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.
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.
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.
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.
As promised, the review for the Kata 3n1-33 Camera Bag which I have taken on assignment in the field and on my Honeymoon overseas in New Zealand, where I subjected the bag to all weather conditions. So this review is not a look at its features and construction, you can read a number other reviews and watch videos online for that. It is more of a report of how it fared in the field under actual use.
Me with the 3n1-33 on a hike in the New Zealand wilderness.
Price Paid: $140 used on eBay (near new with tags and packing material)
Airport friendly: Yes, Carry On compliant and has easy access to the Laptop compartment
Weather subjection: Snow, rain, heat and dust
Capacity:I will first describe what I usually carry with this bag to give you an indication of the realistic carrying capacity of this bag. I carry a Canon 50D with a battery grip and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens attached, Canon 70-200mm f4L IS with tripod collar attached, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 with lens hood attached, 50mm f1.8mm Prime lens, Canon 580EX II flash and a set of 52mm close up filters. That is just in the lower compartment!
In the upper compartment, I would normally carry a memory card wallet, set of Gels for the flash, a wireless flash trigger and reciever, pen, Giottos Rocket Blower, business cards, Cokin Filter holder and ND Grad Filter, ND screw on filter and a Polarizer filter. When I was in transit to and from New Zealand, I still had room for a windscreen suction cup mount with a ball head attached (for my time lapse rig), and when I was hiking I could still fit a jacket in its place in the top compartment in place of it. One thing for sure, this bag has an amazing capacity and great flexibility when it comes to packing in all of your gear. On location I use the top compartment for an additional flash and flash triggers and various small flash accessories.
The laptop compartment easily fit a 14″ Toshiba laptop, but I would think a 15″ laptop would the biggest I’d go. The power connector will have to be carried in another bag or in the top compartment if you are prepared to loose some space. I also used this space to carry a set of gloves and a beanie when I wasn’t carrying the laptop.
Gear Access & Configuration: All this capacity is great, but can you get to it quickly when you are out in the field shooting? I used to own a Lowepro Computrekker Plus AW to carry all my gear on bigger photo shoots, but for travel this bag was useless. It was way to heavy when fully loaded with two or three camera bodies and a full suite of lenses and it was difficult to configure to suit your gear and it was also a pain to dismount the bag from your back and lay it on the ground to access it. The Kata answers this problem with being a sling bag/backpack hybrid. The idea is to use the side access flap (left or right hand side configurable) to grip your camera with the mounted lens. What was great I could easily change lenses without putting the bag down and quickly change the inserts to suit the newly mounted lens, all while it was still hanging from my shoulder. I also found I never used it in the ‘X’ strap configuration, as this was awkward to dismount and reattach to your body. I just had the straps arranged in the conventional backpack mode, but I found the bag still easy enough to swing around to the side of my body (to access the main gear flap) when I used just the right hand strap over my right shoulder.
The videos on the internet will show you the sling bag strap mode, but I found when I configured it this way the bag felt unbalanced on my back and if you try to swing it around the front like in the Kata demo video, it takes your jacket with it and it is all just too hard and uncomfortable. That would only be a problem if you were wearing a big snow jacket like I was for most of the time in the New Zealand Alps.
As far as access too the other parts of the bag while mounted on your shoulder you will have to dismount it to access the top compartment. I did like the fact though it opens away from the back giving you easy access and great visibility to its contents whilst the bag is upright. On that note, the interior of the bag is a bright yellow, by far the best colour compared to the fluoro orange and green I have had in bags in the past, so finding gear wasn’t a problem. Even the little side pockets were lined yellow, each of them having a handy little net to keep the contents from falling out. You can only access one side pocket while it is mounted on your shoulder though. I used this pocket for a bottle on lens cleaner, a cloth and my most used screw on filter. The other was used to carry a spare battery and a cable release which I used rarely.
Accessing my gear on the side of a snow covered Glacier
Comfort: On our trip to New Zealand, there were numerous times I would have to carry the bag (sans laptop and time lapse rig) almost the entire day. This is the ultimate test for the comfort of a bag over long periods of time and I’d have to say this is the best one I have used. I carried a Naneu Pro Millitary Ops Tango bag for 5 weeks around the United States, which is a Sling/Shoulder bag hybrid and found that one a pain in the neck (literally) to carry for long periods, even after a couple of hours. It also carries much less gear than the Kata, even though they have similar overall dimensions. The Kata bag I would wear almost all day and I’d only start to feel uncomfortable in the shoulders after about 5 hours.
Another godsend is the suitcase handle loop on the back of the bag which you can hitch over your suitcase while you wheel your case around. The top of the bag is fitted with a handle which is built very tough and this makes it easy to heave into cars and into overhead lockers on the plane.
Build Materials: The build quality of this bag is outstanding, it has tough zippers with zip tags, a stiff shell and good buckles. I bought mine with the tripod mount and I used that numerous times, it was fiddly to setup, but once it was on it was easy to mount and dismount the tripod (I sometimes even forgot I was carrying it as it didn’t sway or rattle around like it does on other bags). The straps have good quality pads, that are coloured on one side to identify which way is inside. Another neat feature is the small pads that are located on the lower parts of the straps which I suppose is for when you have it mounted on your back, you can place your palms on them to relieve a little pressure from your back and to stop the strap cutting into your sides. If you find you don’t use both straps you can tuck them away so they don’t get in the way.
The Velcro parts are of good quality and they show very little fray and it still sticks well. Inside the side pockets and the pocket in the top compartment are lined with mesh to easily identify the contents of the pocket and to stop things falling out.
The exterior material is robust and easy to clean and can withstand all types of weather. I subjected the bag to snow fall, actually placing in the snow, heavy rain and water spray from a boat ride. The water even beads off and eventually dries rather than soaking the material. At all times the interior was free from any moisture. The bag does come with a rain proof cover, which I took with me, but I never used. I can only imagine if you were caught in monsoonal rain you would actually bother to put on this cover. I actually hung it (in the provided bag with clip) on one of the zip tags while hiking and it fell off somewhere on a mountain in the Siberian Valley.
The interior as I mentioned before is yellow and made from nylon. I prefer the smooth nylon interior compared to the soft cotton of other bags, it just feels nicer and doesn’t mark as easily.
Conclusion: There is always that holly grail with finding a great camera bag as most photographers will spend the same as what a pro camera body is worth trying to find one, believe me, I have. So that makes this bag almost the ultimate in terms of gear capacity, access and comfort. So if you are after a bag that has a great capacity for a modest DSLR outfit with 3 lenses and a flash or two, a laptop and handful of ‘just in case’ accessories, this is the perfect bag. It is not the most expensive in its class, it looks great without being over the top, flexible configuration modes and well built. This one has my thumbs up.
It has been a very long time since my last post, I’ve been busy with helping set up my parents business and helping organise my own wedding….. well, watch it being organised. It’s funny when people say ‘You can’t shoot your own wedding, so who is going to do it? Alot of pressure!’ Well I’d like to shoot my own wedding, but I had thought about it, it’s just going to be too difficult, so we have employed the services of an amazing professional studio based in Brunswick West. I’ll no doubt be putting the images into an album I’ll design to show people in person.
Today I wanted to take a look back at an image I took at my last wedding (it feels like a long time ago now), at Bianca and Travis,’ Kangaroo Ground, Victoria. I have posted a black and white version before, but I prefer the colour version shown here.
I always look forward to photographing the rings, it is always a challenge to make each one look different, so it really tests out my vision and creativity. The concept for this shot is simple, but it is a somewhat difficult approach, so for the people reading this for technique advice, this one’s for you.
The rings were held in a small felt container, but I thought for a greater intimacy I had the Best Man hold them in the palm of his hand. The light outdoors was a harsh high noon sun, but we had a slightly shaded garden feature in the park across the road from the house the boys were getting ready at. Through the foilage was filtered sunlight which I used to light the rings to really set them off in the photograph. Having the hand in the lower part of the frame gave me the leading lines from all directions (the fingers, thumb and the jacket), combined with the hot spot of light it gave the rings immediate attention in the composition.
I knew in my head I needed a large aperture to throw the background out of focus, so i had a 50mm f1.4 prime lens mounted on the camera and shot it nearly fully wide open at f1.8. The way I approach all photographs I make is I decide on an aperture setting in my head before I even put the camera up to my eye. With experience you will get to know how your lenses behave at different focal lengths and apertures. By deciding on an aperture first I am making the creative decision to shoot wide open (shallow depth of field/focus) or stopped down to f8 or f11 for maximum depth of focus. I never really go beyond f11 as the sharpness of the lens starts to fall off.
Now focusing at this distance with such a large aperture is notoriously difficult as the depth of field is so narrow, in this case only a couple of centimeters. Even when you change the sensor plane or even move a fraction of an inch during focusing your subject can go out of focus. Combined with the possible movement by the subject’s hands there is massive potential to get an out of focus picture. What I try to do first is set my focus by selecting the nearest focus point (9 points on a Canon 50D and 5D MkII) which I can do while the camera is up to my eye and I lock the focus by holding down your chosen focus lock/shutter button (in my case I use back button focusing using the AE lock button). I then move my head backwards and forwards until I am confident the focus is correct. I sometimes reconfirm focus with the autofocus to be sure I am accurate.
As for metering this shot I used the Spot Meter (2% frame coverage) to pinpoint exposure and I metered off the subject’s skin tone. I know that is the element I want properly exposed and it is close to a midtone to give accurate exposure. I deliberately over exposed a third or two of a stop so I: one, had a good file to work with in post production and two, to deliberately loose detail in the skin.
Processing was simply the Adobe Lightroom recipe I use for most of my wedding photographs, but with selective contrast and sharpening applied to the rings only to make them pop a bit more.
That’s it from me today, but I encourage you to leave a comment which not only feeds my ego it also inspires me to write more about photographic technique.
Here are my images from the 2010 Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk held in St Kilda last week. I joined over 30,000 photographers in over 1100 cities across the world taking photos of my local city to take part in this mammoth day. This was my third and also my favourite photo walk to date as I pushed myself creatively and came home with a great range of images representing life in St Kilda. My all time favourite image will soon be released as an extremely limited edition print (details coming soon). Just click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photo.
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.
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.
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.
Hi all, I have been working behind the scenes on some business related stuff and redesigning my business card and planning a wedding brochure. Today is one of my favourite images from our trip to the USA. It was taken in the middle of the day along the Virgin River in Zion National Park, Utah. The walk was easy from the bus’s drop off point, but required some rock leaping to get this close. This is available as a limited edition print, so email me at marcel@mvphotography.com.au to discuss mounting options, pricing and delivery. Enjoy.
