Urban Landscapes

Looking forward to shooting some urban landscapes in and around Tasmania during January.
He's a gallery of some urban shots created on our last expedition back in August 2008. To views full screen, click on the little icon 2nd from right at bottom of gallery.
Towns included in this gallery include, Nhill in Western Victoria, Ballarrat, St Kilda including the famous Palais Theatre and Novotel Hotel.


As always feel free to embed this gallery into any non commercial or personal blog. To do that, just click on the triangle icon bottom righ corner of this gallery, copy the code and paste it into you blog or site.

Many things to do no time to do them..

I'm sure that's the case with most photographers during the lead up to Christmas, certainly is here. There are a number of interesting things happening in the photography industry at the moment, many I would like to comment on but not today my friends.

We have managed to get the slide show widget working over at the excitations stock blog, love you to drop on over and check that out. We will be posting regular galleries features on the site in the new year.

What price for a photo?

An age old question faced by photographers every day of their working life. but I have to feel for a photographer friend who was recently approach by a junior member of a small publications editorial staff, wanting to use one of his pictures in the publication. After asking the usual questions, about magazines circulation, image placement and size etc. He quoted what he felt was a very reasonable price. Imagine the look on his face when he was told. "We never pay photographers for pictures, most times they pay us, so that the can advertise the fact that they've been published".
Wow there's a business concept I hadn't thought of. Imagine the amount of extra work I could get if I paid clients for the privilege of shooting them.

But I guess it's not that new, I'm hearing that wedding photographers in some parts are advertising that they'll shoot your wedding absolutely free... just to get experience. I saw a post on a bridal forum the other day advising brides to go to their local school and ask one of the photography students to photograph their wedding. Much cheaper than paying for photos taken by a professional, and in the words of this writer " more likely than not the photos will be better too".

I'm pretty sure that holding your reception at Macca's would save heaps of money as well. The only difference is at the little Scottish restaurant you'll get a half decent feed, I'm not sure about your photos though.

Canola crop in flower

The other day while returning from shooting in the Grampians the outback photography team drove past a few crops of Canola in flower. What a great sight, just wanted to get up and do some aerials of it, but alas no time for that, maybe next year. Most of the cereal crops we past on our journey were to say the least struggling with the continued dry weather. Today has, however, brought some rain over almost all of Victoria, with some good falls recorded. Much to late for many farmers, but welcome all the same.

Bush flies and beautiful brides

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35mm USM

The outback photographer was in the Australian Inland Botanic Gardens near mildura yesterday for the wedding of Tate and Jonathan. We had a fantastic day shooting with a great group. I'm really happy with the wedding images we created during the afternoon, but have to say there will need to b a fair bit of post production on this lot of images due to the arrival of a large number of really friendly "Bush Flies". Boy were they a blood nuisance, crawling all over our subjects and getting in front of the lens when I was shooting wide angle back lit photos. Like little diamonds in the sky in hundreds of our shots. Each and every one of the little buggers will have to be retouched out.
Anyway this shot was created at days end, we had just finished shooting Tate and Jono in the back of their bridal car, when I notice the boys all nicely arranged in their ride. All I had to co sas walk around behind them, and yell out loudly... the rest as they say is history...
Anyway the shot above was capture at days end

The ever beautiful Stephanie

Canon 1Ds II f2.8 70-200 IS USM @ 100mm, 2 light studio set up.

The outback photography crew recently had the good fortune of shooting with the young and very lovely Stephanie. This studio portrait image is not however one of those images. Mildura photography studio, Excitations is currently preparing a set of promotional photos for glamour and fashion portraits and our recent images of Steph are still under wraps... But nobody said I could not use some older pics of her on the blog.
We can't just have nature, landscape and travel type pics here can we now! For the record this was a really simple studio shoot. One large lightbox camera left almost touching model, gold reflector just below models chest and just out of shot and one hair light which is doing absolutely nothing, because I'm in too close yet again. For those of you with eagle eyes the second catch light is from a large and bright window in the studio.

Glossodia major, Waxlip Orchid, Australia.

Another native Australian orchid this fine morning, Glossodia major, or the Waxlip Orchid as it is more commonly know. Fairly common around Victoria this beautiful orchid has a single leaf at ground level, grows to around 25cm in height with normally a single flower which can vary greatly in color from almost white through to dark blue.

Nikon D2x, 60mm f.28 micro nikkor lens and SB800 flash.

Next time your out in the Australian bush, keep a close eye out for this stunning orchid, and also for some of the far less obvious native orchids that abound in the Australian bush.

Nodding Greenhood, Pterostylis nutans.

Nikon D2x with 60mm f2.8 Micro Nikkor lens.

We've added a few stock photos of native Australian orchids to our online gallery here. This image is of a Nodding Greenhood,the outback photographer found in the Grampians region of Victoria on a recent trip there.

Pied Currawong

Canon 1Ds III with 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS USM lens @275mm f5.6

The above shot was created recently while I sat in our "Troopy" having lunch. I'd like to spin you a yarn about how difficult it was to capture this image of the Pied Currawong, or Strepera graculina to his friends. I'd be fibbing if I did that because this guy and in fact most of his extended family were anything but camera shy.

At one stage he even ventured into the troopy and sat on the steering wheel with me seated right behind it. I'm pretty sure it was my lunch, rather than my company that he really desired, but it matters not. To get this shot the only technical problem was getting it into his head to sit on a nearby fence so that he was outside my minimum focus range.

If your wanting to check out some real nature photography may I suggest Laurie Excells blog, to see some images created in Alaska over the psast week.

Photoshelter collection to call it a day...

I was disappointed, not surprised to receive an email from the good folks at Photoshelter this morning. After a brave attempt to give the world an alternative source of original stock photography, not to mention photographers a viable form of distributing their work, the collection is to close early October. Just one short year after its launch, a lot of market research, much enthusiasm, innovation and hard work, the Collection will be no more.

Photoshelters archiving facilities for photographers will thankfully continue, giving many of us access to geographically remote backup and storage of valuable images. Combined with the ability to access high resolution files from our own personal archives from vitrtually anywhere on this planet of ours. Any photographer who spends a lot of time on the road or around dodgy internet conections will attest to the value of this service.

Check out Photoshelters announcement on their blog. Or check out the collection here.

Grampians wild flower spectacular

If you have any interest in Australian wildflowers, the first week in October is the time to be in the Grampians. The bushland around the Grampians will be alive with wild flowers beyond your imagination. There are a couple of spectacular displays of wild flowers on in the area during that time as well. The Pomonal Wild Flower show, is I’m told not to be missed, click here for more info.

My brother, has just returned from Halls Gap, which is right in the centre of the wildflower action. He tells me that already the display of Wattles in the bush is amazing, and at night the perfume from these natives is just sublime as it fills the valleys. He also reckons, this year will be fantastic for wild flowers. So as a photographer you know were I want to be.. See you there.

Went hunting this morning.

Canon 1D IIn with f4.5-5.6 100-400 IS

Tried a little bird work this morning with no a lot of success. What's the saying? "Some days are diamond and some days are stone", well today was a little closer to stone. The only shot I manage to get that will end up in our stock archives, is this Little Pied Cormorant, who had just jumped off her nest and was not all that please to see me.

But hey, that's the fun of doing this stuff, You never know unless you try. Check out a few more of our Australian Water Birds stock images here.

So you want to be a fine art model!

Ever thought you'd like to be a nude fine art model? If you have you should check out The Women of Avalon blog. This group of ladies explore their minds as well as their bodies in various collaborations with fine art photographers. They manage to turn the act of modeling into an art form of its own.

Any form of fine art photography involving people is always difficult. For a photographer looking for models, the difficulty is finding a model who really "gets it" and has an understanding of what the final goal is. A fine art photographer who shoots people, is nothing without a model, who not only understands the concepts being portrayed, but understands the process of getting the image. The old term "Making haste slowly" springs to mind. Working towards a final image is often time consuming and for the model physically demanding. Stretching, forming shapes and holding poses for extended periods in often uncomfortable surroundings, isn't everyones cup of tea.

For a model wanting to get into fine art modeling, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to find a photographer, who is not only technically proficient but who also has a similar mindset to the model. There are hundreds of photographers claiming to be fine art nude photographers, but only a small handful who are producing anything above cheap mindless smut.

Keep your eyes peeled for Joe Blakes

Heading out into the Ozzie bush in the next few days, keep an eye out for Joe Blakes (snakes), the first couple of slightly warmer days and our wiggly little friends or out and about. I had my first encounter for the year yesterday, when two of us tried to inhabit the same piece of our back yard. If your not comfortable around snakes, just keep away from them. They are generally not aggressive, most times electing to slip away to somewhere safe.
However, like us if you wake them up while they're dozing in the sun, catching a few rays, they sometimes spring into action and defend themselves as best they can. Standing on them, or kicking them as you drag your feet along the ground is also guaranteed to get you some unwanted attention.

So be safe, keep your eyes on the ground when walking through grass and bushland. Don't for one second think that the grass has to be long, you will be surprised at how little grass cover it takes to hide young "joey" as he makes his daily rounds.

A whole week without internet access.

So much happens in a week, if you haven't got access to the internet. We had a some problems with the line into our office this past week, which unfortunately resulted in no access to the web. I had know idea how much we rely on being hooked up to the world.
Anyway we're back up and running, and I have a lot of catching up to do... Emails by the dozens to answer, and web sites that are like old friends to catch up on.
One of my first sites to catch up on is the blog of Cameron Davidson a people and aerial photographer from United States. Click here to visit Cameron's blog.
Cameron has some really interesting low level aerial imagery on his site, plus some great links.

So its still winter

Canon 1Ds III f2.8 16-35mm II USM @ 35mm

Yep I know it doesn't snow in the outback, well not very often anyway. Last week the outback photographer was in the Grampians in South Western Victoria when we had a very lite sprinkle of snow overnight. The dull grey Australian bush takes on a new look when dusted with freshly falling snow. This shot was taken early morning before word got out and tourist started to flock onto the mountain. In fact I had to all but run up the road to keep ahead of a group of young and very excited children who were undoubtedly seeing snow for the very first time.

The longest 10 seconds on the planet.

A couple of short notes today. The first one and most importantly for me is that this blog will no longer be directly accessible from excitations.com.au but will still link from excitations-stock.com and milduraphotographer.com. We are adding a new blog more suited to the excitations profile and this the Outback Photographer Blog will have a gradual personality shift more towards photography and the outback.

The second thing today is you must check out Vincent laforet's News Week Blog today about shooting the Mens 100m final at the Olympics. Great stuff.

Shooting a debutante at home.

Canon 1Ds III f2.8 24-70mm lens @27mm

What a great way to end the weeks shooting! Spending an hour with the lovely Bridget, creating some personalized debutante images for her within the surrounds of her parents beautifully decorated home. Robyn and I enjoyed shooting in a number of different rooms, while family and friends called by to check out Bridget, the dress and her handsome partner, Michael. Thanks guys we had a great time and you've got some great shots that we look forward to showing you soon.

I loved the depth we were able to get into this shot by using the archway and feature mirror, while Bridget struck a relaxed but elegant pose on the leather lounge in the foreground. We used the rooms ambient lighting to convey a feeling of space, plus a couple of small 580ex flash guns to provide a little modeling light to our beautiful subjects face.

Whoops it Friday! That means tonights shoot wasn't the end of our shooting week. Tomorrow at the crack of dawn we'll be up getting gear ready and packing up the studio to head to Manangatang were we will be photographing a bunch of beautiful young debs but under vastly different conditions.

Drought and the Murray River

Canon 1Ds II, f2.8 24-70mm lens, Robinson 22 helicopter.

One of the interesting things around here lately is the number of requests coming through for stock photos of the Murray River dying. One from an international agency requested pictures of the river dry... but not from drought , rather it must be dry from over use of irrigation water. Now it must be difficult for international editors to understand that the Murray River isn't really a river in the true sense of the word. Rivers by nature ebb and flow. During rainy seasons more water flows down them, sometimes causing flooding. During dry periods the amounts of water flowing down them decreases to the point they sometimes stop running altogether.

The Murray River however, is managed more as an irrigation channel. During wet periods huge amounts of water are stored upstream in dams and river flows are tightly controlled to ensure that there are sufficient flows to meet irrigation, human and so called environmental flows. The stored water being released during dry times to ensure that these needs are still maintained. So that now even when water shortages are critical, river levels haven't change dramatically with all the dams and weirs doing their job. But if your an editor needing to illustrate the river in drought, the picture above which looks like a totally normal river, despite the fact that it is a recent shot of the Murray River near Mildura under drought conditions, is totally useless. You really need to show something graphic, like dry cracked river beds, or tree roots exposed by unusually low water levels, or dead or dying marine life.

That leaves me in a bit of a predicament. Do I continue to resist the temptation to fudge reality and start submitting images which although not factual, do illustrate the rivers situation? Or do I forgo the income and only submit images that are genuinely of the Murray as it is now? It's really easy to find some swamp that is currently dry, take a few shots and flog them off to buyers who probable don't care that much about truth anyway.

That my friends is the problem for me. I know a number of my competitors have elected to supply what the client wants. More stock images of the Murray River and it environs can be found here, and our good friend Paul Atkins has some new shots of the lower lakes of the Murray here.

St Kilda Jetty and Pavilion.

Canon 1Ds III, f2.8 16-35mm lens

This is the “New” “Old Pavilion” located at the end of St Kilda Jetty, a popular beach side suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The original pavilion was constructed in 1904, if I remember correctly and became of on the icons of Melbourne, until its untimely destruction by fire just short of its 100th birthday in September 2003. So missed by locals, it was decided to rebuild the old girl using original drawings from the 1900’s.

Today the new building stands at the end of the very popular St Kilda Jetty and is witness to many thousands of visitors who flock to the area for a bit of R & R. The outback photographer was able to capture this shot of the pavilion, minus people just by getting out of his 4 star hotel bed early and taking a stroll along the water front before heading off to work. I’d love to tell you the early morning walk was about enthusiasm to get the shot but to be honest it had more to do with the hotels air conditioning unit, which sounded a lot like the engine of a Boeing 747 at full power… all bloody night…

Hey.... while I think of it, Vincent Larforet is currently shooting the Olympic for News Week, and he along with a couple other great sports shooters has regular posts to his blog and also the News Week blog

Some great insights into how those amazing sports pictures get to your morning newspaper. Photographers will appreciate some of the difficulties these guys go through to get pictures. I particularly like Vincent's story of getting a picture of the fire works over the Great Wall... priceless.

Winter

Canon 1ds III , 16-35mm f2.8 lens

Seems the winter slow down for photographers hasn't started yet. Two weeks ago we fitted new all terrain tyres to the Troopy, not knowing that we would in the nest couple of weeks test those tyres on a wide range of surfaces. Highways, freeways, sandy dirt trails, snow covered mountain tracks and muddy back roads we've been over them all.
Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the outback photographer doesn't love variety, because I do. The problem is getting back to the studio and a huge backlog of work . Not to mention emails, boy do they mount up if you're not on top of your game.

The shot above is photographed on a mountain track in Southern Victoria, in an area that is generally below the snow line and was recently ravaged by bush fire. Talk about mother nature handing out punishment, many of the trees along this road had been burnt badly during summer and are just starting to make new growth only to be covered in snow and ice and buffeted by gale force winds.

Desolation

Hasselblad 500cm with f4, 50mm lens, Agfapan 400 film

Wow today has been the coldest of our winter so far. A great day to run out of gas. So how come the outback photographer is posting a fine art nude today of all days. The answer is really simple... I wanted to.

This shot was taken a few years ago, just for fun and as part of a private project which is entitled "The Naked Landscape". Simple concept really, take a naked human and add them to a landscape urban or natural, try and get interesting images using just available light and the environment for inspiration. Funny thing is though, when I find a great location that I really want to shoot, there isn't a model anywhere to be found. By the time I find a model willing to get their kit off way out in the middle of the Never Never, the location has change, or the light no longer works there because of seasonal changes. On the other hand when you have a willing and able model or models, inspiration and locations seem to be hard to find.

What should have been a 12 month project has dragged on and on, but when our weather warms up I'm going to get right into it. That's my mid winter resolution. Well the New Years resolutions I make never happen so we'll try Mid Winter instead.

Our model Rachael was brave enough, or maybe she is just plain adventurous by nature and allowed me to drag her out into the middle of absolutely no where for the above shot. She wasn't fazed by the old derelict car body riddled with high caliber bullet holes. The chill of cold steel should have put her off, as I'm fairly sure that naked flesh pressed against cold, rusty, paint peeling steel, couldn't be all that pleasant but no she took it all in her stride.

The only interruption to the shoot was a bus load of Japanese tourists who drove up an old dirt road just behind the car. That event saw Rachael taking cover behind our bullet riddled car body and left me standing out in the centre of a million acre paddock trying t look as if I'm casually snapping pics of said car. Had they only looked closer!

Now people turning up on location isn't unusual, I've had a mother bring her three young teenage girls to look at a hot air balloon that I was shooting. Problem was, by the time I spotted her coming, I only had seconds to organize a diversion to steer her and attached children around to the other side of our partially inflated balloon. Right away from the five very naked men who were the subjects of the shot. Knowing the lady in question as I do, I'm reasonably confident we would have had to brush up on our CPR skills. But back to the bus load of tourists. I mentioned earlier that we were in the absolute middle of no where. Black Stump 500K's South, back of Burke 800K's North and no place between. How do these people manage to arrive on set on time?

Flowers

Nikon D2x with f2.8 60mm lens (The outback photographers "FUN" camera).

This morning the old outback photographer was all psyched up go shoot a large flock of Pelicans that I've been watching for the last few days. Always in the same spot and always the early morning light has been just perfect.. but as is often the case with photography, I've had other more pressing things to go shoot... you know, the short of things that put food on our table rather than the pics that just make me feel all good inside.

This morning would however be different, some precious free time, gear all ready to go and so was I. By 5am I couldn't wait any longer, hoped out of bed and stuck my head out the door just to check that there were no early clouds forming... Ahhhh! to my dismay the sky was full of dull gray clouds.... bugger, no point in going out in this... so it was back to bed to fume for a couple of hours. By 7 however I'd had enough, dragged myself out of bed, grabbed the Nikon and headed out into the bleak gray winters morning to find something to shoot.

As luck would have it I found these little white Snow Drops flowering just a few yards from our studios front door. By lying down on the wet grass I was able to frame these two against a very dull sky and as you can see the early light combined with the very shallow depth of field at f4, gave a rather neat look. Some days you just gotta take what the day offers up. Besides the shot was for me so there was no pressure to come through with the goods. But then I guess the most demanding person I shoot for is myself.

Don Costa

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35mm f2.8, available window light.

A trip to the post office today to clear out our mail box in the hope that someone may have sent us a cheque was not the success that we might have wished for. But there was this one interesting looking packet that we couldn't wait to tear open and have a look at the carefully packed contents. Our good friend Don Costa, musician and all round good guy has just released another CD and the outback photography team were lucky enough to get an autographed copy forwarded to us by Don and his fabulous wife Anette.

Robyn and I shot with Don earlier in the year. The image above was shot in the front window of the recording studio where Don was busy recording. Subsequently used inside the CD cover, it is one of my favorite images from the shoot. Using only available light coming through a window, the light pattern across the wall coming from sun reflecting off a parked van outside. Immediately after getting this shot we moved out into a narrow lane way, complete with cobble stones and great back lighting created by a quickly fading sun and shot the cover picture for this latest CD.

Smile

Nikon F5 with 60mm f2.8 Micro Nikor and film!!!

After spending a couple of hours putting together a not very inspiring composite image for a commercial job I'm working on. I decide enough was enough... time to have a bit of fun and to cheer myself up. If there is a more cheerful flower than the sunflower (helianthus) I haven't yet met it. The stock shot of the big bright yellow sunflower was shot in our studio a few years back, the sunset from about the same time was combined using simple masking techniques and took about two minutes from start to finish. Now that its complete I guess I should put it up onto our stock site www.excitations-stock.com
Think I'll make it a royalty free image, and price it in our cheap and cheerful range... sounds like a plan, but then again my brain is a bit addled from fiddling with another as yet incomplete composite... so I guess I'd better get back to it.

White Faced Heron.

Canon 1D IIN with 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 IS USM lens.

This morning before sunrise, the outback photographer found himself in a small open boat quietly drifting along the banks of the Murray River just checking out the abundance of bird life that inhabits the river banks early in the morning. Every few yards there was another species of bird, having a drink, fighting over the best tree limb, waiting patiently for breakfast, or preening themselves in preparation for another busy day of survival.

Every photographer knows that the great light happens first thing in the morning or just before sun set. Funny thing is you rarely run into another photographer out and about before day break. Which is a good thing for those of us who are out there doing it. Anyway this morning was quite special, and I was able to bag a couple of nice shots for our stock collection.

The White Faced Heron, above was happily waiting for breakfast when I turned up. Slowly drifting up on his position, hoping all the time that I wouldn't be noticed. As if he wasn't going to noticed a great big photographer, sitting in an open boat, moving toward him. Anyway the inevitable happened before I got close enough to get the shot I wanted, but in leaving he gave me the opportunity to get some panning practice in, which I badly need.

The onlookers...

Canon 1D IIN, 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 USM IS lens.

Photographers often attract a group of onlookers when they're shooting. Last night we had lots of people checking out the three beautiful young women we were photographing in the streets of a local outback city. This morning the outback photographer was shooting a small commercial job from a boat on the Murray River. While drifting downstream to get the shot, I noticed another group of onlookers. One seemed to be really interested in what I was doing, while the rest may have had a hard Saturday night out, as they seemed more inclined to just doze while I fiddled around in a boat below.

For those of you not familiar with our Australian bird life these guys go by a common name of Little Corella. They flock in large numbers together, spend the day foraging for seed on the ground, or high up in the tree canopy, doing their level best to rip every leaf from the tree.

Destructive little buggers, and did I mention noisy. Continuous high pitched screeching and chatter while they feed and play which rises to an almost deafening crescendo when they take flight on mass. Forming swirling and twisting clouds of white and soft yellow as they demonstrate their amazing aptitude for aerobatics and obstacle avoidance, while flying wing tip to wing tip continually changing direction in total harmony.

If you find yourself camping anywhere in the Australian outback it would be wise to check that your camp site isn't to close to a flock of these guys. Let's just say you won't get a good nights uninterrupted sleep.

For those of you who care the Little Corella has the rather grand scientific name of Cacatua sanguinea

Cold Saturday night.

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35mm f2.8 USM @ 16mm

Hey … what else would any photographer worth his salt do after shooting three drop dead gorgeous women around the streets of a small outback city? The answer, take the towns two custom built white limo’s out to a nearby deserted car park and shoot them. The beautifully presented limousines belong to Vince and Miranda Lamattina, the Party Professionals based out of Mildura in far Northern Victoria, so if you’re anywhere near that neck of the woods and need a limo, these are the guys to see. Vince an Miranda graciously let me play around with the cars for about an hour, braving the winter cold while I shot away. The shot above is straight out of the camera without any retouching. Even the white balance was set to auto, something I rarely do but the Canon 1Ds II handled the multitude differing light sources with ease. Now all I have to do is get down to doing a bit of post work on the files and see what happens.

Hey its raininig

Yep its raining on the outback photographers world and I’m so happy about that. This isn’t heavy rain but its rain and thats great. No big deal for most people but when your in the midst of a seemingly never ending "dry spell’, rain is the best medicine you could possibly imagine.

You see for those of you who are not from the south eastern parts of Australia, we are going through the "worst drought in a thousand years", something that I doubt myself but its a good line for governments trying to escape criticism for years of failing to develop infrastructure to cater for growing populations and subsequent increases in demand for water. Our current rain fall for this year is under 25% of normal and that follows years of below average falls. Farmers drawing irrigation water from the Murray River near Mildura were this year restricted to using just 48% of there water allocation, but next irrigation season face far greater restrictions on the amounts of water they will be allocated. Less water, obviously means less production and in many cases they will be forced from the land and in many cases their land may be retired from production permanently.

One of the things about being a photographer based in the Australian outback or the "Bush" as locals often refer to it, is our dependence on rural families for much of our client base. When the rural economy suffers, rural photographers feel the heat in a big way. That requires looking further afield for jobs, which is not all that bad of a deal, because photographers should always be pushing themselves to get outside their comfort zone and events such as drought, fire and even some times flood all help to make us think outside the box.

Storm photography

Hey while we're talking about weather check out Laurie Excell's blog. Laurie, and American nature photographer spent the last week chasing storms, really big bad and ugly storms across the USA. She has some great storm pictures so do yourself a favour and take a look. Also on this storm chasing trip was Moose Peterson, yet another American photographer of all things natural. Moose has some super Tornado shots on his blog as well. Click here to see Tornado shots by Moose. You'll have to scroll down the page a bit because Moose is a prolific poster of photography news with almost daily updates to his page.

Erskine River, Lorne.

Canon 1Ds II with f2.8 16-35mm "L" lens

Finally today we started to see some rain here in Mildura, the first for quite some time. Not enough mine you to do anything except lift the spirits of locals a bit and maybe wash some dust of the trees but every little helps. Listening to the rain falling on our studions iron roof makes me want to pack up my camera gear and head into the bush again. There is nothing quite like shooting the Australian bush in the rain.
But that's not going to happen for a while at least so I've dragged out this shot, created on the Erskine River, in Victoria's Ottway Ranges a couple of months ago. Yes even there the drought is making itself felt but at least it still feels and smells like a rain forest. Meantime the outback photographer is back to his trusty Macpro to process some more images and listen to the rain keep falling. (hopefully)

Art and pornography

Here in Australia there has been much debate about the works of an artist who's work has been removed from exhibition from a Sydney gallery. I like many, and in fact I suspect most of the informed commentators on this subject, I have not actually seen any of the artist work in person. So I will not pass any judgment on its content.

I do find a number of thing interesting about the media storm that has followed. Undoubtably many newspapers have sold and many hours of radio and television has been devoted to the subject and many millions of dollars have be made form the coverage of the story.
I find it interesting that the artist has been able to hide this "absolutely disgusting" work, this "pornography", for such a long time. Apparently according to some reports, one of his "poor innocent models" is now in her forties. You do the maths, 13 when the shots were taken, 40 now... been a while. And exactly how did this monster of a man manage to keep this atrocious works from our view and that of the law? Obvious really... you hide them on the walls of art galleries around the world. No one would ever think of looking there.

As a photographer this is an area where I would choose not to go myself. But I don't believe, as has been suggested that the only motivation an artist could possibly have for creating images of the naked human form is sexual. Whether the images are of minors or adult in the nude there are many motivations for creating art images that have nothing to do with sex. Shape, form texture the fall of light, the sheer beauty of the naked form all great reasons to create art images.
Once many moons ago after shooting some art nudes with a beautiful young lady on location, I was packing my gear away, she dressed and walked back to where I was, still buttoning up her
top as she approached. Which is the exact moment I chose to say what I thought. "You look so much sexier with your cloths on." It was the truth but let me just say to all you budding photographers of the nude, not a very wise thing to tell any model. BIG MISTAKE, but you learn from your mistakes.

Another huge weekend

Canon 1D IIN with f2.8 16-35mm "L" lens available light, shot through the window of Seasons Restaurant, Mildura.

Wow what a weekend of shooting, we started on Saturday with the wedding of Amy and Joe, which continued way into the night, then first thing Sunday it was backing up all Saturdays shoot. Yep the outback photographer is a little paranoid about backups and I won't even consider reformatting a CF card until I have 3 copies of the files backed up to two separate hard drives and also to DVD, then off course there is no point keeping them in the one location in case of fire, flood or theft. Backups completed it was off on location shooting an ongoing portrait project, recording a period in time for a family with three generations of history on the one farming property. Followed by lunch on the run, more backups, a portrait viewing and two more family portrait sessions in the Excitations Garden Studio. Followed of course by many more backup sessions before finally calling it quites late Sunday night.

Back to the wedding of Amy and Joe we had an absolute blast shooting in amazing late Autumn weather. Taking full advantage of the many coloured and falling leaves in Ampelon gardens near Mildura, with a great group of people... Lifes just plain great isn't it. The image of Amy and Joe above was shot during a quick visit to Seasons Restaurant in the Mildura City Heart. Amy and Joe were inside while the outback photographer played the role of voyeur and shot through the window, taking advantage of the warm glow emanating inside. Love the technology that allows me to be able to shoot in full sunlight one minute and seconds later being able to shoot in very low light situations without the need to continually change film types like we did in the not so distant passed.

It has been a while.

Nikon D2x with f1.4, 85mm lens

Wow how time flies when your having fun. I've been a bit slack in the blogging department lately. Guess you could use the word busy to describe things around here lately and if the last couple of days have been any indication it may not slow down for a while yet.

The image above is of the lovely Jess, a local area model who occasionally visits us for some portfolio photo updates. The outback photographer had the great pleasure of shooting with Jess earlier in the week, and while a lot of portraits from this session where shot around the farm, this one was created in Excitations Barn Studio.

Using the simplest one light studio set up you can get, a single softbox up close and personal to Jess, on camera left. A plain grey background and my all time favorite portrait photography lens, the tacky sharp Nikkor F1.4 85mm. I know that some of you will have noticed a second catch light in Jess's eyes and think I'm fibbing when I said it was a one light portrait. Ok there was a second light, I often use an on camera flash set at 128th power to trigger my studio strobes. The trigger unit in this case a Nikon SB600, which by the way is an excellent little flash unit.

Jess has great skin, so this shot has had almost nothing done to it in post. Just a quick tweak of levels and the addition of a little custom diffusion in Photoshop and convert to black and white using one of our own conversion profiles.

Some great photographs to check out!

Canon 1Ds II and f2.8 24-70mm USM lens, shot from a Robinson 22 helicopter. The River is the Murray near Mildura, in Northern Victoria, Australia.

People often ask me what is the best camera to buy? How do you do that in Photoshop? It seems that the how to do, or what equipment you should have is to most people what photography is all about. The reality of course is that equipment while important, is not the most important aspect of our profession.

Back long long ago, when I was a newbie to this mad game we call professional photography an old timer told me that it was all about the "eye" as he put it. Now days we are more likely to talk about the thought process behind a photograph or the visual appeal of an image but in reality it is much the same thing. If my fading memory serves me correctly it was Cartier Bresson , who famously said, "There is nothing worse than a sharp rendition of a fuzzy idea!"

Today I'd like to point you to some beautiful black and white imagery by Tom Stoddard, all shot in black and white, beautiful, powerful, strong in message and devoid of gimmicks. Go check out his work here.. and be moved.

More great fun shoots today.

Canon 1Ds II, f4.5-5.6 100-400 IS USM lens, available light with just a touch of white reflector camera right.

Out of the blocks early this morning, a couple of client meetings and then into a fantastic, fun filled shoot with a young and very beautiful ballerina, Mikayla. Who was not only a great sport as we worked our way through a series of both classical and contemporary portraits but heaps of fun to work with. Can't wait to show Mikayla and her parents the results of the shoot.
The above shot created on the front steps of our Sunraysia studio in the early morning cool.
Desaturated, with a little bit of diffusion and a quick adjustment for contrast and bingo we're done. Love this job they call photography.

Some days are just to good.

Canon 1Ds II, f2.8 24-70mm USM lens shot from a Robinson 22 Helicopter late afternoon.

I had a great afternoon today. As the afternoon sun started to make its way to the horizon, the our little Robbie climbed slowly out over the small rural city of Mildura, which nestles on the banks of the River Murray in South Eastern Australia. Pilot Colin, and I were headed out over the city to undertake some low level aerial photography along the river.

You see I love taking photographs and I love flying low in hot air balloons, but in a real world when shooting from the air, as much as I enjoy shooting from balloons, there is nothing that beats a helicopter. Being able to go around again, or changing altitude to get a better angle is something that I gotta have. But the best part is flying low and slow, just shooting the unfolding scenery below you.
The above shot captured after completing the first of our two jobs this evening, we were gentle gaining altitude as we headed to the next location. This cluster of beautiful homes situated along the river bank caught my eye and I just had to shoot them. We Aussies sure low being near the water and I'm just guessing here but I suspect that most of us would jump at the chance to live in a location like this.

But the goodness didn't end there, after departing the Sunraysia Helicopter base, I drove back to our studio, where one of our beautiful and gracious clients was waiting to view images from her recent engagement sitting. Yep I was late, but hopefully forgiven.... I promise it won't happen again, well not until next time at least.

Then we had the best family portrait session in our studio, staring the one and only Rory. Rory, was supposed to have some maternity shots with his mum and dad to be, but unfortunately he got a bit confused about his due date and arrived early, causing a slight delay in the photo session. Tonights session was a total blast and I can't wait to show his proud mum and dad the fantastic images we were able to capture.

Well that's it folks it 11:30pm all the backups are done, batteries recharged, gear packed and ready for another big day tomorrow. Time for some shut eye as well...

Some times you just gotta smile...

The other night I caught a piece of television. The show was one of those news magazine style programs where they save us from all the evil in the world and basically inform us on how to live our lives in a full and meaningful way. I'm sure you all know the style of program. The outrage interviewer who confronts a sleezy used car salesman in his car lot, complete with an irate customer who was wronged by this low life. Then surprise surprise another wronged customer just happens to arrive in time for the camera's to record tirade of abuse for said evil doer, and in so doing fully legitimise what would have been a shaky story . At least the cooking shows are honest enough to say " and here's a dish that I prepared earlier".

Anyway back to the story from the other night. I tuned in because having missed the news earlier I thought I might get some information on the horrible devastation in Burma. But no instead we had an in depth report on whether a swimmer had a bear gut, was underdone and lacking in preparedness for the Olympic Games. Interviews with sports medicine experts, doctors, sports personalities, and sports commentators, all expounding their different views as well as the inevitable replay of the same few seconds of footage over and over and over again. In slow motion, freeze framed and zoomed in.

Good to see Australian television news really gets to the "guts" of the story. I feel so much better knowing that we are so well informed.

Have a great day

Dry lake

Canon 1D II with 16-35mm f2.8 USM lens.

I guess it's what you'd call irony... When I get to go to an awesome location in a dry lake bed surrounded by old dead trees and acres of dried, deeply cracked mud, that mother nature decides to turn on a couple of hours of dull cloudy whether punctuated with the occasional light shower of rain. But who cares, I've found a fabulous location for some fine art nude photography, all I have to do now is wait for the weather to get a little warmer ( some that the model doesn't turn blue0 and hope that the dry lake doesn't become a wet lake before then.

Another green pic.

Canon 1Ds II with 16-35 f2.8 USM

You can't blame me from posting another green picture can you. The promised rain around here didn't arrive again, "Oh what a surprise..." Then today I read that El Nino is in decline meaning the end of the chances for above average rainfall this winter. Seeing that we're currently running at just under 25% of our normal rainfall for the months January through April, I guess we had better get use to working with a lot of brown and dusty backgrounds.

The above dose of green was shot along the banks of the Erskine River in the Ottway Ranges west of Melbourne. Tomorrow I'm off to photograph a very dry and cracked lake bed, so that should be a lot of fun.... seriously.

The beautiful Cherie Q

Shot with a Canon 1Ds II with a 100-400 f4.5-5.6 IS USM lens, natural light with a touch of white reflector on the left hand side of frame.

So its a cold dreary morning here, can you think of a better excuse to post and image of a beautiful young model wearing a bikini. Gotta tell you, even if you can, I'm posting it any way. The shot was created on the banks of the Murray River near Mildura a couple of weeks ago. You see Cherie Q, a good Aussie health and fitness model decide she needed a couple of bathers shots for her portfolio, and the lucky old outback photographer was given the job of shooting them.

Cherie Q, tiny little bundle of dynamite that she is, has launched a new website portfolio page, which you can view here. Cherie Q, is currently on the Australian Gold Coast modeling bikini's on the beach. Lucky sod... while the rest of us freeze.... but then again if its cold there, well maybe that wouldn't be such a good job.

Have a great day....

Great Ocean Road.

Canon 1Ds 100-400 4.5-5.6 IS USM lens

After 3 days of really enjoyable exploring the landscape around Lorne, a small tourist resort situated on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria's South West, the outback photographer is back in the office tried to a computer trying to get a backlog of images processed. I have to tell you that if you ever have the chance to spend a couple of days near the Victorian coast... take them.

Apart from the incredible drive along the Great Ocean Road, through a variety of very different coastal regions, from sandy surf beaches to rugged cliffs all clearly viewable from the comfort of your car. you have the very pretty Ottway Ranges, with countless waterfalls and picnic areas to keep your sense alive. Further west along the Great Ocean Road and you'll find the world renown Twelve Apostles also well worth a visit.

Todays image is a pre-dawn shot of Split Point Light Station, which is at Aireys Inlet, a little east of Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. If you would like to see more of the Great Ocean Road images click here. Have a great day!

Waterfall Wednesday

Canon 1Ds II, f2.8 16-35mm USM L.

Eight hours of tramping over countless kilometres of bush tracks in search of great locations to create fine art images was the name of the game today. Were we successful? Well to be honest at this stage I have no idea. we found a couple of great spots which I guess we will us some time in the future.
Robyn found one site which see has named the Nymph Rock, which has huge potential for working with beautiful young models to create simply stunning portfolio images. Why call it the Nymph Rock? A good friend of ours who earns his living shooting beautiful women, naked for magazines and calenders, often refers to a natural locations as "great but really needs a beautiful Nymph". Todays spot is a great shot waiting to happen, all we need to do is find the beautiful young nymph. Check out some of our friends "clothed nymphs" here.

While hiking today, I discovered that I need to do a lot more walking. Yesterday I chose a cheap pair of new walking boots because I thought the trail would be simple, easy walking, but it wasn't. After several kilometres of walking over rocky unstable boulders on a nearly dry river bed, I realized that you get what you pay for...

Good walking boots have good grip, are padded for comfort and have great ankle support for when you loose your footing on a loose or slippery rock. Bad boots are often not comfortable but worse than that they are prone to loosing grip just when you need it most. If I choose to put my foot on a certain rock and it moves causing me to loose my balance, thats my fault and I deserve to fall or injure myself. That happens enough already. I don't need boots that let go on a perfectly good foot hold. Note to self never ever use poor quality walking boots when out in the bush. A sprained ankle a couple of hundreds metres from my car isn't a problem, but the same injury 2 days walk from the car is a major problem.

Today, my good walking boots came out, but all to late, the old legs are killing me and suspect the repairs to the trusty old boots may need a bit more wearing in. I think I'm looking forward to all day driving tomorrow.

Days end.

Canon 1D II, 100-400 f4.5-5.6 USM L

After walking through a a beautiful temperate rain forest for most of the day, I couldn't resist the temptation to head back to a beach to finish off a great day. For anyone who knows me it will be no surprise that I chose to shoot some blurred motion images of waves rolling in. Of all the things I shoot, waves are the most difficult, because they are unpredictable and really need great light to give them that fluidity I try to capture.

Tonight mother nature decided to give me only about a minute of interesting light before fading into flat, colourless and decidedly uninteresting twilight. This frame was the first of about a dozen. I can't wait to get back to my studio MacPro and 30" Cinema display to work some of the files created today. Laptops are great for managing images on the road, but there is no way I can finish files on this little road machine.

A couple of shots from this afternoon.

Canon 1Ds II, 16-35mm f2.8 USM lens

If you are a lover of nature and have even reasonable fitness you simple have to hit the trail along the amazing Erskine River near Lorne in Southern Victoria. The outback photography team today hit the trail and were simply blown away with the natural beauty of this amazing river. Although there was only a trickle of water flowing down the boulder strewn river bed, the surrounding environment more than made up for any lack of water.
Tall tree ferns line the river banks, while mosses and lichens cling to rocks and decaying timber all along the way.

Sunrise at Lorne

Canon 1Ds II, f4.5-5.6 100-400mm L USM.

A few minutes of beautiful light this morning at day break, before the dull grey skies took over again. This shot of fishermen at the end of the Lorne Jetty trying their luck as the sun rose behind them, was one of a few that I got. Dozens of locals and tourist were out and about this morning in this well known tourist resort situated on the Great Ocean Road in Southern Victoria.

Anyway we're off to tread the tracks of the local rain forests in track of some useful images now so I look forward to posting some of todays pics later today.

Slow days shooting...

Canon 1Ds II with f2.8 16-35mm USM lens.

This morning while hunting for some fine art images along the foreshore at Marengo a small bay just west of Apollo Bay in south western Victoria, I came across this interesting little rock formation. Just above the high tide line, this rock seems to have been sculptured by strong winds and sand. The lighting gods weren't all that kind this morning with low cloud hanging around for most of the morning and then through the afternoon, showing itself late in the afternoon and then sneaking behind clouds again before sunset. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be better, because I'm getting really desperate to get a few good shots real soon.
We are currently based out of Lorne a small tourist town on the Great Ocean Road, while hoping to shoot some coastal fine art and stock images, we're also looking at the nearby Ottway Ranges for some interesting locations.

Hanging out with Cherie Q

Canon 1Ds II with 4.5-5.6 USM IS lens @100, one Elinchrome strobe through white umberella

During the past week the team at Excitations have had the pleasure of hanging out with Cherie Q, a young and dare we suggest energetic fitness and health model. We were shooting some new images for Cherie's portfolio. It is always fun to shoot with a model who is so full of life and determination.

The shot above was created in a Gymnasium while Cherie waited for the outback photographer to get his act together and throw some light onto the set. Lets see no how that works.
Set ready + model ready + stylist ready + oh surprise photographer isn't ready = one really cool shot of model waiting.

That's it for today, gotta go as I have way to much work to do and far to little time in which to do it. Don't suppose anyone wants to wash the
troopy for me... thought not.

Will be heading to the "Big Smoke" tomorrow and a few shoots there, so take care guys!

A great day for a wedding...

Canon 1D IIn, 16-35mm f2.8 @16mm

Some days are just the best. Today the Excitations crew shot a wedding in and around Mildura. Joanne and Trent, a great couple, had just the best day for their wedding. After a week of very average weather and loads of dust. And I've gotta really emphasize LOADS of dust, it took Robyn a full day to get all the dust and sand out of our studio before we could start working in there again. I digress however, back to todays wedding. After a beautiful service in the majestic Grand Hotel gardens we headed to Lock Island Mildura for some extra photos.

I should point out that the bridal group traveled to our location in a beautiful White Limousine, driven by the one and only Vince Lammatina, a true Party Professional if ever there was one. While the outback photographers were rockin and rollin along in the trusty and I might add dusty, Troopy. A new set of shockers and a set of bushes in the undercarriage next week should fix that though.

Once on location we shot our little hearts out, lots of time, very relaxed and co-operative bridal party and some great light makes for a really excellent days shooting. Can't wait for next weeks shooting list, because I've had a bit of a peek into the diary and there are some really fabulous jobs coming up and I just love photographing weddings during the Autumn.

Weather...

Canon 1Ds II with 100-400 f 4.5-5.6 lens @ 100mm

Weather, happens every day, in fact every minute of every day. For some it is nothing more than an inconvenience for others weather occurrences can be life threatening. As we here in South Eastern Australia enter Autumn, where days are gentle, warm, and generally pleasant, today we have a forecast of strong damaging winds, high fire danger, locally raised dust with a slim possibility of rain. Rain would be nice but it seems to have forgotten how to do that around these parts.

Today the outback photographer awoke to the sounds of strong winds buffeting trees around the yard, the air already filling with dust whipped up from the parched land and the promise of a very ordinary sort of day. On the bright side the only two shoots we have today are both in the studio and the sunrise this morning over the Murray River was simply stunning. The shot above grabbed as strengthening winds chopped up the surface of a normally smooth river, reflecting the sunrise and creating amazing patterns of light.

Low level aerial image of wine grape harvester working in vineyard. Shot from a Robinson 22 Helicopter, using a Canon 1Ds II fitted with a 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens.

Earlier this week the outback photographer took to the skies over Mildura to shoot some aerial photographs of a wine grape harvester working in a vineyard. A lot of careful planning went into the shoot prior to the day of the shoot. Our thanks go to Evan Lindsay, the harvesting contractor and the Erny family of Yelta whose vineyard we invaded for the shoot.

We were locked into a specific date and time for the shoot so the biggest variable for us would be the weather. All week the district had been experiencing high temperatures with little of no wind, which was a worry, as dust created by the harvester and tractors would just hang in the air creating a murky atmosphere, making it impossible to get good crisp images. What was needed was a slight southerly breeze to clear the dust away.

Arriving at the Mildura airport and walking out to the little, or should I say really tiny Robinson 22, I was dubious about our chances of success. The weather was overcast, certainly not what is required for good aerial photography, and the much anticipated breeze was much stronger than desired. I've never shot out of a helicopter so small, and being a tall skinny bloke that I am, I really expected it to be cramped and uncomfortable to work from, surprisingly once seated and working with the door off, this aircraft is a little gem. Lots of leg room, enough space for my equipment and it feels like a much bigger helicopter than it is. I must thank Colin Clarke, operations manager and pilot with Sunraysia Helicopters for his help in making difficult flying conditions for photography as good as any photographer could expect. Should you need a helicopter near Mildura, whether for private or business use give Colin or Rob a Call. To see more images of grape harvesters from the air go to our stock site link here.

52 years on...

Canon 1Ds II 16-35mm f2.8 @16mm

While doing a quick location search around Lake Wendouree the other morning, I couldn't help myself, I had to shoot a couple of the usual corny pictures of an empty lake. The shot above appealed to me for a number of reasons. The Olympic circles mounted proudly as part of the Ballarat Olympic Precinct, the repetition of the circles in the foreground monument, a small child cycling to school along a well used exercise track and a dry lake bed directly behind the child.

The irony of the shot is that Lake Wendouree was the site for the 1956 Olympic Rowing, Canoeing and Kayaking events, with the rowing finish line almost directly behind this young child. Oh how drought and time change things.

Old and new.

Canon 1D IIN 16-35mm f2.8 @ 20mm

While looking for breakfast yesterday morning in Ballarat, I was struck (no not literally) by the contrast between the old building built in 1878 and modern lamp post with new advertising banners attached. I'll post a few more Ballarat pics later, as I have a whole lot of catching up to do over the next few days.
WE had a great shoot while there but we won't be able to show you any of those for a while due to commercial obligations.