If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll …

A little bit of Guitar Hero mixed with some off-camera flash.

Rock On!

“It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll” ~ AC/DC

This is the long overdue sequel to “Drive He Said” (one of my alltime favourites, especially given the circumstances around how I captured it).

Not sure how I stumbled upon this one, but it just caught my eye looking through my back-catalogue and I had to post it.

This is, as you can imagine, about 0.5 seconds later.

“Final Destination” ~ Chris Brown

Photographing a recent corporate event I was getting tired of the usual ’smile’ photos - there was a great vibe in the room and everyone was enjoying themselves, but I was looking for something a little more creative. A game of darts was being played as part of a giveaway gimmick and I took this snap of a lone dart protruding from the dartboard.

“Bullet And A Target” ~ Citizen Cope

After wandering the streets of Christchurch I quickly stepped through the Botanic Gardens. Actually I was looking for a toilet but couldn’t resists a peek through the gardens, looking for inspiration and appropriate portrait locations. In case I ever shoot a location wedding in Christchurch, of course!

This grand tree was one such spot. Imagine the framing with a snuggling couple placed gently in front of or slightly beside the trunk of the tree, or even sitting on the low slung branches. Beautiful.

“Bend Down the Branches” ~ Tom Waits

My favourite from the heads, looking slightly up the nostrils of the great Sir Richard Hadlee.

“Don’t Put Your Finger Up Your Nose” ~ Barry Louis Polisar

There really are a lot of sculptures around Christchurch City. Or maybe I simply have a fascination with photographing them.

This great arc of sculpted heads had very recently been installed outside the Court Theatre. I really like ‘em.

“Heads Will Roll” ~ Yeah Yeah Yeahs

This was possibly the most interesting front yard I’ve ever encountered.

The house was for the ‘Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand’ (street view) and amongst the native New Zealand plants, informative wall panels, audible seats and water feature was this: beautifully whimsical steel plasma-cut ribbon of words that float through the air - “Inner Struggle” - designed by Weta’s own Richard Taylor.

“Books And Letters” ~ The Morning Light

Oh how I desperately wanted to get behind this fence.

“Gap In The Fence” ~ Enter Shikari

I’m in Christchurch.

I’m walking around the beautiful inner-city square. Market vendors are selling their wares: handmade jewellery, mid-winter beanies & scarves and sausages with sauerkraut. Sculpted statues adorn the corners of the square. The Christchurch Cathedral rings on the hour out across the middle of the city. And I spot a ladder. It’s a fairly inconspicuous ladder. But combined with the low mid-afternoon sun it casts an interesting shadow against the stone of the Cathedral.

I like it.

“Up On The Ladder” ~ Radiohead

I’m not even sure what this is. Again, in the middle of Christchurch city I wandered underneath this - a ‘day of the trifids’ like sculpture strutting into the sky. I like looking up for photos - we don’t look around often enough and are content on taking level photos from the height of your eyes. Try it - look up, look down, take a different perspective. I can be interesting.

“Then Looking Upwards I Strain My Eyes And Try” from Passenger Seat ~ Death Cab For Cutie

I spent a little bit of time in Christchurch recently.

Actually, it was nothing more than a couple of hours. Nevertheless, it was my free time, so I spent it doing what any photographer would do and wandered the city looking for interesting angles, objects and scenes.

Taking inspiration from the urban shots Michael Valli is proudly displaying on his regular blog, I wandered down this alleyway. I love the symmetry of alleys and hallways, and in this case the bright light at the “end of the tunnel”.

All it needs is a subject, perhaps even a silhouette to give it a little more character.

“A Light in the Dark” ~ J. Robert Spencer

It’s a boat. Actually on the same day as “Homegrown” I spotted this moored to the wharf. As always, I’m pushing for new and somewhat unique angles, something making the everyday look a little more abstract. You’ve seen a boat from this angle before, but have you seen it cropped this tight?

“I Can Feel It Coming Adrift” from Man on Your Mind ~ Little River Band

In the local city of Lower Hutt outside The New Dowse is a great purple and blue sculpture.

Of course, as long as I’m photographing it you’ll never *really* know what it looks like.

These are my lovely wife’s jandal-adorned feet. Ahh those summer days.

“Out From Under” ~ Britney Spears

So, it’s been a little quiet around here lately. Apologies for this, but as you know I have other side projects that still find me taking photos, so it’s not as though I’m not picking up the camera!

Browsing back through my archives looking for shots of Wellington I came across this little colourful number, and realised I hadn’t posted it. Was from a lunchtime walkabout around the Wellington waterfront, where I spotted this small piece of bright yellow colour strutting out of the brown wood against the deep blue sea.

“Homegrown” ~ Neil Young

And we’re back.

That was painful. Technically, I’m not sure what went wrong as I didn’t change a single configuration setting, however I’ve resolved the problem and can now post images again.

And what a backload I have!

Here’s one to start me off and kickstart your Sunday morning. Entering my apartment lift one morning I spotted these hanging in the corner. Dumbfounded I quickly scoured the lift for more signs of halloween - with none to be found the best I could do was capture an image.

Bizarre.

“Spooky” ~ Dusty Springfied

Trying a few different angles from the glamorous confines of my apartment balcony, I aimed the LensBaby towards the Mt Victoria lookout. I’ve been up there a few times before for various photos, but never shot the actual lookout before.

“View From A Hill lyrics” ~ Fish

I couldn’t resist a recent opportunity to pickup a LensBaby. It’s the poor man’s tilt-shift and certainly represents a chance to have a little creative fun with depth of field and selective focus.

It’s certainly a challenge to accurately focus on your desired point, but achieving it - in a photo like this - is quite rewarding. At this point I’m a little dubious the extremely shallow depth-of-field will go the way of selective colouring and white vignetting and become the big craze that soon becomes quite cliche, but in the meantime it presents some new creative opportunities.

“The Line Begins To Blur” ~ Nine Inch Nails

You’re at the cricket, you only brought along one long lens (the 70-300mm) and you want a shot of the relatively full bank.

What do you do?

You shoot a pano, of course! This is from 18 photos @70mm as I stood as far back as I possibly could on the side of the bank. Stitched admirably in Photoshop, and ready to go!

“Its All In The Game” ~ Tommy Edwards

I quite like this image from a recent maternity photoshoot.

It breaks all of the rules I set for myself when photographing people - there’s absolutely no focus on the eyes and you can’t even tell the expression on the face, let alone know if I’ve captured the right moment.

But I love the colours. I love the composition. I love the light. And I love the bokeh. Considering the f/1.8 aperture there’s surprising detail in the couple - at least enough to determine what’s happening in the photo.

And that makes it alright!

“And then So Clear” ~ Brian Eno

Of course whilst I was watching some exciting action on the sidelines, there were a few more experienced gentlemen trying to navigate their way to the close of the day’s play. Here I captured Dan Vettori playing a rather subdued forward defensive shot in his otherwise blazing innings of 42 off 66 balls.

“Slow Show” ~ The National

With a run-up like this there’s only one inevitable outcome - you’re going to reach the crease exhausted, deliver a lolly of a delivery and get spanked out of the ground.

“Piece Of Your Action” ~ Motley Crue

As the scoring shots began to flow, the crowd was clamoring for more. The little chaps, aware of the attention being garnered, upped the tempo of the game and began increasing the run-up length. Another rubbish bin was added with each ball, before they were almost 1/4 of the way around the ground.

Here we have ‘Harry’ mid-flight as he steams in off a 112-step Shoaib Akthar-like run-up…

“Steaming” ~ Sarah McLachlan

Over the weekend a cricket game rolled into town. Not just any cricket game, but the first test in a 2-test series between Australia and New Zealand, a test match rivalry stretching back 60+ years and one which hadn’t been won by New Zealand since 1993.

And as this record looked like it might continue through the remainder of the summer, with New Zealand reaching a reasonably woeful 43/4 chasing first innings target of 459, a small game of BYC (back yard cricket) began to erupt on the sidelines. These diminutive cricketers  - the future of our nation - pooled together a bat and ball, resourcefully using a rubbish bin as wickets, and began enthralling the crowd far more than the on-field action had done.

Notice the left-handed batsman: inevitably a hook, pull or cross-bat slog - always a kid’s favourite - would land the ball on the field itself. Thankfully the ball was eventually returned and game continued.

“Down The Line” ~ Jose Gonzalez

One of the things I love about shooting weddings is trying to find unique and different angles to shoot very common scenes. The bride is undoubtedly looking beautiful whilst getting ready in the morning, but as I posted yesterday there’s always many different ways you can capture a scene.

I posted another from an earlier wedding last week. How’s this one - a little too subtle?

“Down On The Upside” ~ Soundgarden (actually an album, not a song title, but you’ll forgive me)

Another take on yesterday’s image, because for every picture you take there’s thousands of other ways it could have been captured.  This is just one of those.

A portrait composition - this time including more of the road and leaving the colour in the image. There’s only 2 distinct colours - pleasingly complimenting yellow and grey.

“The Vegetable Song” ~ Bob Mitchell

This is one for Mike!

On my daily wander down Cuba St I pass this scene almost every time - the fruit & vegetable market has finished the unpacking of it’s daily fruit&vege allotment and the leftover crates are stacked outside on the footpath.

This is a tighter crop than my original composition, which had a few distracting items like street signs and the shop windows behind. I decided it was better without.

“Carry On My Wayward Son” ~ Kansas

Took this photo last weekend whilst covering the wedding of Anna & Mike.  This is a bridesmaid receiving attention from the makeup artist prior to the ceremony. Using a small mirror I found in another room I setup this shot - it probably won’t make the final collection as there were a few better composed images of the same scene, but I quite like this one nonetheless: breaks all the rules of composition when the focal point is smack-bang in the middle but I enjoy it. Heavy use of post-vignette has helped take the distraction away from the objects and colours around the outside of the mirror, including my hand!

“Calm Before The Storm” ~ Keel

I took this photo whilst shooting a recent event in my home city - Ignite Wellington!  It wasn’t really appropriate to handover as a PR shot, but I quite liked it and thought no better place to post it than here!

“New Spanish Two Step” ~ Bob Wills

Here he is again.  Sometimes you’d think this blog is becoming a family album. But when the little dude has this much charisma, can you blame me?

I don’t know where a 2-year old gets the hands-in-pockets idea from.  Wrapping up a Wedding rehearsal yesterday evening we were chatting outside the church.  This little fella was simply strutting around outside, hands in pockets, relaxed and chilled.  I quickly lowered and snapped a shot - got the right shutter speed and focal point, and love it!

“Too Cool For School” ~ Fountains Of Wayne

It’s all been a little sparse on this blog lately.  If you’ve been wondering why - and I certainly have - this screenshot is the answer!

I’ve already announced the Photobooth to the world previously, and this is what I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks - the WE DO Photography & Design blog.

We’ve decided to style the Blog slightly differently than the rest of the http://wedo.net.nz website, which of course means hours and hours of PHP and CSS tinkering.  It’s not complete, but it’s a start, and we’ve already got a few Blog posts backlogged and itching to get them up!

Browse over to the WE DO Photography & Design Blog, and check it out!  Subscribe via RSS and see what we have to say regarding Photography, Design and the ever-fun Photobooth!

In the meantime this blog will certainly continue.  I may not keep up with the post-a-day I was featuring during the better part of 2009, but it will still contain photographs and imagery from my personal photography projects.  That’s still ongoing, for sure!

Thanks for reading, stick around!

“Taking Care Of Business” ~ Bachman-Turner Overdrive

We’ve looked up at this building before.  However, this time there’s something in the way.

Interesting. A rather strange structure, known by its plaque as “The Rock”, has been suspended mid-air in front of the building. I guess it’s a rock shape - steel wire all contorted and bent into a large blob of an object. Not sure about the green colour, although obviously that’s been removed in this black&white composition.

Interesting indeed.

“Rock Bottom” ~ Eminem

More kayaks (no doubt also belonging to Fergs), this time stacked and standing against a wall.  As I walked past this on my way down the wharf I love the alternating colours - 1 yellow; 1 red; 1 yellow; 1 red, etc.

It was standing under the shade of the building - no harsh shadows and fairly evenly lit.  I’ve boosted the saturation a little and played with a little lens vignette (isn’t that all the style these days? ) to draw your eyes towards the middle.

“Colors Of The Wind” ~ Vanessa Williams

Still wandering the Wellington waterfront last Friday, there are now a multitude of helicopters sitting on the waterfront wharves. Previously I believed only 1 chopper was available for hire, now there are a multitude of them lining  for rides stretching over the harbour and city.

Whilst a helicopter ride over a city like New York must be amazingly thrilling and interesting, or a ride that dips and drives through the Grand Canyon exhilarating and overwhelming, I can’t imagine a better city that Wellington on a still and sunny day.  The harbourside city - small on an international scale, but with its fair share of buildings and interesting architecture - surrounded by hills and trees is surely one of the most beautiful in the world.

You’ve just got to pick your day carefully!

Today seemed to be a quiet day. Surprising, given the time of year and weather we were experiencing.  Nevertheless, they were making the most of the good weather and giving the helicopters a clean, including the wipe-down with the squeegee!

“Learn to Fly” ~ Foo Fighters

On a Friday, and completely out of order for the miserable summer we’ve been experiencing this year, the sun shone bright and the wind blew through the city ever so softly, and I decided to make the most of the opportunity with a photowalk.

I chose the Wellington waterfront - changed so much over the years (watch this 1987 video footage of the Mobil 500 car race and observe just how different things used to be!), and always so vibrant, interesting, and full of new things to photograph.

These are a rack of kayaks, rented by Fergs for locals and tourists alike to venture onto the harbour.  With spot metering I was focused on a reasonably dark spot in the rack which blew out the background but achieved what I was after.

“Paddle Out” ~ Sublime

This is the first rainbow over Wellington I’ve seen since moving into our new apartment ~18 months ago.  It hadn’t even been raining yesterday - nor was it scheduled to rain over the coming evening.

This is a 7-shot panorama - I don’t have a wide enough lens to capture this range, so I snapped 7 shots in portrait mode and stitched in CS4.  Applied a Lightroom graduated filter to darken the sky (as I didn’t have time to use a real graduated filter on the lens) and boost the contrast to really bring out those clouds.

“Have You Ever Seen The Rain” ~ Creedence Clearwater Revival

Just one more from last week’s baby shoot of Maddi, because I’m a sucker for such cute shots.  This is pretty self-explanatory: using available light from the nearby window (was a dull and dreary day outside, but the grey skys and large windows combined and became a lovely softbox) I shot reasonably wide (50mm @ f/2.2) pointed directly at the soles of her feet, framed lovingly by her Mum.

“Twinkle Toes” ~ Roy Orbison

My final photoshoot for 2009 was the gorgeous Maddi - 3-month old daughter of Hannah (& Billy).  Our previous Maternity photoshoot was literally taken 1-week before her birth - talk about cutting it fine!

The greatest thing about the best clients is the repeat visits - from an engagement shoot, through the wedding, onto the pregnancy and shots of the children growing up you really get to know your clients, and feel hugely privileged to capture such personal moments of their lives.  I didn’t capture Hannah & Billy’s wedding but wish I had, and hope there’s many more photos of her beautiful daughter to be taken in the future.

Anne Geddes, eat your heart out!

Actually, I have a *huge* amount of respect for child photographers - you all know how the saying goes, and it’s very difficult to capture such beautiful and emotional moments from such a young child over whom you have little control.  There’s no repositioning of hands, tilting your head upwards slightly or smiling on demand - you setup a shot and snap away.  Mother, Grandmother, assistant - they’re all waving toys and making noises behind you to coax a smile out of the baby, and you’re just hoping you capture it!  They do a great job.

We didn’t get the sunny morning we had hoped for outdoor photographs, but we made the most of the nice lighting indoors.  This was a quick setup against a purple wall - Maddi was propped up inside the basket and I placed a speedlight behind the for some natural vignette on the wall.  Fairly vibrant shot coming out of the D300s, with a little tweaking of saturation and levels in Lightroom.

Wrapping up the year of 2009, some of the top-visited images this year are below:

I Was Born To Love You - the beautiful Shylah, only 10-days after birth.

Keep Looking Up - interesting, can’t explain this one!

You Don’t Wanna Go Outside - easily one of my favourites too. Pretty chuffed when it was printed in a magazine and was also made into a Christmas card by my sister.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you back in 2010 for some further adventures and plenty more imagery!

- Jason

“I’m Putting All My Eggs In One Basket” ~ Fred Astaire

When I saw it, I just had to pinch this image for my Christmas Greetings!

You’ve probably seen the photo before - it was posted 2 months ago as “You Don’t Wanna Go Outside“.  My sister decided it was the perfect start for her family Christmas card, and proceeded to ask my wife to decorate it appropriately - hence the ’stick-on’ Santa and Reindeer costumes.

Makes a great Christmas card from my sister, and now I spread the Christmas cheer to all followers and readers of this blog!

Merry Christmas!

- Jason

I didn’t personally take this image myself - but the We Do Photobooth sure did, and this seems like a perfect time to announce the booth!

I’ve been toiling away for a few months perfecting the collapsible, portable and ultra-fun We Do Photobooth: One button, Four photos, One photo print - the perfect accompaniment to your function, your wedding or your party.

Jump in the booth and pull the curtain closed, use the screen to position yourself and push the button - 4 photos later the high-quality dye-sublimination photosheet is ejected from the side of the booth.

Setup at a work function last Friday evening in Martinborough, the We Do Photobooth was a huge hit!  This photo above is just one of many brilliant captures of the staff, and the 4-photo / 4-second printouts like the following were gleefully passed around the crowd and now proudly pinned on office cubicles as a reminder of the frivolities at the end-of-year function.

If you’re a local Wellingtonian with an upcoming event, be it a party, social function or - for the most fun! - a wedding, then be sure to contact us @ We Do about the We Do Photobooth.

Check it out!

Rounding off the travel photos from the recent trip to Australia - the most recognisable of Aussie landmarks.  This need no introduction.  A reasonably simple black&white conversion and pushing the blacks and whites very hard.  There’s some nice shimmer across the tiles from the sun that was top-left of the image and just skimming the top tiles, before the remainder of the ’sail’ was shrouded in shade.

“When The Fat Lady Sings” ~ Dj Muggs

Amongst the madness of our visit to Australia - and I mean madness - we managed to hire a car and spend a day touring the Yarra Valley Wine Region out of Melbourne.  Despite the relatively small size and accessibility of the region we only managed 3 wineries - they were amazingly attentive and generous in their tastings!  This was shot standing outside the Balgownie Estate looking down into the vines and across the valley.  And again, rather than the classic landscape shot with everything in focus from front-to-rear I’ve experimented with the Brenizer method for this shot - ~60 images stitched together. Did I need to do that?  No, but I do love the focus fall-off behind the front vines, which I simply can’t achieve with any of my lenses.

“I Heard It Through The Grapevine” ~ Marvin Gaye

Just a little sneak peek on something we’ve been working on for a little while now.  This is all you’ll get - more to come very, very soon!

“Step Inside” ~ Gomez

There are a lot of statues and monuments in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens.  Of course, there’s plenty of beautiful plants and flowers too - but it was the statues I was interested in.  It gave me a great chance to try out the Brenizer method a few more times - and what better subjects than statues.  On the face of it this may not look like anything more than a front-on photo of a statue, but it was shot from reasonably close range @ 200mm f/5.6 as 30 individual images, stitched together in Hugin.  This gives a far shallower depth of field and much better bokeh than I could achieve with any other lens at my disposal - look at the out of focus trees in the background.  This was one particularly interesting looking chap - in fact I even had a conversation with a passing Sydney-sider about the statue whilst I stood in front snapping away.  It seems I’m not the first to admire it.

“Delaney Talks To Statues” ~ Jimmy Buffett

I love this arcade - Sydney’s Strand Arcade, between Pitt St Mall and George St.  It’s littered with a collection of some beautiful boutique  stores - hats, perfumes, clothing, shoes, stationery and some strange perfume/oils that were stocked on the white walls looking like a pharmacy.  Beautiful.  I took this shot from the 2nd level looking down along the arcade as the local workers went about eating their lunches - there’s quite a lot going on with the cascading signs, hanging Christmas decorations and local patrons.

“Girls Just Want To Have Lunch” ~ Weird Al Yankovic

Wandering through The Rocks back to our accommodation we passed this tree.  I don’t know the back story behind it or why it was there - all I know is that it was made from PET bottles.  Re-used plastic bottles, made into a Christmas tree.  Interesting, indeed.  I took the slightly unusual angle of leaning on the surrounding fence and capturing a close-up of the bottles - you’ve never know this was a Christmas tree unless I had told you, but this angle is certainly more interesting than the wide-angle shot with throngs of tourists posing in front.

“Genie in a Bottle” ~ Christina Aguilera

It’s long overdue - perhaps the first holiday I’ve taken in 12-months - but well deserved.  It’s been a busy year, it’s nice to get away.  The destination - sunny Australia: Sydney, to be precise.  Despite the early 3.30am start for the red-eye flight we still managed to stay out well into the darkness - I think I was awake for 21 hours on that day, the longest since I was a teen!  Our destination for a couple of drinks and some dinner was The Rocks Night Market.  Great atmosphere, live music, fresh food (the Ethiopian cuisine was a standout), free wine samples, and some rather strange market stalls.  These masks were simply bizarre - but we couldn’t resist trying a few on.  I’m being really inspired by the use of mirrors in my photography lately, and snapped this photo of some other ‘tourists’ trying on some masks.  I loved the action of the female attempting to straighten the ears - like it was going to make him look any better!  Decided to include the stray arm and face in the bottom of the image - didn’t notice that mirror as I snapped away, but don’t think it detracts too much from the image - almost adds another level of interest.  Let me know what you think.

“Behind The Mask” ~ Eric Clapton

Lately I’ve been playing around with the idea of taking more shots using the ‘Brenizer method‘.  I’m still far from proficient - this is actually a lot harder than it both looks and sounds.  The key part of producing a good Brenizer shot is actually not taking the images (the correct camera settings and enough overlap) nor the merging (CS4 Merge or hugin will do that), but choosing an interesting enough subject for the shot.  You need something that doesn’t require a huge amount of depth-of-field but has enough happening in the foreground / background to display the wonderfully out-of-focus bokeh.

Wandering through the Wellington Botanic Gardens last week (after a lovely birthday picnic lunch!) I spotted this statue and tried an attempt.  Not great, but some background flower give it a bit of depth and colour.  Will keep trying!

“Why drink the water from my hand” - December  ~ Collective Soul

This is my 200th post!  When I started this blog over 9 months ago I wasn’t sure how regularly I would manage to post a photo.  I certainly didn’t think I would stick with 1-per-day but I am pleased and impressed I’ve managed to keep it up and hit the #200 milestone.

As mentioned recently, the tact of this blog is changing somewhat - look out for a few announcements shortly - but in the meantime I’ll continue to post a few photos of various shoots I’ve been doing.

This is a quick serendipitous capture.  We were visiting a central-city Open Home over the weekend in an old historical building in the city centre: one of the ‘features’ was this brilliant old vintage lift.  I imagined how fantastic this would be for a photoshoot - especially a wedding or engagement shoot - but as it was under heavy use on this particular Sunday with other visitors to the apartment, we couldn’t spend much time in it!  I did manage to snap this photo - looking at my wife as reflected in the smudged gold button panel inside the lift.

“Push The Button” ~ Sugababes

Just another pic from a not-so-recent newborn shoot.  This certainly isn’t your usual “awwwwww cute” soft sleeping shot of a newborn baby, but all babies have their own personality - even at 10 days old - and this epitomises the theme running through the shoot on the day!  Little Shylah simply refused to sleep and simply wanted to be a part of everything - here she appears to be fighting off the weariness and keeping one eye open just to make sure she isn’t missing out!  The fantastic blue colour was brought out in post-processing, but it beautifully contrasts the warmer tones of her skin.

“Just One Look” ~ The Hollies (amongst others)