17 July 2010
Last week I volunteered to help out the gym at work and take some headshots for the intranet. They wanted something a bit better than you’d get with a point-and-shoot, and I wanted some practice taking pictures of people other than myself and Tessa.
Since the shots may need to be used in a variety of situations, including small thumbnails on the website, I opted for low-contrast lighting, using a ring flash to kill the shadows and side-lights to add highlights. I had the ABR800 ring-flash on camera without a tripod, so after the hour-and-a-half session my right-arm was pretty tired.
In the end 22 people flowed through, which only gave me a few minutes per person. Some of them were only on a quick break in between training sessions, others uncomfortable and not wanting to be there.
Overall, I think the results came out pretty well, considering. Hopefully they like them.
22 February 2010
This site was home to my photographs for many years, beginning while I was still shooting film cameras and scanning negatives, and going through my first Digital Ixus and onto the Canon 10D.
Coming relatively late to the party, I joined Flickr at the start of 2008 and haven’t looked back since. The thing that is most compelling for me is the social aspect, something that a personal photo site could never achieve. It pushes me to take more photos and to try to be more creative.
With this in mind I felt the photos left on this site were getting dated and unrepresentative; photos from university ski trips and my early travelings in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Instead I’ve put together a portfolio of sorts.
So Flickr is my photostream, Picasa gets random albums for sharing with family and friends, and while I don’t feel I’ve found a particular style yet, this site gets my best attempt at a photographic portfolio.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
26 May 2009
A couple of weeks ago I picked up an old Polaroid Sun 660 from a guy on Craigslist. It was a mere $20, but since Polaroid have stopped production the film is rather more expensive; about $1.50 to $2 a pop depending on expiry date.
A group of us went house boating on Lake Shasta last weekend. We took a tonne of polaroids which Tessa was kind enough to scan.
The camera rocks. It’s big and chunky, and takes a good 20s to charge up the flash, but the noise it makes when you take a photo, and the retro-quality of the prints are awesome.
18 May 2009
I’m really pleased with the way this photo turned out. It was taken for the Assignment 52 Flickr Group and I’d been planning it in my head for a few days.
I’m not a big chess player by any means, but I wanted an authentic scene for this shot, so I looked-up some famous matches on Google. I found The Game of the Century, where 13-year old Bobby Fischer beat a renowned chess master. This photo replicates the last move in that match.
Tessa turned out to be a great hand model :)
13 April 2009
This weekend was the 9th annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel event on Vermont Street here in San Francisco. I’ve never been before, but by all accounts this year was much bigger than the previous years.
I felt a little jealous just watching from the sidelines, but at least I managed to get a few photos. Maybe next year :)
