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.

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

Vintage invasion...

Mildura Vintage Vehicle Club, visit Excitations Barn Studio.
Nikon D2x, 17-35mm f2.8 Nikor.

Last Sunday we had the Mildura Vintage Vehicle Club call by our studio to have a look around and a bit of a chin wag. It was great to see the team and all their cars. The car on the left of frame I believe is a Buick while on the right is a Lanchester. There were about another ten vintage cars lined up in front of the barn, right were this shot taken from.
I have to admit the outback photographer felt a little old when he realized that some of the cars were manufactured during his lifetime. Does that make me a vintage photographer?

Killing time.

Canon 1ds, 70-200mm f2.8 is lens.

On Saturday as part of the wedding celebration, our bride and groom along with all their family and friends took a cruise from Mildura to Trentham Estate Winery where we were waiting for them. Yep, the outback photographers, sitting beside the biggest river in Australia in an area gripped by a monster drought, surrounded by the tranquil beauty of evening on the Mighty Murray. We captured this image of the paddle boat Mundoo, complete with wedding guests as its paddled slowely to the Trentham Estate Wharf.

Tranquility was soon replaced by frantic activity, as soon as the Mundoo had berthed we grabbed Brooke and Brady and started shooting as quickly as we could. Great light like this has a tendency to disappear really quickly. I'm often amazed at how long it take darkness to fall when your stand beside your tripod mounted camera, ready to shoot but waiting for the light to be just right, while on the other hand just how quickly the light fades when you shoot bridal portraits in the same fabulous light, praying for just a couple more minutes, and watching with dismay as shutter speeds extend out to impossibly long times.

Great light fades quickly to no light and the session is over. Fortunately on this occasion, we had the shots in the bag early enough to allow us a couple of minutes shooting some really interesting portraits of our beautiful couple backlit by the paddle boats huge headlamps .

Valentines Day

Four finalist from the Mildura Big Kiss held on Valentines Day frantically search through a child's wading pool in search of an elusive $2000 diamond ring.

Valentines Day for Robyn an I started early as we prepared to be part of the 99.5 Star FM BIG KISS promotion. Broadcasting the Mildura City Heart the local radio station kept their listeners entertained with all things Valentine, while spreading the good word about their sponsors for the morning, including of course our studio, Excitations. We of course took the opportunity to display our wares, while offer some great specials to last minute Valentines Day shoppers, although to be honest there weren't to many of them early on. However we had fun and got to meet some great people.

Mistletoe

Nikon D2x with 60mm f2.8 micro nikor lens

After shooting a great wedding yesterday and some much needed rain on Friday night I decided this morning to venture out to a nearby location and photograph the flowers on a colony of Mistletoe plants. These particular parasitic plants have made home in the branches of low growing Acacia trees near the small township of Merbein, in far Northern Victoria.
The Mistletoe, much maligned for the damage it does to native trees, provides countless numbers of birds with a great supply of food at this time of year. In fact while I concentrated on finding a picture to add to our stock photography collection, there were about a dozen very noisy honey eaters fighting over who got to feed from the best flowers on my plant. None of them seemed to mind me being there, such was the attraction of the flowers.
Apparently of all the tree nesting birds in Australia, around 75% of them are very happy to call a Mistletoe plant home when it comes time to nest.

Quite January... NO WAY!!!!

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

January for us is traditionally a quite month, a time to catch up on all those jobs that should have been completed in December but somehow just didn't get done. A time when we sit back and look at what we need to do to get ready for the coming year and a time for some personel photography projects. Not this year however, it's been go go go right from day one...Actually day two because we did manage to get new Years day off.

This morning I decided to take a bit of R & R and get up early and take the boat down to the river. Unfortunately when it came to getting out of bed early my enthusiasm for the project started to wain a little. Finally manage to convince myself that it really was what I wanted to do, rather than lay in bed wishing I was out there. The image above suffers from the old I didn't get up early enough syndrome. Fifteen minutes earlier and the light on the river bank would have been so much better, but this is what you get if you sleep in instead of getting out and about. Guess I'll try again soon, which of course means another early morning laying in bed trying to convince oneself that I have to get up now or I'll miss the light. Oh how I love shooting at the other end of the day.

What if?

A couple of days off from all things photography related, a cold beer, a comfortable chair in a great Aussie backyard and some delightful company was all that was needed to start me thinking.
What if... manufacturers of fast foods were allowed by legislative oversight or intent, to add addictive chemical compounds to their products, causing the population at large to slowly but surely become addicted to their products?

What if ... Obesity was no longer considered a condition but was by legislation defined as a disease?

What if... there was a cure for cancer, which was a freely available to the general population, was cheap and was totally natural?

What if... What if powerful lobby groups convinced governments to ban naturally occurring and beneficial substances such as vitamin C ?

What if... we were continually fed with misinformation by all available media outlets? Would this cause us as a general population to be manipulated into acting in a manner which was directly opposed to our natural instincts?

What if... there were available renewable and entirely environmentally sustainable energy sources? Would we be encouraged to use them or would powerful fossil fuel lobby groups prevail?

And so the list goes on, I'm would like to think that that the above what ifs are hypothetical but are they? My younger brother has a saying "Remember its all about the money." May all our collective gods be with us if that is the case.

Getting High..

Nikon D2x 17-35 f2.8

Still the busy times roll, so just a quick post today. The above pic is of the flight crew for a recent aerial shoot, left to right are Rob our great pilot from Sunraysia Helicopters, the outback photographer himself, minus hat because hats blow off when your working out of aircraft with the doors off, and of course Stephanie who normally spends her time in front of our computer but doubles as card changing, camera handling data logging assistant when we're in the air.
The aircraft is a Bell Jetranger which is a beautiful aircraft to shoot from, stable and plenty of room for assistants and equipment. Expensive yes but worth every cent... All we have to do now is convince clients of its value.

Bouquets when they're deserved..

Most of us are ready to complain about bad products or services, but we often forget to give credit were it due. Early in the week I needed a room overnight at short notice, I randomly selected a motel, literally as I drove past it. I think I had driven past at least half a dozen such establishments in a distance of only a few hundred metres. Why did I choose the Australian Settlers Motor Inn over other very similar offerings? To be honest, it was an absolutely random choice.

You know how it is, you check in, you sleep, shower and check out. Well the managers John and Dianne Bertram where really friendly, and helpful, to a level that I wouldn't have ever expected. Thanks guys. I'm not into plugging other businesses or services but if you're ever in the Swan Hill region of Victoria, drop in and say g'day, good rooms, good service, and at very competitive rates.

Let me just say this...

For those of you who are non Australian, the above line is the way in which our new Prime Minister pre-phrases many of his answers to questions which he doesn't want to give a straight answer.

Yesterday the people of Australia combined to vote in a new government. A government of young fresh ideas, most of which we haven't been told about yet. So I guess you could say we're a trusting mob here in Australia. We do know however, that we will be signing as a matter of great urgency a piece of paper that really has very little value. It remains to be seen whether the new young team will have the balls to actually do anything about environmental issues, or whether the major corporations will be able to seduce them like they did the former government. We also know that we will be sending warships to protect whales from our Japanese scientific friends, who some how need to slaughter hundreds of these animals so that they can research them and ultimately save them. Yeah right.... We will also be bringing home our troops from Iraq, well actually, I'm pretty sure if you read the fine print, that will be all our combat troops, which I think is about 30% of our total deployment.

For me, Iraq, the war on terrorism, and the "coalition of the willing", has been the most embarrassing part of former Prime Minister Howards' 11 years in office. I honestly can't believe that under international law, Blair, Bush and Howard weren't charge with war crimes. I mean, invading another country to liberate them, or their oil, surely must constitute a crime. I did notice our now new Prime Minister, just recently try to rewrite history by spinning the line that his party had vigorously opposed the invasion of Iraq. I seem to remember that the opposition leader of the time, Simon Crean was missing in action, from any debate on the subject.

My real concern about the new political scene in Australia is the lack of opposition the new government will have. Howard was a strong leader, no potential leadership depth in the party behind him. His demise will likely leave the now opposition floundering and self destructing in much the same way that Labour did after the Keating defeat. Government without opposition does none of us any favours. Democracy fails to work without effective and meaningful opposition. Hopefully someone will rise from the opposition ranks to provide us with alternative views and debate. Frankly I can't see Peter Costello, the leader apparent being that person.

Five or so years ago I believed that Kevin Rudd would be our next Prime Minister, as there was no viable successor to John Howard amongst the Liberals, and frankly there was only Rudd in the Labour Party. Let us hope that Prime Minister Rudd can lead his government for the benefit of Australia, and not be lead instead by a party full of factions all wanting their prize for helping him get elected .

The news....

Today as always before I start work I try to catch up on what has been happening overnight. Because I usually check Australian sources rather than international ones, its fairly common to find that nothing has changed since yesterday, probably because everyone closes their newsrooms down overnight, even the news organizations that advocate that web services are now and important part of their news delivery.
What strikes me most is how we often ignore international events of significance which occur in Asia. We see all the stuff out of the US, and to a large degree out of Europe but Asia, the region we claim to be part of, well thats secondary stuff.
Today is a case in point. Local sites are reporting as headlines that a football player has been "Outed for 12 Months", that a Hollywood movie actress was "Really frightened" when a wayward photographer drove his car over a median strip to pursue her chauffeur driven car. We learned that a Minister of the Crown allegedly knew of the AWB kickback scandal, now that wouldn't be a timed political statement would it!
However is you are prepared to look really hard, a couple of news sources and I do stress a couple.. report that the cyclone in Bangladesh four days ago has killed at least 2,500 people with the local Red Cross reporting that the toll has a good chance of topping 10,000. Can you imagine what would happen here if a natural disaster killed thousands of people in Australia.
But Bangladesh is a long way away and it really doesn't matter to us, they're poor, lacking in education and they don't have any oil for us. Apparently they are also going to be one of the first countries to really suffer the effects of global warming . Low lying coastal areas will be flooded by rising sea water, and inland rivers swollen from snow melting in the Himalayas forcing up to a third of the population off their lands. That amounts to tens of millions of very poor uneducated climate refugees, with no were to go.
Bangladesh shares a common land border with India, who have commenced building a fence along the border to stop refugees from entering India. Now there is a neighborly gesture if ever there was one. Your neighbor is drowning in flood water so you build a fence to stop him getting out.
I guess the real irony is that these people are going to be the first to be effected by climate change, but if you accept that man has contributed to global warming by production of greenhouse gases, then these people because of their lifestyle will be the first effected but will have contributed least to the problem.
Anyway who cares? Back to the important news, did you see that a well known celebrity was filmed running a red light with her children in the car... Shocking!

An election looms

Well here in Australia we are in the last week of election campaigning. If we are o believe the seemingly endless polls conducted by various media outlets... well lets just say it would be far cheaper to elect our governments based on these polls. The result is going to be a landslide victory for Kevin Rudd. In fact the size of the Rudd victory is now becoming the story with newspapers looking for new adjectives to describe the "calamitous Howard loss"
Rudd is apparently only in "fourth gear" and has plenty of "petrol in the tank", while Howard is preparing to leave politics after his defeat and join to public speaking circuit for a "million dollar per annum fee".
Apparently we have a Prime Minister who has "lost the plot" has no idea about anything and is just plain to old, while our new Prime Minister is fresh and young with "fresh and young ideas" to save not only Australia but the world. Now to be honest I saw Rudd about 5 years ago on a television interview and predicted then that he would be Prime Minister one day, and I still think he will be. I'm not to sure about his fresh and young ideas, because to me most of these ideas seem to be the same ones being pushed by the current leadership, with only a few cosmetic changes. Anyway only 5 more sleeps until the only poll that counts or is in anyway accurate.
On a different note there is smoke in the air this morning, so I guess we can safely say that the summer bush fire season is on us. Be safe...

A busy Wednesday...

Just a really short post today, we are "flat out like a lizard drinking" as the saying goes. Heaps of post processing and design work to get done, and only a short time to get it all done.

For those of you you like landscape photographs and just pretty pictures in general, you might like to head on over to Laurie Excells web blog. Laurie is an American photography instructor and nature photographer. She has a really cool panorama of the Northern Lights on the site and a great blurred motion image of Snow Geese in flight. Check it out here

Murray River, Australia

Canon 1Ds II with f2.8 24-70mm lens @ 30mm

Thought I post this image, created at sunset on the river just downstream from our studio recently. My favorite time on the river, when most people have gone home for the day and I'm alone in the peace and quite. Lots of native birds take advantage of the peace as well and come down to the river for a drink and quick bath. This shot was processed as a direct positive in Photoshop Lightroom. It was recently picked up for use on a calendar, something that always makes a photographer happy.

Melbourne Cup Day...

Hey all... today is Melbourne Cup Day here down under. The "race that stops a nation" or so the media claim. It certainly dominates the news for a couple of weeks prior the the day.
We are bombarded with stories on race day fashions, tv in depth stories on how the rich and famous will spend the day in lavish corporate tents, sorry marquees, what they will eat and drink and the chefs who will prepare those meals for them. I wonder sometimes if any of these people even see the horse race.
Don't mined me, I'm just jealous. You see its a public holiday here in Victoria but this photographer has an ever increasing backlog of post processing and design work building up, so for me at least it will be a 12 hour day in front of my Apple 30" Cinema display. Maybe I'll check the results later in the day.

Back in the bush...

Wow! After a full week of running around seeing clients and suppliers in Melbourne we're finally back home . I doubt that there will be any time for posting this weekend as it is set to be a huge weekend of shooting and post production work. I'm excited to be back shooting as I haven't fired a shot in nearly a week.

The plan was to take a couple of hours off in Melbourne and shoot some private stuff, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Just to busy. So I'm really looking forward to todays wedding as I have a couple of new ideas I want to try.

We had a good drop of rain last night, the first in a loooong while and it looks like we may have more this afternoon, during our wedding, which I'm hoping will give us some great opportunities to create some really great images.

Service or lack of it...

1DsII, 70-200mm f2.8

I love this delightful little image. Shot in the driveway of our studio, the set up for this image was so simple. Using only available light we sat the young model on the ground near the wooden cart, I positioned myself on the ground some distance from the subject so as not to distract his attention, wile his mum was just out of frame talking to the little fellow and attracting his attention. Normally I would have had Robyn interact with the child but she was on this occasion busy making sure "Teddy" stayed upright in the cart. The whole set of images from this location were created in only a couple of minutes. Plenty of time really if your fully prepared in advance.

Now to get on with my beef of today. Yesterday while running around Melbourne seeing clients and suppliers, I visited one of our regular equipment suppliers. Walking into the "Pro Photo Department", which for those of you not in the industry is not an exclusive area for professional photographers but the area of larger photographic retailers where you are more likely to find the type of equipment used by working photographers. This particular store is usually buzzing with activity and stocked with all shorts of goodies for us photo nuts to drool over. Yesterday however, instead of walking into a retail area stocked with large amounts of the latest toys, I entered a sparsely stocked area with only one sales person instead of the usual five or six.
I was soon to discover why. Instead of being greeted with the usual cheery "Hi Ian" there was no greeting or recognition at all. My first question was did they have an item that I needed in stock. The reply was a shock "It is no business of yours what we have in stock". Ok thats not a good start but there is other stuff I need, so I start asking about a couple of radio triggers that I've been looking at adding to my kit. This time a slightly better response, "There over in the display cabinet" Ok thats good... what are the features? Reply, "if you don't know, you don't need them" Ok thanks for your help...

A little shocked at that encounter I took a short walk down into Lonsdale Street and visited the Camera Exchange, where, thankfully the service from Jason was great, the atmosphere was cheerful and even though they stock mostly second hand equipment, they also handle new equipment. I was very impressed when asking about a second hand lens they had on display, to be told that it wouldn't suit me, as the new version of the lens is optically superior the one I was looking at. Now I knew this anyway but Jason gained a lot of credibility with me for being so honest. From now on a lot of my equipment purchases with be made from the Camera Exchange just because they offer helpful advice and service.

Sometimes service and helpful friendly advice is worth a lot more than price alone shopping.

Julieanne Kost

Yesterday as well as visiting with clients I was lucky to attend a presentation by Julieanne Kost, Adobe's senior evangelist. Its always great to have a chance to learn new tips and tricks about the software you use on a daily basis. Julieanne spent a lot of time on my favorite software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which frankly, has really given photographers a brilliant new tool.

On the road again.

Excitations photographers take the Outback Photographer on the road... This time to the city were like a fish out of water I struggle to find my way around, get totally frustrated at the amount of time it takes to get anything done, and quite frankly I spend my time wishing I was back in the bush.

This will be a short post as today I'm off to an Adobe Masterclass to learn lots more neat stuff aboout Adobe Photoshop, I hope. Then there are a number of client meetings, and a laptop to fix.