For my guest post tomorrow on www.violetlebeaux.com SUPERBOWL FOOD!!! =) (Taken with instagram)

For my guest post tomorrow on www.violetlebeaux.com SUPERBOWL FOOD!!! =) (Taken with instagram)

Hi everyone! This year I decided to do more on YouTube. I’m going to start off with a Review and then do some how to’s and I’m thinking of doing a series called “Start-To-Finish” in where I show you how I go about planning a shoot, the make up and styling, the lighting and photography, then finally the post production over a few videos. But first the review! This is a review of the Phottix BGD7000 which is a third party battery grip for the Nikon D7000. It’s awesome and hopefully the video does it justice. This is my first time being infront of the camera with a script since university. It didn’t go well then and I was pretty damn nervous now, but I’m getting better at it! Anyway, enjoy!!

I’ve always seen advertisements for the Suzuki Night Markets on facebook, at the Queen Victoria Markets, in Melbourne brochures all over the place actually, but I’ve never thought to actually go until a friend of mine went and said the food was great. Being a lover of food I thought to myself, “Hey self, we gotta get in on that”. We missed it last week because…I forget, but last night we finally made it! I was also recently given a bunch of issues of Black And White Photography magazine by Violets’ dad and was really inspired by Christophe Agou’s work in the New York subway to go out and get my black and white on!

You might not know this but if you have a Nikon DSLR (probably works with other brands too) you can set your shooting mode to black and white. If you shoot in RAW then the images appear in black and white on the back of your camera and in most photo software but all the colour information is still recorded, so you’ll never say “great photo, wish I had shot this in colour though =(” You might not say the sad face, but you’ll think it. Actually you wont, because like I said you won’t be saying that…is that right? I think so. Anyway, I set my camera to shoot in black and white in RAW, took some test shots around the house and then we set off to the markets! If you’re looking for a way to round out your photography, I DEFINITELY suggest you give this a go!

A little bomb figurine from Mario. It’s full of candy, yum! But this photo actually sums up Violet pretty well, you can see her art work at the bottom, her blogging diary in the middle and sweetness on top!

You might not think this is black and white, but it technically is. This was done using a process called split toning and it involves taking a black and white photo and assigning one color to the shadows (I chose a red-ish pink) and another to the highlights (I went with yellow). Mixed together it came out a little green, but still looks good!

Melbourne’s old trams. I was hoping that by using a slower shutter speed (I think I used 1/15th) I could have a sharp location with a bit more motion blur from the tram, but it wasn’t going fast enough. Now I wished I had used a faster shutter speed and gotten EVERYTHING in sharp.

I always love to look down tram lines and without color to distract you, form and shape become much more interesting!

This photo was shot literally from the hip. Violet wanted a photo of the puppy, but didn’t want to make it obvious so I rested the strap on my shoulder, hit the shutter twice and hoped for the best!

I love to photograph musicians but typically we got there just as he started packing up.

I had no idea there would be this many people. It was like the entire city had decided to show up!

Another split-toned image, this one is in yellow and blue but I kept the saturation much lower. I figured it’s be perfect for Australia day!

Even though we were under very open air pavilions the air was thick with smoke from all the food stalls, so thick that you could see the light beams cutting through.

I had to squat down for aaaages to get this shot and copped a knee to the head a couple of times becuase, well you saw how packed it was, but this is the shot I set out to get and I got it, so I was happy. Besides, i’ve been hit in the head so many times I don’t even feel it anymore.

And from the other side, this food looked and smelled sooooo good!

Try putting your model (in this case the love of my life) between you and a strong light source. This makes a nice ring/hair light and can yield some cool results when the bare light just peaks around the side of your model.

Well that’s all from me today, hope you enjoyed my adventure to the Suzuki Night Market and my adventure into black and white! All these photos and more are available for purchase from my online store, just click the photo you like to be taken to the gallery, thanks for reading!

This is a sponsored post, I don’t really have any policies on sponsored posts, if I did then I would link you to them, but in the mean time If you want to pay me to write something or provide a link then sure, I’ll do it provided it’s not for porn or mass puppy genocide or something like that. So there you go, I suppose that’s a policy. If you are against me writing for money, then YOU can pay me NOT to put these sponsored posts on MY website and it will remain an ad free area. Enjoy.

If you’ve ever wanted to visit Spain and you live in the UK, then you might really enjoy this post, if not then this might be for you, so I’ll put in some pretty pictures. I’ve been to spain and really enoyed it. We spent most the time In Barcelona, but I quickly googled Alicante and it looks stunning. Much more cultural and that makes for much better travel photos. Resorts and capitol cities kind of look the same these days, so people tend to be more interested in “the beaten track” or “the road less travelled”. In my opinion there are two reasons for this:

a) They are interested in going to the area so they are looking for information and great photo locations.

or the more likely

b) They like to look at cultural areas and feel adventurous, but prefer to spend their time sitting on a beach sipping cold drinks with little umbrellas and so much fruit in them that it could be classified as a watery salad.

Either way, why not spend some time over the sea in Alicante!

As promised, here are some pretty travel pictures that I took.

This is a sponsored post, I don’t really have any policies on sponsored posts, if I did then I would link you to them, but in the mean time If you want to pay me to write something or provide a link then sure, I’ll do it provided it’s not for porn or mass puppy genocide or something like that. So there you go, I suppose that’s a policy. If you are against me writing for money, then YOU can pay me NOT to put these sponsored posts on MY website and it will remain an ad free area. Enjoy.

I used to travel all the time. At one point I had to get a new passport because the pages were full and there wasn’t any space for new stamps. Not even kidding. Since I moved to Australia I haven’t done all that much traveling at all but last year It started up again when we started getting jobs in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane. On the last Brisbane trip I took SOOOOO many photos that it got me interested in travel photography again, so I might start posting some travel photo stuff on here. Of course it’s no secret who my favorite travel photographer is, Trey Ratcliff is freaking awesome, you can find his stuff at Stuck In Customs or in my own gushing post Inspiration Monday – Trey Ratcliff. But I’d like to know who YOUR favorite travel photographers are. I need to feel the inspiration flowing through me!

Here are a couple of photos I’ve taken while traveling…

In the mean time If you’re looking to do some travelling, more specifically looking for cheap flights to orlando then make sure to click that link!

This landscape  panorama of Melbourne’s Southbank is actually made up of over 70 images all merged together and stretches out over 7000 pixels wide so it can be printed out at almost any size you’d like! It features the Crown Casino, Eureka Tower and a few other iconic Melbourne structures. It took an hour a half to shoot and  a few hours to edit, but it was a labor of love! Available for purchase HERE.

I shot this on a bridge for Violet LeBeaux as part of her review of the sunglasses for FashionAddict.com. VERY quick shoot, one light, two test shots to get the balance of the flash and sunset right and then we nailed it!

Rooftop cinema (Taken with instagram)

Corporate Headshots

I am a Melbourne business portrait photographer so when Laetitia came to me looking for a new image for her LinkedIn account I told her that we were going to take a photo that’s going to blow her old one out of the water, and we did. If you are looking for a new image, a new way of projecting who you are to the business community for the new year then you need to either give me a call or get typing in that contact box to the right.