Digital Outback Photography

The dust has settled on yet another year for the outback challenge, not without the annual shed of blood sweat and tears from all competitors that makes the outback challenge what it is.

The week long event started off on Saturday afternoon with creek run to get everyone into the swing of things, Greg scanlon made an early exit with a diff failure on SS01 and then completed SS02 to realise his Torque converter was overheating his transmission. All in all the competitors put on a great show for the large amount of spectators that made the short trip from Broken Hill to see the action.

Sunday morning the competitors, spectators and officials made the journey to Denian the first of the 3 properties that the challenge makes its tracks through. Denian stages vary from GPS pegboards to Sand dune motorkhana stages with one of the most impressive being the sand wall where competitors are required to use a sand anchor and winch their way up the steep slippery sand dune. These stages seen Lawrie Sternbeck and Steve Hobbs struggle with a failed front diff and major winch dramas for Dave Cameron and Danial Dewitt 2 of the initial favorites to be contending for top spot this year.

Once the sand stages were out of the way the convoy moved on to Viewmont, THE MUD. You will find that competitors either love the mud or hate it, one thing is for sure the spectators definitely love it. With the recent floods the usual water holes are upwards of 3m deep so Paul had to do some searching for some new mud, Viewmont as usual never fails to provide plenty of the thick grey river clay that sucks all but the very best right down to their axles.

Still to come shots and write up from Poolamacca

With a little bit of planning and a whole lot of luck it turned out that my most recent trip to Adelaide was timed perfectly to coincide with a meet up already planed but some friends of mine from www.dslrusers.com. The theme for the day was to only use a 50mm fixed lens, with various locations over Adelaide beginning at the central markets. Thanks to everyone for  great day, and sorry i couldn’t make the dinner. I think I did more talking than taking photos to be honest but heres a few photos.

We’ll avid blog fans it has happened once again, Ive built you all up with regular posting and the just let you down by not posting anything for quite some time. And on that note thankyou all for your support, without all of the positive feedback i receive it wouldn’t be woth making these posts.

In early October I had the chance to repay a massive favor, Dion’s dad took photos for me at my own wedding and what better way to thank the family than photograph Dion’s wedding, as it turned out it was a beautiful day, although it got quite chilly for the afternoon shots though eh girls???.  When shooting weddings in foreign towns (Port Pirie in this case) I rely very heavily on the input of the bride and groom for photograph locations, and rarely get to spend much time sussing these locations out prior to the actual event, contrary to popular belief there’s a lot more going into wedding photographs than just shooting the events especially when it comes for the set up shots. I always make time to visit a location at least once before the photos and on this occasion it happened to be the afternoon before the wedding, when at the beach location I noticed the afternoon sun would be hitting the southern filinders ranges in the background of what I had hoped to be some really nice portraits. Using a combination of portable strobes and umberella’s we really achieved some nice results.

Below are a very small selection of what we captured on the day (thanks guys for allowing a realistic amount of time for photographs)

Thanks Dion and Sam for letting me be a part of your day!

No no you wont see any images of people kissing in this post but some examples about how well a simply lit portrait can work. (Keep It Simple Stupid) I think all to often we can take lighting for portraits a little to far, with multiple lights flashing and huge light modifiers everywhere, can make people pull the wool over theyre eyes so to speak so you cant get them honest/fun expressions that really make an A grade photograph.

The images in question below were all lit with a single shoot through umbrella with SB900 at our local show. The umbrella was moved around a it but nothing drastic was done. I found my subjects for the weekend (mainly children) seemed to really open up and got some really fantastic expressions. The amount of images  I got from just one set of batteries in the flash was amazing, using a high iso and wide aperture on the camera allowed me to shoot the flash nearly at it’s lowest power which got me over 1400 photos from the one set.

Enjoy

With pictures of the massive dust storms come the pictures of the dusty camera, now it’s time to clean.!!!

We’ve just had some of the worst weather, we have seen for quite some time at around 3pm i noticed a distinct red glow coming in my window, when i looked outside I was greeted by a huge huge dust storm.

My camera gear now looks like it’s been rolling in the back of the ute for a couple of hours on a dirt rd and below are some of the images.

It’s that time of the year again and for this year’s silver city show we decided to get a stand and show off our work, below is a sideshow of  images to showcase the portraits were taking and printing while you wait and a quick mobile phone image that I took of the stand when it was almost setup.

More photos to come

Thanks Broken Hill for all of your support

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to shoot frames during the day lately, so Ive been trying out the D3 with a bit of night photography. We’ve had some stunning weather here in the Hill lately and night times haven’t been to cold nor to windy to get out and have a play.

The first real night shot I had taken with my D3 was a week or so ago when a camera club visited from the Riverland. Unfortunately i wasn’t able to join the team in any day lit hours so I decided to do a bit of a night photography/painting with light demonstration.

The following picture was a result of that demonstration. It was taken with my D3 and 24-70mm lens @ 24m, It’s a 30 second exposure at F5.6 @ ISO3200. The light from camera right is from a led lenser torch waved to paint in the subject for about 15-20 seconds of the exposure.

The next image is me having my first go with my ebay remote timer it comprises of 28 x 3Minute exposures layered in photo shop all shot at F6.3 @ ISO500 again with the 24-70

And finally this is an image that’s surrounded by circumstances I’m sorely disappointed in, I have wondered ever since I first shot a night image how well you could get a stars reflection to show in a still body of water, last night I set up my gear about HERE (yes we spent the night in Mildura) when I set up the water was deadly calm exactly what I needed. After a couple of test shots I was ready to run, this shot was the first of a sequence of what was to be 100minutes which would have left the sky glistening with stars, after the first shot was done I flt the wind blow up and knew my perfect image was ruined.

None the less, this image D3 with 24-70@ 24mm, 377seconds @ F9 @ ISO2000

Enjoy!!

A few times a year I teach some classes at my local community college, this not only gives me the opportunity to get out and meet other people who are keen on photography, but also pushes me to hone my own skills and put a little more thought into my photography. Recently I ran 2 day classes one being Introduction to DSLR cameras and the other being a Photographic portraits workshop. The photographic portraits works shop was a totally new class and it really changed things up for me.

We did  little theory and them moved out to take some images, it was a good day tho show the students the challenges of portraiture as it was really harsh sunlight with nowhere to hide but the shadows.

The first set of images we were playing around with a reflector and finding appropriately lit locations in the harsh sun. The hero type shot above is an example of working with the sun, looking up at your subject gives them a n appearance of power and the bright sun behind really adds to the effect.

This next image was an example of finding appropriate background and lighting, this location was completely in shade and the repetition works well as a background.

In this image we found an old shed during our afternoon walk, this was a brilliant location for a close detailed portrait and the light spilling in through the doors left a brilliant glow in Andrew’s eyes

Bouncing the light of a building as we did in this shot can really balance out the harsh sunlight and work really well, in this image we stood Andrew near a creme colored building and positioned him for a nice light balance.

I had the immense pleasure of photographing a beautiful wedding in the Adelaide hills recently.

The weather all week was spectacularly bad all week, even the day before the wedding on our scouting trip it was terrible with a very low lying fog, which did not do the location any justice. Come Saturday morning what do you know it some blue sky!! This was my first real shoot with my new (2 days old at the time) Nikon D3 and oh my god it did not fail to impress . All in all it was a brilliant day with some fantastic overcast light in the afternoon, and some great indoor shot courtesy of some remote strobes and the D3’s unbelievable high ISO performance.

Huge thanks goes out to Chris for being my humble assistant for the day, and also Jarrod and Grace for giving me the opportunity to share their special day.

Below is a slide show with a very small selection of images from a massive day.