Today was the opening of the Reflection & Regeneration show at the World Trade Centre Melbourne gallery. It was a very exciting thing for me, as this was the first time my works have ever been exhibited. After replying to a call for interested artists from the WTC Gallery I saw on Twitter, I sent them samples of my bushfire photos. I was thrilled to hear that they wanted to display my photos, and asked me to send them up to ten high res files.

Imagine my surprise when I attended the launch of the exhibition this morning to see all ten of my photos gloriously printed and displayed on the gallery walls, along with fifty other amazing and moving works of art of all kinds. I learned that 100 artists responded to the call, but only ten were selected. Even more amazing was that ten of the 60 works displayed were mine.

The emotions of the day were very mixed. I was excited and proud to be exhibited, but the subject of the exhibition, and the anniversary of Black Saturday this weekend, along with the shocking nature of some of the photos and other works of art on display, brought me firmly back to earth.

A large number of press, public and important invited guests were in attendance, as well as many of the artists. It was lovely to be thanked by name along with the other artists, and the Victorian Police Commissioner humbled us all with his generous words when he was invited to speak. He commented that throughout history, it has been the artists that have most directly and personally recorded the important events, including our works in that noble tradition. I was fortunate to be able to have a brief chat with the commissioner, and he seemed to be a friendly and honorable man.

There were many cameras and reporters there as well, and though I wasn’t interviewed as several other artists were, the cameramen seemed to like my photos, as more than one of them featured in every television report of the event that night! It was a thrill seeing my work (and myself briefly!) on television. You can see the news reports at the bottom of this page.

I would like to extend a special thank you to Emma Volk from WTC for arranging the exhibition and including me.

The works exhibited are all marvellous, and if you are in Melbourne between now and the 11th of March, I highly recommend you make the time to visit the exhibition and see them for yourself. You can find the details here.

Update

A new video report from SBS on the gallery has gone online: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1187462/Artists-share-bushfire-visions

Mum sent me a photo she took of me chatting with the Police commissioner.

Published last week, via the Digital Photography School, my first ebook, “Photo Nuts and Bolts: Know Your Camera and Take Better Photos” is now available to buy for $19.97USD!

The book is all about the camera and how it works. All the important essentials behind how your photograph is taken are explained, as well as how knowing how it all works can improve your photos.

Naomi and I have been working very hard over the last several weeks to bring you this book, and we are both very proud of the result. The book was launched recently, and has been doing very well.

For the next 24 hours there’s a launch special, with a free pocket reference guide bundled with every copy of the book sold. Follow the link below or click on the picture to the right to go to the sales page to read all about the book and buy your copy.

Thank you for considering purchasing my book. If you do, I hope you find it enjoyable and useful!

My first year as a full time professional photographer, 2009 started off slow professionally, but that quickly grew over the months, convincing me that I made the right choice. I think I am able to see an improvement in my photographic skill throughout the year, which makes me happy, but I think I’m also enjoying it more. I bought a lot of new equipment this year, including a new professional-grade camera (the Canon 5D MkII) and studio lights.

In the annual tradition, I have collected what I consider to be my “top 10″ photos for 2009. This doesn’t necessarily mean my best, or most beautiful, but the 10 photos I feel best show what the year was about, and which I think best represent my work in 2009. They are presented here in chronological order, I hope you enjoy them.

The Top 10

The year got off to a bang (har har) with my first top 10 photo being taken in the first few minutes of the year. I have been photographing the new years fireworks for several years now, but this year I tried taking some closer compositions for the first time, filling the frame. I’m very happy with how it worked out. See more.

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My astrophotographer friend Phil and I headed to the bush to try and capture images of a visiting comet, but while I was there, I also experimented with my fisheye lens on the new full-frame 5D MkII. This let me capture the whole sky in a single photo. This photo is the result of several images stacked together to increase brightness and decrease noise. I particularly love the colours in the heavily processed image. See the comet and other photos from this trip.

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In February, devastating bushfires hit country Victoria, and in what became the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history, claimed over two hundred lives and destroyed several entire towns. One month after the fires, I was given the privilege of being invited to one of the towns destroyed by fire by a friend who had lived most of her life there. My guided tour around Kinglake was one of the most sobering and humbling experiences of my life, and the photos I took there helped me to show the rest of Australia and the world what this little corner of the country had been through. A selection of my photos will actually be appearing in an exhibition in the Melbourne World Trade Centre next month, along with six other artists. I’ll have more info on this soon.

Here Ben, a volunteer firefighter, inspects what remains of his home, which was destroyed while he was out, with hundreds of other firefighters, protecting the lives and property of others. Read the full story here.

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This photo was taken near the end of an extremely intense weekend of photography, which I spent covering two different friends’ weddings. I love this photo for the atmosphere of joy that fills it. This was a non-traditional wedding in many ways, and the reception was a rousing Scottish dance themed party, where everyone let down their hair and danced till they collapsed. It was certainly the most energetic party I have ever been to!

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Naomi and I took a driving holiday around Western Victoria and Southeast South Australia, which included a few days at the picturesque Kangaroo Island. There were many beautiful scenes waiting for you around every corner. While driving along the highway on the York Peninsular, I spotted this abandoned cottage in a gap in the trees. I had to turn around for a closer look and I spent at least half an hour taking photos here. I rarely process my photos with “special effects”, but I felt the treatment worked well with the subject matter in this case. See more photos from our trip.

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One of our day trips around Kangaroo Island took us to Remarkable Rocks, a truly remarkable geological formation perched on a cliff over the sea. I wanted to be there at sunset in time for a panoramic photo. It was a mad rush, but we made it just in time to witness one of the most incredible sunsets either of us had ever seen. We were very fortunate to be able to see and photograph such a site. It even made the harrowing two hour drive through the bush, dodging dozens of animals at 40kph on the way home worth it. Please make sure you click on the image to see it at full size! See more photos from our trip.

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I made many new friend this year, including a lot of cosplayers – some of my favourite subjects. Siami is one of my favourites to photograph, because she is easy to work with, knows how to pose, has lots of creative ideas, and is so gosh darn cute! Here she is cosplaying Haruhi Suzumiya. See more photos from this shoot.

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If Siami is cute, then Siera is beautiful. I have been photographing her and her amazing costumes for years now, and she just keeps getting better. I must confess, I think this is probably my favourite photo of the year. When I took it and saw it on the back of the camera, I felt that bolt of electricity – which many photographers know – that gave me goosebumps, knowing that I had captured something truly extraordinary. See more photos from this shoot.

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Sometimes the best photos are captured in a single moment of spontaneity. Sometimes, as was the case with this photo, it is planned, rehearsed, tested and carefully executed. My good friend Annie makes her third consecutive appearance in my Top 10 list cosplaying Grell Sutcliffe, with her friend from the USA Lilly as Madam Red. Siera also appears in the photo, but she is not visible. She carried the sparkler and ran around the couple several times during the 30 second exposure, almost collapsing from dizziness by the end. Thank you all for helping make this photo work! See more photos from this shoot.

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Finally, not long after purchasing brand new, powerful studio lights, my photo buddy Elias kindly offered his Mother’s yoga studio as a location to take photos. He invited a small number of our favourite cosplayers and we spent a wonderful day taking hundreds of photos in an ideal studio environment. This shot was taken towards the end of the day, and I experimented with my new boom, placing a single light directly above Sefie, dressed as Edea from Final Fantasy 8. I love how her simple costume but with an elaborate headpiece and makeup look in this dramatic light. See more photos from this shoot.

Plus Two

It’s very difficult to cull down your favourite photos to just ten, so here are a couple of “honorable mentions” that I couldn’t do away with completely :)

Penny and Mark on their wedding day.

Will as Irie Shouichi from Hitman reborn, taken in my studio at the Melbourne Anime Festival.

In the next few days, I’ll be asking you to share your favourite photo for 2009. So start looking through your archives!

P365 Day 5

A super secret lunch meeting with Darren (aka @problogger), Naomi and I about the impending release of my first book ;) Watch this space in the next couple of weeks for the big launch announcement!

P365 Day 4

I got word just two days prior, that a friend of Kaalli and Jess was coming to Melbourne from the country for a cosplay photo shoot. Siami was invited as a cosplayer, and I as a photographer. I love hanging with and photographing these guys, so I made some time in my day for a couple of hours for a spontaneous photo shoot in Fitzroy Gardens. Timing was fortunate, as golden hour was glorious. Link to full gallery at bottom.

View the full gallery (more photos still to be added – check back in a couple of weeks).

P365 Day 2

This is my desk, it’s a mess, it’s where I spend a great deal of my day. I like it, but it needs a tidy ;)

P365 Day 3

My first serious attempt at 3D photography via the iPhone. I have a 3D photo app for the iPhone, but I find that the results aren’t as good as I can do myself with Stereo Photo Maker.

Learn how to see 3D photos like this.

Happy New Year everyone!

I don’t believe in new years resolutions. I think if something is worth committing to, then why wait for a particular day to start? However, Project 365 is an appropriate thing to start with the new year. A couple of years ago, I participated in a project to take at least one photo a day for a year: Project 365. I have decided to do the project again this year! I haven’t been giving this blog the attention it deserves, and I think P365 will help me to do so, ans I plan to post every photo that I take. I think it’ll also be a lot easier to do this time, because I now have an iPhone! It’s so easy to snap a photo, upload it and post it, all from the iPhone, and all within a few minutes. It’s a lot less hassle than copying files from a memory card, processing and uploading them. I’ll be taking photos for P365 with my 5D MkII as well though, you can be certain.

Why don’t you join me? I’d love for others who read this blog to participate in the project, and post your photos as comments on my posts! Even if you’ve already missed the first or second day of the year, you can just start now, and finish up a couple of days into 2011.

Here is my first photo for P365 2010, taken just minutes after midnight, at our friends’ new years eve party:

Our new year’s eve was a lot of fun! We enjoyed a delicious barbeque in friends’ newly landscaped back yard, and just finished eating in time for a massive thunderstorm to pass through. My last photos of 2009 were rather spectacular! After the food and storm watching, Darren, who is a music teacher, got out his electronic piano, and we all had a great time listening to music and singing songs.

One of the great things about Twitter, is that you never know what opportunities will appear. A company called IPEVO put the call out to photography bloggers via the #photog hashtag which I follow. They were looking for people interested in reviewing their wireless digital photo frame. I eagerly put my hand up and within a week or two, this gorgeous piece of engineering turned up on my doorstep:

First impressions

The first thing you notice about the Kaleido 7 (or KR7) once you take it out of its environmentally friendly packaging and remove the plastic protectors on every surface, is how gorgeous it is. This is design from the school of Mac. Shiny black surfaces, minimalist design, high quality construction. It feels nice and weighty in the hand, and inspires confidence that it won’t go tumbling off whatever surface you keep it on. The screen does a couple of nifty tricks. It can rotate ninety degrees to go from landscape to portrait, which is detected by the frame, and the display rotates to compensate. It also has a small vertical tilt, ample for mounting the frame both above and below eye level to present the best viewing angle.

The second thing you notice is that it’s rather complicated and a bit unfriendly to set up. Before you can use the frame for anything, you need to install the included software on your computer and “pair” or sync the device with the software via a wireless network. This isn’t an especially difficult task for the technically savvy, but I suspect it would be a challenge for the “typical” digital photo frame user. The early – and it turns out, lasting – impression, is that this is a digital photo frame for geeks.

Once you have the pairing set up, then you can enjoy looking at photos on the beautiful seven inch screen. One of the shortcomings of most digital frames I have seen is the woeful screen resolution. There is no such problem with the K7. Photos are crisp and clear, beautifully vibrant, thanks to the LED backlight, and a pleasure to behold.

Software Shortcomings

Aside from the gorgeous screen, the main feature of this frame is its wireless connectivity. The advantage to this is that you can connect the frame to the internet, via your wireless network and the software installed on your computer, to look at an essentially unlimited number of photos. You can also stream photos from your hard drive to the frame. However, the only photos you get to look at, at first, are some sample streams from Flickr. If you want to see your own photos, then you have a little more work to do. Again, the process isn’t too painful or difficult for a technically literate person, but even I had to try a few times to get things set up how I liked. You can of course plug in a memory card with your photos, but I do not use any of the card formats supported, so I cannot review this feature.

The main problem I had with the frame was its software, both in the application on the computer and the interface on the frame itself. While the frame itself looks as beautiful as an apple product, the interface and software looks well and truly like a windows app. By that I mean that the software is functional and usable, but not intuitive or especially attractive. It can be confusing to understand the “Channels” and “Gallery” concepts used. Setting up new sources for imagery can be hard to grasp, especially when using your hard disk as the source – which is how I used the device almost exclusively. Matters became even more complicated when I tried the IPEVO IPhone app to control the frame. Syncing between the various devices had to be broken and remade whenever I wanted to change the controlling device. Sometimes syncing failed after powering off the frame.

I should emphasises again, that for technically capable people, these are minor inconveniences, but I can just imagine how often I might be called by family for help, when they inadvertently cause problems through the unintuitive software and cause the frame to become “stuck” displaying a single photo, or some such problem.

What I like about it

• The absolutely gorgeous design and constructon of the frame. It’s beautiful to look at.
• The screen, while smallish, is vibrant, crisp, colourful and high resolution.
• The wireless feature lets you display unlimited photos on the frame, without even touching it, once set up.
• The ability to flip the frame between landscape and portrait orientations is very nice.
• The ability to display any appropriately formatted RSS feed content alows for a huge variety of content to be relatively easily displayed on the screen.
• The multiple control options: Desktop software, IR remote, on-frame controls, iPhone app; let you take control of the frame via whatever method suits you best, though with some shortcomings.
• I like how you can set a timer for when the frame goes to sleep and wakes up.

Suggested improvements

• I’m not a software usability expert, but I think much can be done to improve the ease of use of the K7’s software, and to make it look prettier.
• I’d like better controls for adding images from the hard disk drive. As it is, you can add directories, and one level of sub directories. I’d like to see fine control, with individual directories, deep subdirectories and individual files being able to be selected for display.
• The ability to create “playlists” of images to be saved and later selected to be played would be a wonderful addition.
• I’d like to see an option to automatically hide or skip photos which don’t match the orientation of the frame. It would prevent the unfortunate shrinking of images to fit them on the frame.
• Better randomisation of local photos being displayed would be great. Whenever the frame is turned on, it always seems to default to the same directory of photos.
• It’s hard to expect a supercomputer in a photo frame, but responsiveness is sluggish, with there typically being a second between keypress and menu change, as well as several seconds to change between slideshows.
• With the iPhone app, I’d like to be able to control the streaming of photos from my desktop, but the nature of the software/hardware relationship means any local images must be stored on the device controlling it.

Conclusion and Recommendation

I think the K7 is a remarkable piece of hardware. It is attractive, functional and excels at the task of displaying photos beautifully. The wireless feature is wonderful and turns the frame into a window on the world, or into your archive of photos on your local computer. However, the control system and software are complicated, especially for people who are not very confident with computers.

Bottom line: Do I think this digital photo frame is worth the $200 asking price? For me, it’s a very close thing. If it were a 10 inch screen, rather than a seven inch one, then absolutely yes. As it is now, however, I think I would personally choose to hold off a generation in the hopes of getting a bigger screen for the money. I am a photographer, however, and excessively fussy about how my photos are displayed. For most people, a seven inch screen, which is still larger than the traditional 6×4 print size, is probably enough.

If you do buy the Kaleido 7, one thing is for sure, your photos will look gorgeous, as will the frame itself, wherever it’s displayed.

The Specs

Last weekend I was fortunate to be able to attend an improv street performance by the Lilithia Productions group in the Melbourne CBD. Run by my friend Stef, the group has done a number of fun public “performances” over the last few months. This time, somewhere between 50 and 70 people gathered at Bourke St Mall, and all at the same time, at the strike of 1pm, recieved or made telephone calls, via banana! Below is the video I took at the event. RSS feed readers will need to click through to the blog page to see the embedded video.

It was very amusing and a lot of fun! If you live in Melbourne and this looks like your kind of thing, then please visit the groups facebook page. Maybe I’ll see you at the next event!

Last weekend, my good friend, and regular star of this blog Annie and I did a costume photoshoot together, with a friend of hers visiting from the United States, Lilly. Both are big fans of the Japanese manga and anime Kuroshitsuji or Black Butler, an 1800’s era supernatural gothic horror story. As so many girls seem to, Annie and Lilly revelled in the bloody theme of the shoot, which gave me the perfect excuse to shoot with bold and dramatic lighting and vibrant colours.

I also had the opportunity to play with a little bit of light painting with some sparklers. A suggestion for lighting sparklers in the wind: use a lighter and find a very sheltered corner. Siera, another regular on these pages, assisted in the shoot, and bravely battled dizziness to run around with sparklers.

I had a lot of fun with this shoot, and the girls were both thrilled with the results. Lilly has since returned stateside, but I hope she takes with her happy memories of a fun photo shoot.

Sensitive readers may find some of the following photos confronting.

You can see the full photo shoot on SmugMug.