Well, I put together a short blooper reel for The Wedding, so I hope you enjoy it. What’s depressing is that I realized just how bad I am at speaking into a camera – I could have had a whole separate blooper reel for the number of times I messed up. Either way, here it is, hope you get a few laughs out of it!
My book for 2012 has arrived! Check it out – I made a short and simple timelapse going through each page. Actually I messed up a bit and actually missed turning some pages, so if you want to see the whole thing, you’ll have to catch up with me in person! Thanks to the people at Memo Production for the fine quality book. I shot these photos with my D700 on interval, using a Profoto D1 to light it (see how consistent the light is in each shot? This is where speedlights fall flat) Anyway, hope you enjoy it!
This year I had the great privilege to start shooting for AERA, which is a weekly magazine who are said to be extremely picky about their photographers. They’re part of the Asahi Shimbun publishing company, but the AERA section deals with more focused issues than the newspaper, and has a stable of very talented photographers, of which I’ve somehow managed to become a part of. Was kind of a reality check when I went in earlier this year to show the photo editor my portfolio. After glancing through my book he gives me an hour-long critique/lecture on areas that need improvement, and what I should do to make my book look better for prospective clients down the road. After all that, he looks me in the eye and says: “You could be first class if you really wanted to be. Try harder.” Talk about tough love. Inspirational though. Then he seems to remember that I’m not here for a portfolio review. “So why did you come here?” he asks. After sitting through an hour of …
Photobook manufacturers Memomiio recently contacted me to make several books for their showcase. Seeing as I’d just finished shooting a wedding for a couple in Melbourne I decided to make two types of books; a wedding photo book for that side of my business, and a portrait portfolio for the editorial/commercial side of my business. Here’s the finished product for the wedding album, and I have to say I’m really impressed with the binding and print quality. The best parts are the thick photo-board style pages and the lay-flat binding which makes designing two page spreads really satisfying. The one pictured below is 40x30cm and super heavy (about 3kgs). Gotta say I’m loving the quality though. Which brings me to a fairly cool announcement – the first 10 couples who hire me for engagement/wedding photography get 25% off any album they order, which, I have to say, is huge. They start at around 30,000 for the 20 page 40x30cm book (the one pictured below is 40 pages). So if you’re getting married anytime soon in …
Image copyright to Maki Kawakita. Hey everyone, I know that two posts in one day is pretty rare for me these days but I’m really pleased to announce that my second post on Strobist.com is up! This time I interview Japanese commercial photographer Maki Kawakita about her epic approach to lighting Japanese rockers Glay. Some pretty good lighting tips as well as an idea for commandeering an hotel lobby for a 12 light setup (hint; it actually wasn’t too difficult). Here’s the link for anyone interested, comments welcome! http://strobist.blogspot.com/2011/10/maki-kawakitas-theatrical-light.html
Now for something slightly different to what I usually put on this blog: here’s some personal news! I got engaged! w00t! Those of you who know me personally will appreciate how much of an achievement this (convincing a woman to marry me) is. So, aside from recovering from the cost of the ring, and trying to figure out which wedding photographer I’m going to hire, I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts, or at least until my supply of Rohypnol runs out (that was a joke! no need to call the police). So to commemorate this frankly unlikely occurrence I’m putting some photos up of the lady in question, primarily because I love her, and secondarily as evidence that my fiance is not someone that I’m simply stalking with a telephoto lens. Of course, a post on this blog wouldn’t be complete without a bit of camera geekery. I shot all of these photos with a Bessa Voigtlander R4a (too poor to afford a Leica) with a Nokton 40mm f/1.4. It’s a great camera …
The other day (quite a while ago now – I’ve been a bit slack with the blog lately), I had the pleasure of photographing Yoshioka Tatsuya, who is the founder and top man at the NGO Peaceboat. This was a particular pleasure for me to photograph as I had joined on a week long volunteer program organized by Peaceboat in May and had Yoshioka-san give us an inspirational speech on the last day. He’s a very eloquent, passionate man in both English and Japanese and it’s evident that he cares very much about helping his compatriots up north in Japan. So without and further ado here’s the portrait: For people interested in the how and the where, I photographed him in the usual conference/meeting room which thankfully had bare white walls. I used a Nikon SB-900 in an Orbis ring flash for the main light , another Nikon SB-80DX with the snoot far camera right, and another Nikon SB80DX in a short snoot camera left for the rim light. I hope I managed to capture …
So much social media, so little time. There are far too many ways to ‘reach out’ to your audience these days, that it’s difficult to choose between them all. Either way, I’ve decided to adopt myself a Tumblr blog, as kind of an informal place to stick the photos that don’t really have a home on the professional side of the websites. As I only use this blog to showcase the work I do professionally, this ‘photo-diary’ style site has been a long time in coming. Here I’ll be posting any photo that particularly tickles my fancy or otherwise shows what I’ve been up to outside of work. Also in keeping with the whole RB thing (which I think stands for ReBlogging – I only just found this out), I’ll be putting videos from other creatives that I personally like up on the site. There are still a few issues with the theme (ie; it doesn’t work properly yet) and I’m planning to add a bit more functionality to it as time goes, such as …
Last week had to shoot some portraits of MTV Japan’s newest CEO. This man will be at the forefront of bringing out such shows like Pimp My Shinkansen, Tokyo’s Best Kabuki Crew, Takeshi and Butt-head, The Roppongi Hills, and so on. (Hah, The Roppongi Hills, good one Irwin). Sometimes I think I need a better hobby than making myself cringe with bad jokes. Lighting: Profoto 1Ds in 28″ softbox camera left. 1 SB900 in 60″ shoot-thru white umbrella directly behind camera for fill.
