Jumping Jack Flash

Strobist Work Shop, London, UK

This year has been quite the lifestyle changeover. London is expensive. Anyone that says it isn't, is lying, or on very good money. Last year I was able to blow lots of disposable on Camera equipment, this year, I've settled for a couple of accessories and my biggest photography splurge was today; a Dave Hobby Strobist workshop.

David Hobby started a bit of an internet phenomenon with his blog www.strobist.com, it gives amateurs and beginners an amazingly informative place to start off-camera lighting (cos we all know that the flash on camera is rarely flattering on your subject).

So in I went at 9am, and was taken on a walk-thru of the masters workflow. Building shots up with 1,2, 3... 6, 7 lights with seemingly the greatest of ease. Eventually he dis some live demoes and I was picked out to be part of one of the shots... I think, my first even "professional" photograph (Unless I count my dads stuff of course).

A great day and well worth it in terms of what it gives to technical skills and handy tips whilst photographing subjects.

Paparazzi

Studio Lighting Day long workshop, Artarmon, Sydney

So as you may or may not know, I have been emersing myself in the world of photography over the past year or so, one thing that still felt very foreign however, was the use of off camera flash, and lighting people.

I decided to take a course with the same company I've done courses with in the past - a studio lighting course. I travelled over to Artarmon early in the morning and learned step by step how to light a low key shot and a high key shot with 3-5 studio lights, light metres and radio triggers.

The whole day was tiring, but massively beneficial to my learning and understanding in photography. I quickly shelled out for an extra brolly and a small softbox attachment for my flash... and started experimenting quickly.

Sit and Wonder

Kempsey, (Near Port Macquarie), NSW, Australia

So it is with a huge thankyou to Oren for making this blog post possible... as my fledgling photographical business makes its way along on training wheels toward a world bereft of IT technical issues (I wonder if I'll read back on this statement in five years and think either "How naive of you Luke"or "Heck yeah, go O!").

Saturday morning was again started at an early hour, as myself and Lauren jumped in a cab driven by some deaf dude who struggled to work out why we wanted to go a different way to the airport - "we're picking a third person up!" I repeated again and again... I asked if he knew MacDonalds and to turn right there, to which he asked if we were stopping... he just couldn't grasp the concept that we would be picking someone else up. Regardless, we finally got ourselves to the terminus and awaited our Qantas Link flight to Port Macquarie with Coffees, bagels and fruit salads.

We boarded a little propeller driven plane, nothing like the last 10 planes I'd been on and a rather 'difficult' stewardess shepherded us to our emergency exit seats; read us our rights in case of emergency and we were off. A noisy take-off out of a drenched Sydney airport, and we were finally amongst the clouds for the sub 1 hour trip North. Just as we started the descent, the clouds finally eased off and we saw Blue sky for the first time in days. Orens father welcomed us to the tiny airport as we awaited baggage, to be towed from the back-end of the plane to the drive way along side the terminal... we sure weren't in any kind of major city now.

We stopped off at O's place and met the family and the extended kanine family before heading to his folks's shop to start photographing product and surrounding.

It was soon time for a break, and so the 3 of us went to lunch with parents. We sat along side a muddy river, fresh from a silt influx created by the very recent storms, and ate delicious food. Some more photography carried us through the afternoon before Oren took us on a grand tour of Kempsey, encompassing South West Rocks and Crescent Head - and a lighthouse; I can't remember where! An evening of good food and wine finished off Saturday nicely.

Sunday morning, I took it upon myself to do one of my regular once monthly early wake-up calls to go photograph the sunrise. I had never had so much company as my friends Neville; Myrtle and Rani the Dalmation, followed my footsteps all over the property as I tried to spot composition in the mornings rising light. A delicious home-cooked brekkie and it was time to finish business, the last of the shots snapped before we jumped in Gregs car for the long road back to Sydney... overall an experience I would never have seen without my obsession for releasing a camera shutter. If this is the beginning of things to come, I can't wait for my future with cameras.

Guided By A Voice

Sydney, NSW

It seems life is throwing some chapter ends at me all of a sudden, this particular weekend saw the end of a Randwick era with Rog, Matty, Wedge and Al all moving on to new homes. To celebrate, they held a party at their place. Some of their long standing neighbours, who've made a habit of complaining at the briefest amount of noise were in for a surprise with the arrival of the guests to the 'Loud' party.

Loudly dressed and with volume up loud too, the party lasted until about 11.20pm when the neighbours found the fuse box for the appartment; and the lights went out for the final time at this appartment.

This past week at work has been a little different. Sydney had been hosting World Youth Day - a Catholic celebration where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims fly in from all around the world to learn more, participate is mass mass and then, depending where they are stood, maybe catch site of the pope. In Sydney, this was HUGE news. Worldwide, I found it funny that my mate Clive in England had heard that Pamela Anderson was guest in the Australian Big Brother House, but not that the pope had come here to address; as it would turn out - 400,000 pilgrims... all within 10minutes walk of my home address.

We were expecting chaos, but it never came. The buses were largely unaffected despite the extra volume of people travelling, the road closures were minimal, and to be honest, most drivers were scared off, and it made every day in Sydney feel like a Sunday. There was so little traffic. The city streets would regularly have large groups of pilgrims marching along with their national flags, singing away and generally having the fun any 14-18year old kids would have. Nice work Sydney.

I visited a mates house to take some pictures of the crowds at Randwick Race Course, and then as Saturday nights celebrations kicked off, I got my butt outta the city and off to the 'Shire'.

In anticipation of the new Batman movie, we re-visited Batman Begins. I spent Sunday getting the guided tour of Cronulla and its surrounding areas before we hit up the movie theatre back in EastGardens to see the new movie. I don't normally mention movies I go to see on here, but man, that movie rocks. See it.

The following weekend, after most of the Youths had dispersed from Sydney, we took to more refined past times, this time with a trip to the theatre to see the Phantom of the Opera! It's been a while since I saw a show like this; the production was excellent!

Calm Like You

Degustation Weekend, Lithgow, NSW, Australia

As Benny, Lauren and I drove out of the city, the temperature dropped a little more than we'd been accustomed to of recent times. The olbigatory road-trip stops were made to re-fuel and re-stock on nibbles for the 2hour journey out further than West of Sydney. This weekends purpose; to become degusted.

Around 15 of us in total had registered on Rog's weekend menu; the commitment to prepare a meal (course) for all in attendence over the period of around 48hours... that was always gonna be a lot of food!

So as we pulled up at Toad Hall in Lithgow once more, the night sky had become berieved of all cloud and the milky way was all that could be seen, those stars always amaze me whenever I get far away enough from a city to actually see more than about 5 at any one time! We headed in to the warm and festive scented cinnamon aromas, which happened to be Alisons mains that would kick off the weekend.

Myself, Lauren and with more than a little help from Matty, put much love into the Friday nights dessert - chocolate Brownies - one batch for the nut lovers and one for those that had allergies. The nut lovers one went down a storm with all that natural walnutty goodness packed inside every gooey slice! Past fits of giggles, people soon started passing out as Friday rolled into Saturday.

Saturday, the menu powered on with an awesome brekkie from Matty, mid morning Scones by Louise and Aaron, a hot n spicy lunch by Benny, and Ems legendary cupcakes making a cameo in the arrangement too.

The day between eating, consisted mainly of badminton, volleyball, reading, soun baking to an extent (our 22 degrees paling in significance to the whopping 27 that was blazing in England at the equivalent time of day) lounging around and, well I think you get the gist. As the sun dipped, the light was fantastic and I made the most of the warm hues that you only really ever seem to see around this time of year; at least in the Southern Hemisphere!).

Afternoon tea was from the Irish element in the house, with Louise making some damn fine scones with Irish coffee which left the path clear for Rog's Kangeroo Stew; 6hours in the making to explode upon everybodies pallettes. Todd rounded off the evening eith his Spumoni. Group rounds of Taboo kept us busy into Sunday.
Kiri swept everyone away with her berry topped pancakes before Oren capped off the culinary capers with some home made muesli bars and biscuits... a throroughly delicious weekend. Now what happened to that gym membership???

Shutterspeed

The Lost Weekends, NSW

There comes a time when I struggle a little to pack stuff into my weekends, and a couple kinda past me by just recently where when I think briefly; that this happened. However as much as I didn't go to India, ride quad bikes or even just wander round the great city I live right next to, I had great weekends of a different variety.

A week rolled around that would see me make my first money directly through photography... I had already expected for some weeks that I would be shooting a wedding, but unexpectedly, I caught a corporate event during the week. Great practice and experience for an aspiring photographer. The event went pretty well and I learned a whole bunch that should stand me well for the future.

Saturday I headed over to Camden to meet Vikki and Trev for their big day and proceeded to shoot some 939 photographs for them... I had some serious fun, and some unexpected photographers hand cramp too!

The following weekend I managed to get a last minute call-up to a one day workshop at the same institution that I learned about my SLR workings... This time, the purpose was for Digital Post production, which helped me learn a fast workflow for dealing with my RAW images and of course... ethical photoshopping as I like to call it. in other words, the bits of photography you could do in a darkroom with several tanks of chemicals, enlargers and all sorts of amounts of patience. I got to shoot a professional model too for the first time, which was nice.

Opportunity

Soccer & Photography wrap up

The last 8-10 weeks have seen me kept invariably busy throughout the week. Monday nights were home to a 6-a-side mixed soccer tournament… Our form roller-coastered along though we finally scraped into the finals day playlist. Our final 2 games won with 1-0 victories.
Our semi final was against one of the teams we’d just beaten the day before – and so we were somewhat confident we might be able to pull of another upset… the luck was with us a while, with the ref failing to spot a ball over the line from them. It soon faded however, and before we knew it, were 3-0 down with 5mins to go.

An awesome team effort clawed us back a well deserved consolation goal and meant we could leave the field with heads held high after never failing to score in 3 meetings with a team that topped the league group.

The following evening was another finale – this time from my photography course that I’d been partaking in. The aim was to learn full manual control of my Minolta digital camera (and all other digital SLRs).

The final night was presentation night – where everyone in the class had to make a presentation of around 15 pictures that they’d taken since the course began. The tutor picked me at random to go first… you can see the full picture selection on my other blog: http://www.fonfara.blogspot.com/.

The water shot got some ooh’s and ahh’s, and I got quite a few questions right after asking which techniques I’d used to capture my images. I great feeling of accomplishment enveloped me and I can safely assume I reached my goal set at the beginning of the course.