close off the final pieces in part of my photographic business plan.

It marks the day which I now have all the equipment I need to be able to shoot on location at events and the images I take are sent live across a wireless network to portable Wacom Workstation Pro table, where an assistant will process before uploading the images to either my online store or a Google Drive account where my clients can access them within minutes of the images being taken.

For competitions, I can now shoot while these images are being worked on in the background and never need to walk away from the action. Competitors can now get access to view and purchase images of themselves and their achievements within minutes, not hours, days or in some cases weeks.

Gala and awards clients will now have access to their images before the celebration drinks have been finished and allow them to capitalize on their own marketing of their events.

For weddings, the bride and groom can have access to their images in the fastest possible time as they can not be processed while we are still shooting the event.

2 Canon 5D IV's with battery grips and 64gig super fast SD Cards
2 Canon 5D IV’s with battery grips and 64gig super fast SD Cards

Over the last month, I have been investing heavily in equipment as to bring the dream of being able to delivery super high-quality professional images to you in lighting speed, speeds that are not normally associated with progressional event photography.  I know you are going to love this new service as it takes event photography to a whole new level.

Bring on a new beginning and remember to always back and invest in yourself. 🙂

Where Will 2016 Take You?

As the last sunsets over the evening sky for 2015 we all generally like to sit back and bot reflect on the year that has gone and look forward toward the year that is ahead.  Most of us will have grand plans of what it will be like and the amazing things we will achieve.

Most will move on from new years day with little direction toward the grand plans they made just a few hours before.

 

I see the world through a lens and in a series of frames, with each frame different from the next and all frames unique and can never be repeated, so if you do just one thing tonight take a photo of yourself with all the warmth of these new and wonderful grand plans you have for the year ahead, and when you lose faith or just get busy in life pull out that photo and remember…..  Remember that moment in time where you were for just a fraction of a second free to dream and become whatever you want to be.  🙂

The process of capturing a fraction in time that lasts a lifetime is an amazing thing and one I don’t think I will ever get sick of.

Now for me I will be spending tonight not alone but with the love of my life.  Under the stars with my photography 🙂

For me the night life and the crisp early mornings make for fantastic photos so I will be spending it under the stars with my camera by my side to capture one of Australian’s true wonders……  The Australian Blue Mountains.

What are you planning for tonight? and what amazing things will you be doing over the next year?

Wishing on a star, night photography, camiping, rhino rack, foxwing sunseeker
Wishing on a star

PS: If you are interesting in learning how to capture night shots like this one and the technique of painting with light let me know as I am looking and conducting some workshops if the interest is there. 🙂

Technical Info:

  • Exposure: 30 seconds
  • Aperture: 2.8
  • Focal Length: 24 mm
  • Lighting: Used a flash light to paint the trees and everything in the foreground.

With The Sounds Of Christmas Fading

It makes for a great time to get out and capture all the Christmas lights while they are still around. 🙂

Christmas lights and lights in general can be hard to capture especially if you want to also capture a person or some other subject that is not lit up by the lights.  The resulting images will be that the either the subject will be dark or the lights will be over exposed.

The trick is to use some form of flash to light up the subject so that you can even out the exposure across the entire image and in doing so reduce the contrast between dark and light.  There are lots of ways to do this and some I will go into in the coming weeks.

If you are just out to capture the lights you may not need a tripod but it is a good idea if you are after sharp images due the the camera needing to open the shutter longer than you can hold the camera steady for.

What I tend to do is go out and give it a try.  I start with hand holding and then move toward using other supporting devices if the need arises.

Why?  because then I can travel lite and I have less equipment to get in peoples way.  After all they are also there to experience the joy that is Christmas lights.

So before the lights fade away for another year, grab your camera and head out to capture some lights.  Experiment a little, play with your shutter and aperture and just have a bit of fun.

Out to capture some Christmas lights
Out to capture some Christmas lights

 

Photographer Turned Power Freak!

Power, give me power!!

With the arrival more speedlites the consumption of power that these things require to stay on for extended periods throughout events while is never-ending!!!!

This chase for power will hopefully be rectified with the addition of these CP-E4 external battery packs for my ever-growing range of Canon 600 EX-RT speedlites.

While these suckers are not cheap to buy they are also not cheap to fill with batteries as a take eight AA batteries, they do in conjunction with the four AA batteries already sit inside the speedlites themselves reduces the recycle time to up to a third, while extending the life by at least double, and I must say I can’t wait to put them to the test at my next event!!!!!

 

CP-E4 external battery packs can speedlites
CP-E4 external battery packs can speedlites

Sun rises over the last day of the week

Well we have finally reached Friday, thank God! And unlike other people the week and leads me really into my working week because, as an event and portrait photographer my working hours are when people having events and have the time to get their portraits done.

It also means I get to meet a whole range of fantastic people, and I get to see such amazing sites to which I feel really blessed. And I know this little Canberra event photographer really enjoys and appreciates every moment I get to spend with not only new and exciting people but catching up with old friends.

Now I’m not sure if I’ve shared this photo publicly, but it is a photo that I really enjoyed taking for many reasons. One of which I got to meet a friend which I had spoken to for many years online but had never met in person where I had the opportunity to give a one-on-one photography coaching session, where we concentrated on landscape shooting along with how to use speed lights on location in a practical sense to ensure that you could capture images as they were seen through our own eyes. It was also a fantastic opportunity to get up early and get some early-morning photos of what was splendid but kind of chilly morning.

Early-morning one-on-one coaching in New Zealand's North Island

This photo was taken while I travelled to New Zealand to cover the New Zealand salsa Congress in the beginning of June this year.

It was also part of my travels after the event were grabbed a car and drove all around the North Island with my daughter capturing and visiting some of the most amazing places and this was just one of those places.

For the shot we were looking out over the Bay of Plenty at Tauranga on the north end of the North Island of New Zealand. The island you can send the background is Moturiki Island and while the image appears quite dark this was certainly not the case on the day as the sun was shining and we were shooting directly into the light.

Our anyone that has done this would certainly know that it is impossible to get an image like the one you are seeing, mainly because that the sun would overpower the camera and cause it to expose in such a way that the subject in the foreground would be silhouetted.

To get around this I used my portable speed lights to bring the subject up to the same exposure as the background. I also applied a neutral density filter to the lens of my camera to bring the sunshine back down to a level that was acceptable and able to be captured within camera. As with everything with photography and in life, everything has a side effect or a cause-and-effect. The side-effect of adding a neutral density filter is that the image naturally get starker however it also goes along and requires a longer shutter speed to achieve and capture an image. While in most cases this is not necessarily an issue as it is in effect which you would like to achieve, in the event scratch that in this shot I wanted to capture a person, someone that I required to be very still and without motion blur. The cool thing is in using flash I’m able to achieve this as this is a side-effect of using flash. It will freeze the person or subject to which the flash is directed, while everything outside of that flash is left to be exposed by the camera. Which can have some softness due to motion blur or the subject in the foreground is completely sharp.

One of the other key points of this photo scratch that one of the other key points to this photo is that the colour balance of speed light is different to the colour balance of the rising sun. Rising Sun is a much warmer colour than the colour that comes out of a speed light. To get around this I also applied what is referred to as a gel. Gels come in many different colours into many different things but for the purpose of this I used an orange gel which change the colour of the speed light to match the warm colour of the sun which ensured that the subject in the foreground gave the appearance that the light falling on her was more natural than man-made.

If you want to know more about photography and in particular get some photography lessons let me know, as I’m putting together a course material for photographic workshops beholding over the next year, some of these being on location landscape shooting along with how to use artificial lighting to bring out the best in your subject, the matter the location.

Well I have to run as I have some planning and things to get done for my weekend shoots,

Hope y’all have a fantastic day which is in essence the last day of your working week, and I hope to see some of you over the weekend even if it is from the other side of the camera.