The Gateway......s

Hey hey again,

This time took a little stroll under the bridge for some straight up long exposure shots. It had been awhile since I last shot the bridge, as the second bridge was still being constructed at the time.

So a quick post tonight. I promise more soon and hopefully with more descriptions, setups etc.

Cheers,

Az.

Comics and you

Now I'm not a big Photoshop person when it comes to photos - I'm very much of a "If its not good in the can, then its not good at all" type of guy. That also being said if it's altering contrast/brightness/saturation etc. then go ahead

BUT...

Photoshop is a VERY powerful tool (So is Eddie McGuire ;P) and I'm starting to learn it so that I can do some "arty" type stuff with my photos. One thing that I have started to do is attempt some Silver/Gold Age Comic style pieces (As I suck at ALL forms of art).

My first Attempt was with 2 shots of my TKD instructors:

Now what I did was take the originals, cut out the people and added a thick stroke around. I drew a bit from some manga (READ: DBZ) where action scenes have either a starburst or diagonal lines in the background.

Later I thought that I could improve on the design by using a Film grain and Colour Halftone filter to make the photo appear more "comicky"

So I used a previous photo that was posted here to test it:

Another thing that I did was add a thick black border and put a bit of a gradient in the Text box to recreate the colour inconsistencies that earlier comics had.

Next I then tried to use text more and combined the cutout and halftone techniques into the one cover. Also as a bit of an in-joke with my people at the pharmacy (they call me Captain Chaos due to my messy desk and nature) I created a cover of myself as "Kaptain Khaos". I used K's because they look better in comic font than C's.

Pharmacy or Med people will get the Triple Whammy reference.

Lastly my wife asked me to do something with our guitar/mic photo that we posted earlier in the year. So I kindly obliged.

I think I can improve on this technique a bit (for instance cutting each person out separately then putting them back together to show the separation and possibly venturing into adding brush lines to the outline of the arms etc. Perhaps I will

Ciao,

Az.

Shooting Musicians

Hey hey peeps,

Have been very busy over the last few weeks so haven't had time to post up.

Firstly:

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to take a few shots of some bands at the Beat the Street Festival. Some of these guys are bands that are still trying to make a name for themselves.

Secondly:

Given a very strong amount of sunlight, I had to pull the shutter down until I got the ambient exposure down to a place where I was happy with it. (I really wanted that frozen in motion look so 1/800th was satisfactory)

Thirdly:

It was going to be one of those "assignments" that you had to change the exposure and white balance.... CONSTANTLY!

So anyway without further ado here were the shots from the daytime portion:

My Echo (A Melbourne band with a sound similar to that of The Living End) were fantastic. They had such energy in their set! I really recommend you check these guys out.

Then came the wonderful talents of Mr Beatbox himself, Joel Turner

Now up to this point I really wasn't happy with some of the shots that I was taking - mostly because I missed a few opportunities to "capture the real moment" or to "capture the energy" - fortunately as the sun began to set I started to capture some good moments.

Next up was Dissonance - A band from Narangba.

Then Joel Turner came out again

 Then I had dinner :) oh yeah then took a couple of Burning Brooklyn - another start up band. They have a real Story of the Year/Taking Back Sunday feel to them.

Earlier in the day:

At night:

...And then Joel Turner came back again (pretty cool guy to talk to though). Now from here on in I used Flash predominately to portray some sort of mood. I am happier with the night time photos because of the extra control that you have over the light.

Now lastly there was the headline act: New empire

Some group shots earlier in the day:

Then the night shots

So in the end I'm sorta happy with the result, but sorta :S with the earlier ones. Oh well, at least  I had a great opportunity to meet some cool people and take their photo.

Azza