AFREAKIN PHOTOGRAPHY

Monday, September 8, 2008

Afternoon in Andringa

Got a message from Chris on Saturday & he was keen for a street session/shoot in his new Xsjado's & was his 1st street session in them. He was on the way back from a friends wedding, so organized to meet him in town a bit later.

Hooked up with him in Andringa Str. & went from there... just as we left the parking lot I spotted a lil bump to wallride that is relatively new & got a few shots there... as we began Robert & Konrad ( 2 skateboarding brothers) drove past & joined us on our lil mission. After Chris was done with the wallride we went to the De Jagers gap & got a few of Chris & Konrad popped it & did some nice melon's over it. Was getting a few strange looks with all the flashes & stuff set up & the cops were driving past just about every 5min, but luckily weren't too worried about what we were up to, so we were left to do our thing in peace.

Just around the corner from the gap are some rails with a bit of a drop on the side & just got a shot of Chris doing a back farf on one & he was keen to try another strange trick on a short down rail on a wall... after a bit of discussion as to what the best angle for the trick would be I opted for a bit of a longer shot with the 105mm & glad I did... with the fisheye any angle I tried didn't quite show the trick properly or made it look like it was a mistake or half miss. Chris only wanted to do it once, so I had to make sure all was good before he went for it & we both managed to get it in the 1st try, so were both happy.

Mark G & Mark H pitched up & said the flashing kinda gave us away as it was pretty dark by now & just chilled & chatted a while & decided to call it a day & went our seperate ways.
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Chris - Bump Mute Wallride

Chris - Mute

Konrad - Melon (dark)

Konrad - Melon (pan)

Chris - Shifty Zero Spin

Chris - Back Farf

Chris - Stepdown Soul

Modeling in the Sticks

After the lil test model shoot with Richard & my mom I was pretty amped to go to a more interesting location to try some more. Serious portraits are not really my thing, but I feel I need to try a bit of everything before I say weather I like it or not & in this case I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was... granted it was pretty much just Richard & I fooling around & shooting, so couldn't be too bad.

I had my eye on a field near my house because it has some nice reeds that I thought would make a nice background, so Rich & I grabbed as many outfits as we could find, from our normal gear to some more formal ones just to have a bit of variety. We ended up only using about half of what we took with us, but was more than enough.

We went down in the late afternoon because I wanted to use the sun again & the warm light in the reeds is always good, so we went down & set up & started shooting away. For most of the shots I used the sun as my main light source to light up the face & used my 2 flashes. One as a fill for the shadows the sun created & the other as a strong rim light, but did try a few other set ups, but was really happy with my 1st setup, so used that mostly. My mom was curious to see what we were up to again & she came down to get a few shots of us & in her typical fashion kinda took over for a bit. I gave her & Rich my cam for a bit & got on the other side of the lens... was pretty weird coz whenever I get shots of myself its with the fisheye & I can take it myself, so felt a bit strange just standing there & leaving it up to them. I definitely belong behind the camera & not in front of it!!

Am pretty amped with the results & is completely different to what I normally do, so will try get hold of some people keen to model for me & try some more soon.
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Lighting Setup

^Richard^

looking nice & dodgy

^Me^

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Portrait Practice

A good friend of mine is down in Stell for the week, visiting from PTA & while I have him around I decided to try a slightly more serious portrait shoot & test my 105mm on people. Only have 2 flashes, so waited for the sun to get nice & low to use as a 3rd light source.

Got all set up with a few tests & was really amped on how sharp that lens is & just kept playing with the lighting & different poses & just let Richard do his thing & relax & only posed him a little for a few of them. The fisheye had to come out for a bit too, but got pretty hooked on the more classic style & quickly went back to the 105mm.

My mom came out to see what we were up to & had to get in on the action, so got a few shots of her too.

Was pretty amped on the results & hardly did any post on them & the 105mm will definitely be used for this a lot more in the future!!! Going to harass Richard a bit later again & see what we can manage.

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Lighting Set Up

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Sundaze in the Scumm

Haven't posted anything in a while & thought I needed an update or 2...

I have been trying to shoot as little as possible in the last lil while coz I have thousands of photo's in my "To Do" folder & needed to catch up on those a little. So I've limited myself to Sunday skate sessions in Sommerset West & Strand.

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SUNDAY 3rd August

Sunday the 3rd I got a ring from Sam Clark & he was rolling at the rink in the scumm & I went through to shoot the plankers on that side with him. After a lil warm up at the rink we moved on to HHH where Matt & Andrew hit a lil down rail (check Sam's blog for what went down there). I have had some bad experiances with school "breakins" & wasn't too keen to jump the fence just for a shot & thought I'd leave that one to Sam. After some serious determination on Andrew's part he got a sick K & landed on some sketchy boards & Matt got a nice feeble.

From there we went to a bench at the Strand Library that Keiran (A.K.A The Rat) had his eye on & was quite late so the light was getting really nice & the spot is pretty photogenic, so I was amped to get some shots.

There was a light near the bench & it was casting a shadow right over the middle of it, so had to shoot him right on the ends not to have a black line over him, but managed ok & that was about the worst of the worries, until I started to shoot with the sun with the 10.5mm. Then I had my own shadow to deal with... so crouched super low so my shadow stayed under the bench & stuck my arm out with the cam & thumb on the shutter... it worked pretty well & kinda dig my shadow on the floor in a few of them. Unless you know what it's from you cant really make it out & is not too distracting.

After that Sam was keen to do some tricks of his own & pretty quickly we had another shoot on the go with us just messing around... that took us to dark & ended our Sunday session.

Keiran waxing

Keiran- K

Keiran- K HDR

Keiran- Switch K HDR

Keiran- Back Tail HDR

Most of the crew- Sam, Gregg, Koos, Keiran & Andrew

Sam & Berg pulling off some circus stunts... took them quite a while to get the coordination for this one.

Some more of Sam & Berg fooling around

Gregg showing us his power moves

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SUNDAY 10th August

Last Sunday (the 10th) I felt to go for a roll myself again & have been neglecting my skates way too much, so went to go pick Koos up & we were off to Gants Center between Strand & the Scumm. I wasn't that keen for rails or anything like that, just wanted to find a lil something nice to skate & was hoping to find something I could get a bit creative on, but after driving around in Gants for a while the best thing I found was a hump to launch & just felt like skating something so we decided to check it out. The run up had a bit of a loose gravel on the road & then the brick run up was pretty short, but not too much of a problem & was managing ok, so got the cam out & started to look for a good angle or 2 & found that this spot was damn tricky to get what I was hoping for. Got 1 straight on shot just to show the distance of the gap, but wasn't too keen on that angle & settled for a shot from right against the wall. I set the flashes up & showed Koos what I wanted & he was my trigger finger for the spot.

After a few more warm up goes & shots I was pretty keen to get a shot of a parallel grab & after struggling for a while I realised it was easier to do it switch coz of the way the hump was throwing me & once I realised that we got the shot I wanted in 3 or 4 goes & was done with that spot.

Me- Mute

Me- Parallel

The ramp was next & just to roll, get a few shots, chill & get shot. As we pitched up AD did too, so was amped to have someone to shoot & talk shit to. Got a few shots of him & the other local kids riding & then it was over to Koos again coz I wanted to roll more. So was a nice happy go lucky shoot & left it pretty much up to him & just asked for a few specifics which he got perfectly.

Once we were pretty much done & it was really dark I got a few shots of AD on the dark ramp with the graph colours just coz it was looking nice & dramatic, blinding him a few times in the process... it started to get a bit chilly & with the ramp being metal it gets moisture on pretty quick & that is not so much fun & he slipped as he got to the coping & we decided to call it a day.