Posts Tagged ‘mv photography’
Up until the 14th of February this year, take advantage of the MV Photography Valentine’s Day special at just $299 which includes a two hour couples photography session at a location of your choice in Greater Melbourne, Melbourne CBD or around the Eastern Suburbs, full set of low res edited proofs in digital form, a beautiful 8x12inch print in a matted gallery style frame and 6 loose 4x6inch prints of your choice.
This will make a great gift to your loved one on Valentine’s Day, that is different from the rest and will last forever. Just think, when was the last time you had some nice photos as a couple and are scared to go to the established studios in fear of being railroaded into buying thousands of dollars of prints. There are no gimmicks, what you see is what you get, great quality photography at a great price with excellent service attached. To make your purchase, email Marcel on marcel@mvphotography.com.au with ‘Valentine’s Day Special’ in the subject line and we will return an email with a welcome and payment details. Once payment has cleared (Paypal or Direct Deposit) you will receive a printable Gift Voucher in return to give to your partner. After Valentine’s day you will be contacted with available shoot dates along with an info package and agreement. A meeting can be arranged if required to sort your shoot details face to face.
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Tags: eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, Melbourne, mv photography, photographer, photography, portrait, Valentines Day Special, victoria, wedding
Posted in Engagement Sessions |
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I am very excited to introduce my new DVD Folio and 11×11″ Buckram Finish Debossed Photobook to my range of products for Wedding, Engagement and Portrait Clients. These products have been carefully chosen to represent my business and provide an excellent level of quality to the buyer. The DVD Folio comes as standard with the Digital Deluxe and Deluxe with Print Credit Packages and the book can be purchased separately at anytime. Duplicate DVDs in a custom folio will cost $75 and the book is $370 for a 40side 11×11″ book with a matching slip case and the new premium Lustre paper. The book comes as standard in black, but many other colours and materials are available upon request. Have a look at all the images for a closer look.
Contemporary Design
Classy Looks
Hand Applied Film Pattern Ribbon
DVD Folio Gift Box
No ties or ribbons to get tangled up!
Leather Finish Folio in protective wrap
Duplicate DVD in a folio is $50 with any other purchase
Your photo inside for that personal touch along with an Archival Grade Disc
Matching Slipcase on Photobook
De-Bossed Image on Buckram or Leather Finish (Black Buckram shown)
Names and Wedding date on inside cover (80sides shown)
Strong Press Quality Binding
All layouts are custom and not 'Auto Fill Page' layouts to better tell the story
Simple, classic layouts with timeless white or sometimes black backgrounds
Top quality and exclusive Lustre Photo Paper for great image sharpness and contrast
Full bleed layouts dotted throughout
Attention previous wedding clients! Get this 11×11″ book with matching slipcase and 40 sides for an introductory price of $300. Valid until the 14th of February 2011. Extra sides (pages/layouts) are $15each. Just email me with “Photobook Special” in the subject line to marcel@mvphotography.com.au for details on how to arrange your purchase.
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Tags: CD Folio, DVD Folio, eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, Leather Folio, Melbourne, mv photography, Photo Book, PhotoBook, photographer, photography, wedding
Posted in Weddings |
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I spent last Sunday evening with the awesome Nicole and Billy to photograph their engagement session in St Kilda (where Billy proposed) before their wedding in March this year. We were blessed with, just ok weather, not pouring rain like it has been lately and in other parts of the country (especially Queensland), albeit it was a little windy. What I was happy with though, was the cloudy sky to give me a nice soft light and we then finished off the night with one of the best sunsets I have seen for over two years. This was actually my first E-session ever, so I was very thrilled to do it and we all had a great time.
Stay tuned for the full session in the coming weeks, including a great series of flash lit shots that I’m especially proud of. I would like to thank Nicole and Billy for their time and for being a great couple to direct for shots and also a massive thank you to my assistant (I couldn’t have done this without him), Travis who lugged my lighting case around the busy streets of St Kilda and got me the bits I needed for the shot swiftly and without a complaint. Thanks mate!
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Tags: E-session, eastern suburbs, engagement, ferntree gully, Melbourne, mv photography, photographer, photography, session, St Kilda, wedding
Posted in Engagement Sessions, Weddings |
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One of Cape Patterson's most southern points after sunset
From MV Photography Happy New Year and all the best for 2011. Thank you to all the readers, clients, family and friends for your support over the past year, it wasn’t as busy I had hoped but 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for my photography.
Above is an image I took while I was down in Inverloch for my annual Boxing Day trip at Cape Patterson on the South East coast of Victoria an hour 40minutes from Melbourne. I surveyed the area during the day looking for a spot so I didn’t have to hurry around when I got there for sunset. Unfortunately the sunset wasn’t anything to write home about so I pointed the camera at the rocky peninsula I was sitting on. This particular photograph was the second last picture I took of the evening about 20minutes after the sun had gone down. To the naked eye you could barely see this as it was quite dark. I ended up using a 30second exposure to render the scene visible and I used an aperture of f8 to get good depth of field and to keep it in the sharpest range of the Tamron 17-50mm I used. To maintain optimum sharpness I used the mirror lock up feature in camera to lift the mirror before the exposure was taken and a cable release so I didn’t have to touch the camera. I used my monster Benro tripod to hold the camera steady. A smaller tripod would rattle in the wind and the picture would be soft as a result. The focal length used was 35mm (approximately 56mm in the old film scale) and I needed to guess the focus point because it was so dark and I forgot to bring a torch (there is a lesson for you, always pack a torch for sunset photos, not only to help you focus, but also to see you way back to the car). The photo was entirely processed in Lightroom 3.
Until next year, keep safe, relax and have a good time.
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Tags: Cape Patterson, coast, eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, Inverloch, Melbourne, mv photography, photographer, photography, victoria, wedding
Posted in Personal Works |
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Radio Console close up
Dash wide shot
Steering Wheel Audio Controls close up
The subject matter isn’t the most exciting for some, but for some Strobist enthusiasts (people who love to photograph stuff with off camera flash to a point where it is nerdy) this stuff is great! The setup for this was relatively simple and can be achieved with manual flash or ETTL, wired or wireless. I used a combination of wireless manual flash and ETTL flash that was connected to a 10m (30ft) cord and controlled from the camera body. The purpose of the job was to photograph a car radio installation kit in a new Holden Captiva (aka Chevy) and steering wheel audio control interface kit. The images will be used in an industry brochure that is designed to announce the product’s introduction.
Now for the process: With no clear direction for the shots needed, I decided to shoot first and ask questions later and the client was more than happy with the results that I showed them on the back of the camera as I shot the job. The middle shot was photographed first using my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens set to manual focus, 50mm focal length and f8 for good depth of field. Ideally this sort of work is photographed with a medium format camera and a tilt shift lens in a studio but I don’t have $50k worth of gear at my disposal. The tilt shift lens would have been used to match the product plane with focal plane of the camera to maintain perfect sharpness. I still got it to an acceptable level due to the size it will be printed at. I first determined a base exposure of 1/250th of a second at f8, ISO 100 to knock out the ambient light from the skylights in the warehouse where the car was located. With no ambient light to worry about, I built up the light bit by bit until I got good coverage and balance. First I setup one Canon 580EX-II speedlight on a stand and firing into a soft box to soften the light with an additional Stofen diffuser on the flash head. Here a battery pack and am ETTL cord can be seen.
The 60cm soft box on a stand through driver's window
I fired a few test frames to get the lighting right by using a few different positions through the windows and checked the results on the LCD of the camera. I was getting heavy shadows cast by the steering wheel over the focal point of the photograph, the radio fitting kit. I had to fill the shadows somehow, but I still wanted good contrast and blacks to suit the style of brochure that it was going to be in. First thing was to try bouncing the light back into the shadows, but I didn’t have a reflector with me. It wouldn’t have been any use because it would be too big to fit in the car anyway. I scoured the warehouse to find something white and I found an empty white cardboard box which was perfect. I first tried a small section but it didn’t do what I needed to do, so I had to result in using another flash to get more kick. So I rigged up another Canon 580EX-II flash on a table stand, a Stofen diffuser and a radio trigger to pop the flash during the shutter sequence. This I bounced into a larger sheet of cardboard with the flash mounted on the centre console to create a larger source of light to make it softer. I then experimented with power levels until I got the right balance of light and shadow. You can see here the flash is flagged with a piece of foam (a very commonly used piece of equipment in my bag) to prevent lens flare.
The high tech reflector
I took the photographs on a tripod to slow down the process in getting a good composition and to maintain maximum sharpness in the final file. I also used a suedo HDR (High Dynamic Range) technique on the wide shot of the dash as the shutter speed was too fast to record the lighting on the dash, so the only way to soak it into the shot I turned the flashes off and shot at 1/40th of a second to register the low light output of the dash lights. The two shots were combined in Photoshop and I merely combined the layers and used a mask to paint in the lights. I also used that frame to add more depth to the photograph as the top of the dash was totally black and it needed some life. All photos had to be prepared to a printable standard in post production, so the images had to look flawless. In order to keep my retouching time to a minimum I cleaned the car in the front top to bottom with a good quality cleaner and a towel. Once that was done, I used the air gun in the workshop to blow off any dust on the product to make my job of cloning out the dust specs much easier. I used some layer blending techniques to brighten and darken certain areas to highlight the product better. The image on the navigation was superimposed on the system as it never looks good if you try it in camera. I added a slight gradient of white over it to resemble the glare from the light source.
Well I hope someone got something out of this article as it was a lot of fun to shoot. Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
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Tags: canon, Captiva, car interior, eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, lighting, Melbourne, mv photography, Off Camera Flash, photographer, photography, product, strobe, Strobist, Tutorial, wedding
Posted in Commissions, Tutorial |
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An image of some rain drops on a flower from my new Canon G12 Compact
Hi all, it has been a busy December for MV Photography, so what’s been happening:
- Just completed a job for fellow photographer Justin Hill of Dekuji Photo. He is an amazing photographer with an exceptionally creative vision, and it was a pleasure to work for him. Watch this space for photos which will come right after they are delivered to his clients.
- All specialised print and mounting cut offs as well as any book orders for the print lab have past or are fast approaching in the next day or so. I am still taking orders for loose Kodak Lustre prints up until midnight 18th of December for delivery on the 24th in local areas only.
- After Christmas time I’ll be releasing an exclusive and beautiful product available for purchase, which would have been better released before Christmas, but time has got away from me this December. Keep an eye on this space to see pics and pricing.
- Just completed a product photography job for a local gift shop called the Pirate Chest. Images coming soon.
- The Christmas holidays will be time to catch up on some behind the scenes business stuff as well as we’ll be taking a small holiday down to the South East coast so MV Photography won’t be available at this time. I hope to come back with some nice pics too. In the New Year we’ll see a new business card, some new Photobook Samples, a Landscape Art price list, probably a revised weddings price list and hopefully some website structure revisions.
- I am liking my Canon G12 camera purchase. It operates much better than the Nikon P7000 I had for my Honeymoon and the pictures are, so far, sharper and more lively.
- A new lens came in the mail the other day, but it was faulty! Another one coming soon hopefully as this will surely change my shooting style a bit. I’ll make a post when it arrives.
- Don’t forget to keep an eye on the Facebook feed to keep up with all the latest posts.
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Tags: eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, Melbourne, mv photography, photographer, photography, victoria, wedding
Posted in Uncategorized |
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'Spotlight' A shaft of sunlight breaks the forest canopy
Just a quick post before I head to bed, this is shot I took at the Pancake Rocks, New Zealand of a shaft of light breaking the forest canopy to light this tree stump. I kept telling myself when I walked around New Zealand taking photos, that I should sometimes look beyond the major attraction and sometimes look down or go off the normal path taken by tourists. This tree stump caught my eye walking back to car as there just only this spot of light coming through the trees while the rest of area was fairly dark from the surrounding forest. While Belinda patiently waited on the path I went all terrain to get closer to the subject. I love the fact you can see the few strands of spider web caught by the sun.
How I got this shot is totally different to what the camera’s exposure meter would have set if I was on any of the auto modes. I set the camera to spot metering mode to get a reading off the sunlit side of the stump. This totally rendered the background and shadows completely black, so it frames the fine details that caught my eye to start with. It began with a vision in my head what the image would look like before I even took it. The aperture I selected was f3.2 on my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens to get a shallow depth of field, but not totally wide open as most lenses are not at it’s sharpest then. The resulting shutter speed was 1/200th of second which is more than adequate to hand hold.
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Tags: eastern suburbs, Melbourne, mv photography, New Zealand, Pancake Rocks, photographer, photography, South Island, spot metering, stump, Travel, tree, Vacation, wedding
Posted in Personal Works |
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Lake Crucible defrosting in the Siberia Valley, New Zealand.
One of the highlights of our trip to New Zealand’s South Island is the Siberia Experience that flies out of Makarora not far from the beautiful Lake Wanaka. After checking in at the one of only a few buildings in town, you are sent over to a shed across the road to wait for your ride, either a 6seater Cessna aircraft or a 5seater helicopter. We thankfully had the helicopter as you can see out the bottom easier and it was more exciting than a plane I thought.
The ride was a descent 25 to 30 minutes through the Siberia & Wilkin Valleys and over snow covered mountain tops of the Mount Aspiring National Park. In the helicopter you get to see nearly untouched wilderness, hidden valleys, ancient glaciers and frozen lakes. On the way we got to do a flyover Top Gun style over the top of a Jet Boat taking a spin up the Wilkin River. Our guide was very informative and relaxed while he took us for our flight as well as offering to take a picture of my wife and I in front of the helicopter after it dropped us off in depths of the Siberia Valley in preparation for our 3hour hike.
In the photo you see the Crucible Lake which is a glacial lake that freezes over every winter. You can also see the river of melt water that comes off it heading down the mountain side with chunks of ice floating down it. You can also make out in the lower part of the picture the massive and brittle ice shelf floating in the water. There are walking tours available to this spot, but a high degree of fitness and cold weather endurance is required if you hike there in the snow season.
The images specs are 1/1600th of a second at f5.6, ISO250. I had to keep the shutter speeds nice and fast to avoid any vibration caused by the helicopter engine as well to avoid blur to compensate for the speed of we were moving at. I used aperture priority with about 1/3rd to 2/3rds of plus exposure compensation to keep the snow bright and white instead of grey. I selected f5.6 for the aperture as this is the shapest setting of the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
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Tags: Crucible Lake, eastern suburbs, flight, lake, Melbourne, mv photography, New Zealand, photographer, Siberia Experience, Travel, Vacation, victoria, wedding
Posted in Personal Works |
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The first glow of sunrise touches the side of Mt Cook/Aoraki
One thing I loved about New Zealand was that I didn’t have to get up at 4:30AM and drive/walk for miles to catch a sunrise, this one was about 6:40 from the window of our hotel room. I setup the camera with the Canon 70-200mm f4L IS lens on a tripod at the window before retiring for the night. All I had to do was set the alarm, roll out of bed and crack the curtain a bit to capture the first light on this amazing view of the mountain and the Hooker Valley. I even snuck back to bed for another hour before getting up to do a hike through the Hooker Valley and then later followed by boat ride in the Mueller Glacier Lake.
The image specs for the enthusiasts is 1/15th of second, f7.1 at ISO100 with some the basic natural adjustments in Adobe Lightroom.
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Tags: Aoraki, Melbourne, Mt Cook, mv photography, New Zealand, photographer, photography, sunrise, Travel, Vacation, wedding
Posted in Personal Works |
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The final image that made the flyer for UpDown Apparel.
A couple of weeks ago I did another photo shoot for my friend’s clothing company UpDown Apparel in preparation for a flyer to be distributed at Australia’s largest Mini Truck show, East Coast Cruise (ECC). This shoot stretched my technical ability to its best, with the use of multiple off camera flash, a reflector and a model, all the while I had time pressure from the location’s manager.
The venue is a steel craft shop in Hastings, Victoria where most of the trucks built in the area come from, so it was the perfect backdrop for the shoot. The lighting on location was no use to me, as they had mercury vapour lamps in the ceiling which are hard to colour correct and very dull anyway, dull skylights and one garage door opening on the side of building. Even with the door wide open and in the middle of the day, the ambient lighting exposure was 1/30th-1/15th of second at f3.5, ISO100, not an entirely useful amount of light to photograph a person.
To light the scene I used a Canon 580EX II on a light stand using either a shoot through umbrella or a 24″ softbox. To give some edge lighting to the model (Amber) I used a Nikon SB28 Speedlight on a little mounting foot in various different positions throughout the shoot. The Canon was connected with a very long custom ETTL cord to give me accurate exposure quickly. Normally I’d do it totally manually, but time was bit of a premium. I also had the bonus of playing around with the exposure compensation of the flash right in camera, saving me to go to the main light to adjust it all the time. To trigger the Nikon flash I had a wireless radio trigger connected to the camera’s sync port and in turn the receiver was connected to the flash’s sync port.
I took my usual approach of selecting an aperture value first in Manual mode (in this case f3.5) where I new I would have adequate depth of field for the shot I was taking, fast or wide enough so the flash didn’t have to work too hard and it was in the sharpest range of the lens (f3.5-f6.3 is the sharpest range of the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8). I knew my base shutter speed was 1/30th of second, but I wanted to render the background in near darkness. For this I reduced the shutter speed to 1/250th of second which is the max sync speed of my camera and flash trigger. Combined that with an ISO of 100 for maximum sharpness and file detail, the background went into complete darkness. Remember the faster the shutter speed, the less ambient light reaches the sensor in relation to the flash exposure, which is controlled by aperture.
The vision for the shot was a girl emerging from the passenger side of her boyfriend’s mini truck (in this case the actual truck that is part of the UpDown logo), with directional high contrast lighting to give the image an edgy mood. I always used to light literally everything from every direction, but now I take a more minimalistic approach to add more drama. The main light in the softbox was camera right, about 5ft high and about 4ft from Amber. To get some extra warmth in the shot I gelled the flash 1/4 CTO (colour temperature orange). The light was tilted only slight downward to get some light on her legs. Camera left was a big reflector to help fill the shadows only very slightly as I wanted to keep some aggressive shadows. Inside the car I used the Nikon flash sitting on the center console totally bare and set it to 1/16th power. The head was slightly pointed up to get some good edge lighting on Amber and this separated her from the blackness a bit.
There was extensive colour work on this image, even just in Adobe Lightroom, with dramatic combinations of an unusual White Balance, colour level settings and contrast. Nearly every slider in Lightroom was adjusted to achieve this look, but the final tweaks were in Photoshop CS4. Here I did some selective contrast and sharpening layers, retouched some imperfections on the truck, skin smoothing on Amber, selective brightening on various parts of her as well and a High Pass Sharpening layer over the whole picture.
I’m very happy with the result of final picture, even before I edited it, as the vision came together nicely and the equipment performed beautifully. I think that anyone with basic flash equipment can achieve this style of photo with a little practice, but the image would have never come together if I couldn’t picture it in my head before I hit the shutter button. It’s 70% vision, 20% technique and 10% editing.
In the future I will post some more sucessful pictures of the shoot.
A phone camera shot of me at work with Amber. Photo courtesy of Lachlan Hale, UpDown Apparel.
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Tags: eastern suburbs, ferntree gully, Glamour, Melbourne, Minitruck, Model, mv photography, Off Camera Flash, photographer, Strobist, Tutorial, UpDown Apparel, victoria, wedding
Posted in Commissions, Tutorial |
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This is one of my favorite images from the first leg of our trip around New Zealand. After scouting the area for a spot for some sunset photos I settled on this amazing rocky outcrop on the Kaikoura Peninsula that looks up to some snow covered mountains right by the coast. The light wasn’t that spectacular on the mountains so I turned to the rocks by my feet. The area had some intriguing shapes and textures defined by the warm evening light.
To get the smooth and silky look of the water I set up my camera on my tripod with its legs splayed over the jagered rocks and set up my composition. In order to get the slowest shutter speed possible, I used a neutral density filter to absorb some light and combined with an aperture of f10 to get some good depth of field and it resulted in a shutter speed of 6seconds. To make sure I got the maximum sharpness on the rocks in the photo I used a cable release and the mirror lock up function in the camera to make sure the camera didn’t vibrate one bit. I was happy with the results on the LCD screen so I shot little else and headed back to the car to put the heater on full blast!
Post processing back home was pretty simple; just the usual natural enhancements and sharpening just in Adobe Lightroom (no Photoshop).
I encourage some feedback in the comments, and if I get enough interest I’ll be releasing it as a very limited edition print.
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Tags: blur, coast, Kaikoura, Melbourne, mv photography, New Zealand, photographer, Sunset, Travel, Vacation, water, wedding
Posted in Personal Works |
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