A couple of days prior to the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, late last year, I was assigned to go and shoot the skipper of the super-maxi yacht and five time winner of the race, Mark Richards.

I wasn’t given any specific instructions from the picture desk, but I knew right away that I wanted to go up the mast and get of a shot of the skipper up there. The mast on Wild Oats XI is 48 metres high and getting winched up there in little more than a seat with a plastic buckle holding me in was something I didn’t even think about at the time, but later when filing my pictures felt a little uneasy about.

Mark had never been photographed up the mast before, which I didn’t find out until my feet were back on solid ground. I thought the mast photo might have been a little cliché but was happy to hear that although he had been up and down the mast hundreds of times, he had never been photographed up there. A good score for our paper!

I took up my Nikon D3 with the 14-24 lens and the hardest part of getting this photo (besides the glaring early afternoon sun) was not getting my feet in the picture. 48 metres up swinging around on a rope with the entire boat rocking and a fair breeze blowing, combined with ten or more rigging ropes getting in the way and sending sharp harsh shadows on the subject, proved problematic. A small white puffy cloud gave me enough time to get a quick shot with some not so harsh light, and after that we were done. Mark was a busy man in the middle of last minute preparations with his crew prior to the big race.

The photo ran six columns on page 3 of The Australian the following day.

A very cool assignment indeed!

Jeremy Sheridan at Bordworld.com.au has set up a charity auction to raise money for Brad’s wife Nancy, and I have put up a couple of mounted 90x70cm limited edition prints. The auction only runs till this Friday, so head over here now and put a bid on one of the many items up for offer. There’s some great stuff here and as of five minutes ago there are still some crazy bargains.

I only met Brad once in person, but we communicated through email and social media often.
Brad’s star was only starting to rise in action sports photography, he was Canadian and naturally, snowboarding ran in his veins, but whilst living in Sydney with his wife Nancy he was rarely seen without a camera. He shot everything from skateboarding to early morning yoga workouts on Bondi beach. He was keen, passionate about photography, and had a thirst for knowledge of all things photo related.

I met Brad in person at this year’s Bondi Bowl-A-Rama. I was working for the newspaper The Sunday Telegraph and although I’d never met Brad before I knew exactly who he was when I first arrived at the bowl.
Not one to play the “too cool” card as many other photogs do a big events, especially skateboarding events, Brad was the guy talking to everyone around him, laughing and absolutely stoking out on the fact that he was standing on the deck of the Bondi bowl photographing some of the best skateboarders in the world. I remember having a long conversation with him about, first and foremost photo geekery, but then we talked a lot about the future and his and Nancy’s plans to head back to Canada. We showed each other shots on the back of our cameras after nailing a decent pic, and laughed at ourselves when we would screw something up.
That was to be the first and last time that I would get to hang out and geek out with Brad.

Jeremy Sheridan at Boardworld was a very close friend of Brad and Nancy and contacted me some time ago to see if I could help him with some contacts in the snow industry to get some product donated for a charity auction. I told Jeremy I wanted to help out in any way I could and suggested I could do some limited edition prints. I’m not one to think my pictures are worth anything much, but it was something that I could sure do to be part of this great cause. The money raised in the auction will go to Brad’s wife Nancy. It’s a small gesture from the Australian action sports community to pay tribute to Brad and to help Nancy out with her recovery.

Rest well Brad, I’m glad I got to spend those few hours with you.

Early last week I was sent to cover the announcement of the 2011 ARIA Award nominees at The Sydney Theatre Company in Walsh Bay, Sydney. Nominees were announced along with the winners in the artisan and fine arts categories. Melbourne based musician and singer-songwriter Gotye aka Wally De Backer was nominated for seven Aria Awards for his single Somebody I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra), three of which he was announced as a winner during the artisan and fine arts announcements. it was clear from the outset that Gotye was the news story for this year’s ARIA Awards and as such four photographers from Sydney’s major metropolitan newspapers (myself included) were clambering to get a couple of minutes with him for a set-up portrait.
This event didn’t have any photo opportunities set aside for the media, so it was a case of us photographers dragging whoever we could aside for a quick snap. No time for our usual lighting set-ups it was pretty much find a spot and hope there was enough ambient light and a clean background to make a decent photo. I went last out of the four photographers and here are the shots I got in the three minutes I had with Wally, who I might add was incredibly friendly, talkative and super easy, unlike some of the other music industry personalities present.
Link to ARIA nominations gallery at The Daily Telegraph http://bit.ly/ouhknU

I was recently fortunate enough to be selected as a finalist in the Shoot The Chef photographic competition. The competition is run every year in conjunction with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s Good Food Guide and the Crave Sydney International Food Festival.
This is the first time I have ever entered any kind of photographic competition and was pretty excited to be one of the eleven finalists.
My subject for the shoot was Hayden Ellerton, the exceptionally talented executive chef of The Terrace restaurant at The Denman Hotel, Thredbo. A close mutual friend introduced us thinking it would be the perfect pairing for such a shoot as Hayden is also a pretty talented skier and I have spent a long time shooting skiing and snowboarding, and more recently have been shooting a lot more editorial features. The hope was that we could somehow combine the two.
Hayden managed to get his hands on a freshly slaughtered, organically farmed pig, sourced from a local farm for the shoot, which made things interesting – especially when we started to use some pigs blood on snow!
The back story to the final image is that Hayden (along with myself) is a vegetarian, yet he prepares a variety of exotic meat dishes such as pheasant, pork cheeks and sweetbreads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetbread. Hayden tastes these dishes he prepares but spits out the meat without swallowing. I wanted to show the compassionate side to the vegetarian chef that prepares such an amazing and diverse menu of delicately crafted fine food.
About a week after we found out the image had made the finals, Hayden was awarded a chefs hat at the Good Food Guide awards, a highly prestigious accolade for any chef!
I have included some of the other shots below that didn’t make the cut.
Also here’s a link to all the finalist’s images on the SMH website. http://t.co/KCE6yXS3
The images are on display at Chifley Plaza in Sydney until October 28th.

Kohei Tsubaki of Japan is pictured competing in the bike leg of the Triathlon ITU World Championship Series in Sydney on Sunday, April 11, 2010. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)

First off, I’ll say I don’t normally do a lot of product reviews, but recently on Twitter I responded to someone I follow who was heading to Japan to do some snowboarding. They were wondering whether compression tights were worth buying for the trip and I responded by saying how priceless I think they are -I’ve been a big fan of the Skins long tights for many years.
I’m no athlete, but my experience wearing Skins comes from years of photographing snowboarding and skiing all over the world. I used to use plain old thermal underwear, although that didn’t even do the job of keeping me warm most days. I found out about Skins while away on an editorial trip with a bunch of professional snowboarders from Victoria back in about 2006-they were swearing by them, but I didn’t really understand the benefits of compression tights at the time.
Every time I would head out to the mountains after a few weeks or months away from the snow, the first couple of days my legs, particularly my thighs, would be aching. I spend most days lugging around about 15 kilograms or more of camera gear on my back, hiking through deep snow and transferring that extra weight through my legs when riding. After a big first day, I could barely walk the next, due to heavy muscle fatigue.
The first time I wore the Skins in the snow, that initial muscle pain which followed my first day was completely gone. The purchase price was more than worth this sparing of pain!
Again and again I was amazed at the difference these compression tights made to not only my leg muscles and fatigue, but my general ability to back up the physical work in the backcountry, day after day. Not only did my muscles thank me, but for the first time I was also warm, and I’ve worn these things in temperatures as cold as -36 degrees Celcius.

So fast forward many years later and I’m actually quite passionate about the physical benefits of this product. Chris at Skins had seen my Twitter responses to the snowboarder that was heading to Japan and got in touch to see if I’d be keen to test out the new A400 short tights. After I explained that apart from running around with a couple of cameras hanging from me on a daily basis with my current newspaper work, the only activity I do when there isn’t snow on the ground is run laps of Sydney’s Centennial Park-which he thought would be perfect.

I can say after wearing the shorts for a few weeks, that I experienced the EXACT same benefit from running with the shorts, as I have when wearing the long tights in the snow.
Muscle pain is significantly less the day after a big run wearing the shorts. The shorts are super comfortable and clearly well made, none of the seams dig into the skin even considering how tight they are. I wouldn’t even think of not wearing them now-they have become just as important as my running shoes or iPod. I don’t want to get too carried away here, but since wearing the A400′s I have run PB’s in both time and distance on my evening runs. Who knows, it could just be conditioning or even mind over matter, but either way it’s working for me.

I have also taken to wearing them under my jeans if I know I have a big event to cover, such as a sporting event where I will be covering a lot of ground during the day and carrying a lot of camera equipment. When I covered the Dextro Energy ITU Triathlon last year, I could barely walk for two days after – stairs were a killer. Lesson learnt!
I’ll definitely be purchasing another pair of long tights to wear under jeans while covering rugby league games this winter. All that running up and down the sidelines to get the shot requires the photographer to stretch and be in good shape, and compression means less impact damage to the muscles, and hopefully less fatigue the next day.
Go get some!

Jurgen Horwaath is pictured through the legs of other competitors, launching out of Bondi Bowl during a heat of the annual Vans Bowl-A-Rama skateboarding contest, at Bondi Beach. Pic: Dan Himbrechts

A while back I was assigned to shoot the annual Bondi Bowl-A-Rama skateboarding contest, for The Sunday Telegraph. As skateboarding was what got me into photography back in my teen years, it seemed like I had come full circle by being back on the deck of a bowl with my fisheye lens photographing skateboarding – but this time for a major newspaper.
My brief was to go down and shoot some nice pictures as part of a day in the life of Sydney, although I was told by my picture editor that they weren’t holding space for it. (action sports still struggle for space in major mainstream newspapers – even surfing, which is such a huge sport in Australia)
Competitions like this are always hard to shoot. Photo passes are handed out to seemingly anyone with a DSLR, and add to that the endless line of filmers and lurkers and you have yourself one crowded skate bowl with particularly ugly backgrounds. i.e other cameras and flashes.
I decided to just have a bit of fun with it, and was super happy with this image, which I managed to nab just before I had to head back to the car to file the shots back to the paper.
The good news – they ran a fairly large picture of the comp. The bad – it was a bail! Oh well, can’t win them all!

As 24 year old Pakistan born Usman Khawaja makes his test cricket debut for Australia today, I thought it would be fitting to post a couple of shots I took of him for The Sunday Telegraph a couple of months ago.
Uzzie as he is known to his team mates, comes into the Australian cricket team at a time when the team has been playing pretty poorly, losing the Ashes series to England after being disgraced in the fourth test in Melbourne. Khawaja comes in at the number three spot in the batting order to replace the injured captain Ricky Ponting, but the feeling is he is more than just a stand-in, hence why there was media interest in him months ago. He has been scoring runs for NSW and playing in top form, and what also makes Khawaja a great news story is that he is the first non European to pull on the baggy green cap for Australia – he was born in Pakistan and moved to Australia at age three. Cricket fans have been longing for a fresh young hope to put the spark back into a lackluster team, and it looks like Khawaja is the man for the role.
The Ashes have been lost and the fifth test in Sydney which began today won’t change the outcome, but to the players this fifth test means everything, and for the fans packing the Sydney Cricket Ground today, it seems as though Khawaja means everything to them – he walked on to the ground, making his debut for Australia to deafening cheers from the fans.
He had me two months ago when I met him in a cafe at the SCG, he was wearing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and leather jacket – definitely the future of Australian cricket! More shots after the cut.

In early October I was lucky enough to be given the job of shooting the NRL Grand Final for Australian Associated Press (AAP). I haven’t shot a great deal of rugby league, so getting a chance to shoot the biggest game of the year, and getting paid to do so, was something I feel very fortunate to have been able to experience.
If anyone remembers the day, it was pouring rain. Not the kind of conditions you would hope for when covering an event of this size-and of course being exposed to the elements for 80 minutes makes for a soggy night indeed.
I did, however turn up prepared for the worst weather and had all my gear covered up with rain covers, and in the end I think the pouring rain made for some great pictures. Rain, after all, looks pretty incredible when it’s lit up by those massive stadium lights.
I was there to cover the game with AAP’s chief photographer Dean Lewins, and I thank him for showing me the ropes prior to the big show!
Below the cut is a selection of some of the images I filed from the game.

A few weeks ago I was assigned to do a portrait with Socceroo and Everton F.C star midfielder Tim Cahill, for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
Tim had just returned back to Australia from the World Cup in South Africa and was here also to take part in a number of matches with his English Premier League club side, Everton.
I haven’t done too many of these ‘celeb portrait’ style assignments, but I do know that the photographer usually has five minutes or less with the subject and then the subject moves on to the next journalist or t.v crew for their five minutes. These picture opportunities are tightly controlled and you usually have zero time to think.
Luckily I arrived a little early and scoped out four possible spots I could put Tim in that would result in four different shots for the paper. Any more than that would be a bonus.
I had one Nikon speedlight on a light stand and it was fired by Pocket Wizard remote.
As it turns out I had around four minutes with Tim. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for experimentation, but I’m pretty happy with what I got out of it.
Below the cut are a few shots from the session and the shot that ran in the sport pages that weekend. I was pretty happy with the size it ran, as the Sunday papers don’t often run big pictures across two pages.