Don’t forget the print special below closes this Wednesday, your best chance to save around 25% off your purchase of wedding and landscape prints.

My print lab is having a sale, so that means I can pass on the savings to you! If you have wondering to get Nan for her birthday, been pondering if you wanted to order that canvas of your favourite wedding photo or you want to give a unique art print to a loved one, now is you chance.

Kodak Endura Metallic Prints in a traditional Black Gallery Frame with a digital paper coloured matt. 20×30″ Frame size only. Normally $220, now $150 with Free Delivery

16×20″ Kodak Endura Metallic Print on 10mm black craftwood with hand made aluminium ‘U’ channel hanger. Normally $250, Now $180 with Free Delivery

16×20″ Premium Canvas (white edge only, not pictured), Normally $350, Now $260 or 20×30″ Premium Canvas, Normally $600, Now $400 with Free Delivery

How do you order? Just simply send me an email to marcel@mvphotography.com.au and tell me the product you are after out of the list above, along with the image number or description/title (in the case of a landscape prints). Make immediate payment to PayPal using my email address or request my account details for direct deposit. Don’t forget to mention your daytime AND evening delivery addresses. Your orders must be in by midnight Wednesday 28th of July to take advantage of the special prices. happy ordering.

Hi everyone, it has been a while since my last post, so I thought I tell you all what’s been going on.

• The new pricing guide has received much praise from new clients and friends. It details everything you need to know about MV Photography and the range of beautiful printed products available.
• February and March next year is starting to look like a busy period for me, so if there are any couples looking to get married around this period it is best to give me a call soon to book your spot.
• Being the wintery non wedding season it has been time to sort out all the paperwork and business materials, so coming over the next few months will be a Photo Book sample, a beautiful new brochure and new business cards.
• I am still taking registrations of interest for basic Digital SLR training, so if anyone is interested please shoot me an email as the more people I can get the faster the training will come and the cheaper it will be for everyone.
• I’m in discussions with some wedding photographer contacts to present some training at a business level (namely Photoshop  and Adobe Lightroom) skills) to be held at a studio in Malvern, so that should be interesting.
• I myself will be taking in a few seminars and workshops when I can as they come thick and fast in winter.
• I have registered for the 2010 Annual Photo Walk being held in St Kilda on Saturday 24th of July. It’s always fun to catch up with other photography enthusiasts and just take pictures of stuff we would normally pass by. Head over to Scott Kelby’s blog for information if you want to join me.
• My Lowepro CompuTrekka Plus AW photo backpack is for sale as I don’t really use it that much (it looks as good as new) and I’m going to invest in a big road case to carry all my gear to wedding photography jobs. Please email me or call me for details and a price (full review and pictures coming soon).
• Below is an image I retouched to show a potential client if I could do a particular style that she saw on the internet, so I was happy to demonstrate this to her. Soon there will be a full blog post on the step by step on what I did to achieve this look in the photo.

MV Photography Pricelist

After much planning and designing the 2010 MV Photography price list has surfaced. Each page has clear photos of either a past wedding or of one the MV Photography printed products that I proudly offer. Newly announced is the new range of photo book products I offer from one of Australia’s premium book manufactures, including a beautiful premium bound book with heavy weight paper, personalised embossing and matching storage case. I will be creating some samples of these in the coming months.

New wedding clients will be treated to this new professionally designed price list either by email request or with a printed copy from an initial client meeting. Also don’t forget you can follow me on Facebook by clicking on the button on top the page. Until next time have a great day.

Sarah waiting for her Groom

This photo critique takes me back to my first ever wedding I did for a sister of a friend of a friend, which is how most wedding photographers start out really. Back then I didn’t know the pressures of a wedding shoot, but I had with me the bride’s brother who was a keen photographer as well for support. We had pretty basic equipment back then with the addition of a hired SpeedLight from Michael’s Cameras in the city. When I look back this image it goes to show you don’t need the world’s best equipment to take a good photo. You just need to now how to use it and understand where the light is and how to use it. Some, if not all pro wedding photographers will agree that good equipment will make a difference to your images, but I mean it in the general photography sense.

This photo was pretty straight forward to achieve, I just used the light of the window which was softened by the sheer curtain which gives a nice soft light that is perfect for a bride on her wedding day. The room she had gotten ready in was perfect, it was well lit with natural light, had a massive ornate mirror on a stand covered in roses, white ceiling and angled walls to bounce flash off and a light coloured timber floor. Because the room was very open and filled with light, the shadow side of her face had opened up a bit so I didn’t loose too much detail. I tried similar shots with the flash bounced of the walls and ceiling to fill the shadows, but the lack of contrast made it look fairly average.

The expression if I remember correctly is her giggling at the fact I made her look out the window to see if her groom had arrived, but she knew very well he wasn’t there yet. The open space to the right is deliberate as it gives room for he subject to look into by placing the focal point of this image (her eyes and face) in the upper left third of the frame. If I had the opportunity to do this shot over again I would probably rotate her body away from the camera a little more as her shoulders are a little to square to the camera, making them appear too broad and it takes away from the other compositional elements as well and probably crop a little more aggressively and dynamically. I’d also use a lens with a wider aperture to reduce the depth of field to remove distracting elements that didn’t need to be there, like the pattern on the curtain behind her. The blotchy appearance on Sarah’s shoulders and chest come from shadows cast by the lead beading on the glass of this beautiful house.

Post processing of this image the way you see it now took place 3 years after it was actually taken just so I could practice a little in Photoshop. There is nothing drastic here, but I just softened the skin ever so slightly, brightened the eyes with a ‘Screen’ blending mode on an adjustment layer, some slight contrast was introduced and selective sharpening was applied to here eyes, mouth, jewellery and hair. The colour was removed by desaturating and then I introduced a yellow tint using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The image is actually reversed from the original as I wanted that orientation for my new price list. I encourage any feedback and comments and don’t forget you can follow me on Facebook by clicking on the link at the top of the page.

The long awaited release of Lightroom 3 has finally arrived much sooner than anticipated and with even more features loaded into it than the Beta version that was available up until about 8 months ago. The new features will make any photographer’s job easier as well as give their clients a more professional result in less time. These include industry leading Noise Reduction for high ISO images, Camera Tethering to a computer, a new Slideshow Export to Flash with music imbedding, newer and easier to use Printing Module, Photo Collections right in the Develop Module and the biggest kicker here is the Lens Correction feature. The Lens Correction and the Noise Reduction is worth the price alone for me, allowing me not to worry about lens distortions in camera and boosting the ISO beyond ISO1600 when I need to capture that important moment in low light.

Previous wedding clients will now see a new lease on their images when purchasing prints and photo books as some of the images allow greater cropping and enlargement options. I’ll even be able to dig up some more images from the archives that I thought weren’t suitable for showing, as now I can change them to better suit my vision from when I took the photograph.

For a full run down on the product and to purchase head to Adobe’s website here.

The last minute of light taken on the Grand Canyon from the South Rim

This particular photo is very precious to my fiance and myself because it is the exact spot where I proposed to her just two minutes later. Only a few minutes before that, we had a crowd of people behind as we sat behind my camera on the tripod waiting for the sun to go down, but luckily not knowing the best light comes when the sun actually goes beyond the horizon, most of them left us alone for me to pop the question. 

Enough of that, how was the picture taken!? This is a series of 5 images taken on a panoramic head on my carbon fibre travel tripod stitched together in Photoshop CS4. 3 images where used in the final image as overlaps where too great, so I didn’t need them all. I first attempted this pano stitch over a year ago on my old PC with Photoshop CS3 and after numerous crashes, the blend was terribly obvious and I chose to abandon the project. After all the post processing I enlarged the file so I could print it at a massive 60×30 inches, not a normal size but I split the file into three TIFs to have printed on Metallic Kodak Endura Paper and mounted on 3 pieces of black edged craftwood. Even with my new iMac with 4GB ram it struggled to handle the 2GB PSD file. The three saved TIFs totalled about 450MB and then they were uploaded to my lab. 

June Catch Up

• We attended the PMA Digital Life Expo on the weekend at the MECC in Melbourne and boy, did I have a great time. I took numerous free training seminars on the Friday night and all day Saturday. I saw the huge range of photo-book and print suppliers and numerous retailers and wholesalers from the photographic industry. I also got to meet and listen to talks by some of my Australian Photographer idols, including having a posing demonstration applied to Belinda and I by world famous wedding photographer Jerry Ghionis. He borrowed Belinda as a model bride not once, not twice, but three times. It was quite a laugh and I learnt heaps.
• Due to PMA I will be changing my Photo-book supplier again, I got to see every supplier’s samples in person and got to talk to some representatives. Some suppliers were top of the tree in terms of quality, but with that comes price. I found one supplier that is only 5 minutes drive from home that has a great range of products and their quality is great. I signed up as a wholesale supplier on the spot as their prices were very competitive even compared to my previous supplier which offered mediochre quality. I will have a special launch price for previous wedding clients when the books are ranged.
• I also found a new printing technology that bonds photographic ink directly to metal. This means prints will pretty much last forever, are water proof, scratch proof and mould resistant. This enable the buyer to hang up prints in high impact areas like bathrooms, kitchens, garages, pool or spa areas and outdoors if you would want. The quality level is outstanding, the company is based in Victoria and the staff are fantastic. I’m excited to give them a go to add a new product to my range of printed products. I will drop my canvas and foam mounted products to make room for them.
• Of course there is a new price list revision coming this week to accommodate the range changes.
• The Annual Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk has been announced, full details here.
• I am still taking registrations of interest for Digital SLR Camera training, so far I have at least 3 interested, I just need at least another 5 to make it worth while for me to go ahead with. Email me from the contact page to submit your details. I am investigating venues to hold the event and planning for a survey of participants is in the works.

Grand Central Terminal, New York, New York

This one is from an image folder I haven’t opened in a while, but I wanted to post this picture as this stood out as an amazing place in New York city. Grand Central Terminal was opened in October 1871 at a cost of $6.4million dollars by ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt. The terminal was restored over the years from 1996 to 1998 to what you see there today including the majestic sky ceiling. I particularly wanted to show this grand interior by tilting my camera up and using an ultra-wide lens to capture as much as possible. I processed the image with Topaz Labs Adjust to get the HDR (High Dynamic Range) look and to bring out the details of the stone work.

Welcome to part 2 of my photo critique series. I have dug up a photo from the archives from my first ever wedding that is one of the client’s favourites of the day.

Sarah & Geoff out the side of the Royal Carlton Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne

 This kind of image had to be created, unlike what most people call ‘photojournalistic’ or ‘reportage’ style when you shoot ‘as it happens.’ My vision for this photograph was to have the side of the building as a feature and to frame the couple somewhat with the door frame. To flatten the perspective I needed to use a long lens (in this case it was taken with a 75-300mm lens) and take the picture from a fair distance back to get my framing right.

The camera was mounted on a tripod to stabilise the wobble from the long lens as this was taken on the shade side of the building. The sun was particularly harsh at that time still so I put the couple in the shade which flattens the tones quite a bit rather than having deep shadows.

The couple’s directions were simple, I said just to take a seat and talk amongst themselves while I set up the camera. This is so they felt relaxed and weren’t really camera aware, so I waited for the opportunity when they went for a kiss. On the day I tried different crops, orientation and even used shorter lenses up close, but this one worked the best.

If I was to take it again, I would move the couple to my right a bit and up a step or two to centralise them more with in the door frame and the reflection from the fountain would have lit them up a bit better too.

My post processing was quite in-depth as well, back in the days I had more time to fiddle with a photo in Photoshop. I first used a ‘Screen’ Blend Layer using Curves and painted away the mask around the couple. This brightened them up a bit to ensure they were the focal point. I then used on a duplicate layer a Shadows & Highlights adjustment to reclaim the details in the dress and to boost the darkest shadows. The rest was done with Nik Color EFX plugin to further enhance the image to give it more oomph. Here a details enhancer layer was introduced to boost the building’s details and the warming filter was used to give the image a golden glow.

Once flatten it was printed on Kodak Endura Metallic paper and mounted on Archival Grade Acrylic for an ultra modern picture mount of which I have a sample of. Feel free to comment and give feedback, I’d be interested to know what you think.

As promised it is the first post of a series of photo critiques of my own photographs that I have taken at weddings or even just out and about. I aim to get the photography enthusiast side of my readership (or even potential wedding clients) some little insight in what is the photographic process from vision to print. As a photographer I analyse images all the time, where ever I see them, magazines, the Internet, television or ads at bus stops. I look at each photo and try to deconstruct it, the lighting, the equipment and anything else that makes the image, doing this makes me a better photographer and it adds to my own vision.

You will here me harp on about vision all the time, it is the foundation for photography. Most people think it is a matter of point and shoot and better the camera, the better the picture, but before I even raise the camera to my eye I will have some sense of what I’m going to take a picture of and what the final print will look like. I even consider what post image processing I will need to do to bring that photo to match my initial vision.

Here is the first photograph I will look at, it is of good friends of mine Nicole and Tim Holmes, who’s wedding I shot in January this year, this photo is one of my favourite from the day.

Nicole & Tim Holmes Wedding, The Briars Mt Martha, Victoria

I’ll first start with the equipment as that is the most asked question from keen photographers, but the least important. I used a my Canon 400D DSLR (something you can pick up used for under $500) with a vertical battery grip and a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 zoom lens. This choice of focal length (in this case 17mm on the lens, which is 28mm on the old film scale) was chosen simply due to the distance I was from the subject. I was pushed right up into spider infested grape vines to get the framing I wanted. Most photographers hate the main focus of the subjects to be in the centre of frame, here i was being deliberate. If I tilted the camera down more I would have resulted in an unusual distortion causing the heads to look too big and the bodies taper off to really skinny which is not true to reality and isn’t flattering. If I tried to bend my knees more and get lower I would have been taking the photo from an unflattering position for the bride, but the main reason was to capture that lens flare which I find pleasing. In the past you were always told not to shoot towards the sun or any bright lights in the fear you would get lens flare. I also wanted to have the greenery as a frame for the couple as this gives isolation to the subject and they stand out more.

The image appears relatively natural and I simply captured a fleeting moment, but this was very posed from the start. The groom is quite tall, so he is standing behind the bride on the lower part of the slope (the vineyard was on a slight hill). I had the bride shove in close and connect their bodies for a sense of intimacy and I told them to look at each other. Simply telling them to do this, they must of remembered the reasons they were there that day and both of them broke out in a natural smile. Forced smiles never look the same in a photograph, so I consider this as something that I won’t do at a wedding. The flowers were brought up into frame simply for something for the bride to hold and to add an extra point of interest. I utilised this location in many different ways to result in several pictures to used in the wedding album. This is so I can capture a great range of images if the location is fantastic as well as if any other locations are not great with poor light I have safety images to fall back on.

Metering in this lighting condition is usually quite difficult but I was aware of the problems the camera might face when it came to metering the scene. Due to the massive contrasts between shadows and highlights the camera would go for something in-between, but to make sure my mid tone areas exposed properly I used the centre-weighted (or a.k.a Spot Metering) metering mode  and metered off the grooms face. My camera was set to manual mode and already set fairly close to the setting I wanted as I had taken already a few shots prior to this one. While the couple got into position after directing them I took a quick snap shot to make sure the exposure was right. I then quickly reviewed to see what my camera’s histogram was showing to me and then I composed the shot properly. The aperture used was f5.6 which is the sharpest aperture of my lens and I wasn’t too concerned what the depth of field (or depth of focus) was. I simply wanted a sharp image of the couple from top to bottom. The shutter speed I selected was 1/50th of a second which was the minimum I would go to avoid camera shake. Finally the ISO setting, which is the last I usually set was ISO100, so I would get a nice, clean and noise free image. You camera is always going to produce the best files at this setting.

No flash or reflectors were used so the image is totally natural light. Lastly there is the post processing. I keep my processing fairly guarded as this is my own recipe that makes my style, but I will say the white balance is quite warm, there is slight colour toning introduced and there is a vignette applied to darken the edges to make sure the focus of the viewer is on the faces. The images besides the toning is totally straight out of camera and all that was needed to retouch was a few bits of dried flower petals on the suit from earlier in the day and a very low amount of skin smoothing in Adobe Lightroom.

If I was to take it again, I would compose more to the right to get rid of the space to the left, I would try to introduce some space between Nicole’s arm and her body and maybe see if Tim could bend his knees a bit more because he’s as tall as me! There you have it, feel free to comment and ask any questions.