Creepy Naked Manakin Is Watching You
While you walk past underneath… He watches…
Nikon F5, 50mm f1.8 Lens, HP5+ 400 ISO Film pushed to 1600 ISO, CanoScan 9000F Scanner.
Weather Bomb
A couple of weeks back Wellington had a “Weather Bomb”, essentially this meant gale force winds and rain, flights were cancelled and the ferries stopped running. Not the sort of weather to take out a Rollei so took out the F5 with a 24mm Lens.
Nikon F5, 24mm f2.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film pushed to 1600, CanoScan 9000F Scanner.
Adventures In Assisting
A couple of weeks ago (it always seems to take a couple of weeks) I did another assisting job with Bev Short for her new project. I didn’t get too much of a chance to take photos on this one as we were a bit rushed due to the fact that even though it is the middle of summer it was stupid cold and then one of the lights wouldn’t communicate so I ended up hand holding a speedlite as a rim light.
Matt Middleton the SFX makeup artist did a great job of turning a mask into a head, dubbed “Bob”,as well as doing all of Steve Francis makeup
The most amusing part was when we were just about to leave, a car pulled up and three guys got out and were a bit shocked by Steves appearance since he was still fully made up and asked him if he was alright… Wish I had got some shots of that 🙂
All in all another fun shoot and I think the final image turned out pretty damn good 🙂
Final image on Bevs blog HERE
Nikon D90, 50mm f1.8
A Couple Of Long Exposures
I have been away camping with the family for the last couple of days (hence no new photos). Did a bit of playing with long exposure shots and the D90 to see how it would handle… The first one is a 20 minute exposure which has been a bit over tweaked in Photoshop (sorry not quite back in the real world yet) and the second one is a 30 second exposure.
The files look good but I have to say that the camera processing time was crazy! On the first shot the exposure was 20 minutes and it nearly took that long to process the image after the initial exposure so 40 minutes all up. I am hoping I just left a setting on which would increase the processing time so will have to look and see what other people have said…
Nikon D90, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200
Zoo Shooters
At the Wellington Zoo yesterday and couldn’t help slipping back into street shooting mode 🙂
Nikon D90, 50mm f1.8 and 80-200 f2.8 Lenses, ISO 400
Death Of A Friend… D70s You Will Be Missed
Last week my trusty Nikon D70s decided that after 8 years of being thrashed that enough was enough.
This post is a dedication of sorts to all the fun we have had together over the last 8 years…
This is the last shoot it ever took… Finishing up the shoot for Spook The Horses on a rooftop in Wellington… You will be missed 😦
All Images Nikon D70s (deceased), Various Lenses and ISOs
Fatherhood Friday: Ballerina
Emily had her ballet show last weekend and she want me to take some pictures of her in her costume before it had to be taken back. Sam got in on the act also 🙂
(Sorry to Facebook people who have already seen these).
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200, 2x 500W Electra Stobes with shoot through Umbrella Softbox and Barn Doors for Backdrop.
Snow Flurries
It’s unusual for it to snow enough for it to settle in Wellington but we had a couple of storms pass through and there is still snow on the ground this morning.
Yes I took some on the Rollei and Half Frame but you have to wait for them 🙂
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, Sb80DX Speedlite.
Fatherhood Friday: Adventures In Cooking
Ok so this isn’t a normal type of post but it was a fun experience so I thought I would share.
About a week ago Emily suggested that we make gingerbread houses (I’m pretty sure she meant real life sized ones, or at least dolls house sized ones) since every couple of weeks we make gingerbread men while Samantha has a lunch time sleep and then decorate them the next day at the same time. Sam usually wakes up once we have done most of it but there are always things left for her to do as well (usually eating the decorating things and left over dough as well as cutting the last few shapes out).
So I thought what the heck lets give it a go…
I drew out a quick sketch (thank you 5th form technical drawing) to make sure it was kind of what Em was thinking and then made up a small model to check it would work and also to be used as a cutting template.
We made the gingerbread like normal and just after we had finished making it Sam woke up so she got to help ( I secretly think that she knew we were doing something fun and woke up so she wouldn’t miss out).
We made enough parts to make 4 gingerbread houses (since this was a trial run) and the rest got turned into a conglomeration of Christmas trees, teddy bears, people etc…
Into the oven they went and 15 minutes later we had some slightly distorted but still entirely usable house pieces …
At this point the story was put on hold due to the fact that the next day when we were due to ice and decorate them Samantha had a blinding 30 minute tantrum and didn’t go to sleep and was grumpy for pretty much the whole afternoon.
Friday comes round and things go to plan, Sam goes to sleep and we mix up some icing ready to decorate (I was going to make the usual pink icing but Emily insisted that I make chocolate icing). I put together the first house but made the mistake of putting the walls on the inside of the ends which meant the roof didn’t fit so it had to be pulled apart and re-done which made it look a bit messy before we decorated them.
After they were all put together we put them in the fridge for 30 minutes so they would set and started decorating the rest of the gingerbread.
We each decorated 2 houses and I think for a first try at making them they turned out pretty well.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens.
Storm and Expired Pan F+
These are some shot taken on the same day as the other storm shots I posted.
These one were taken on my Nikon F5 with a Tokina 19-35mm lens and some Ilford Pan F+ 50 ISO film which expired in 2006 and a red filter.
There was some seriously funky things happening with the film including mold on a couple of shots so most of these under went a fair bit of Photoshop retouching.
I really like how old they feel… I still have about 10 metres left on a bulk roll so might have to try this again next storm 🙂
While I was out shooting I had a woman come up to me aghast that I was taking photos in the middle of a full on storm to which I replied “but its a great day for photography” I think the images speak for themselves… I really need to look into getting a Nikonus 5 underwater camera for this sort of stuff though…
Nikon F5, Tokina 19-35mm Lens, Pan F+ 50 ISO Film (Expired 2006), Cokin Red Filter, CanoScan 9000F Scanner.
Storm
So there is a bit of a winter storm happening over New Zealand at the moment so when the first snow flurries started to hit I decided it would be a good time to head to the south coast and get some images as the storm rolled up from the south island.
Its school holidays which meant that Amanda was home to look after the kids as I put on as many clothes as I could find and headed out.
The great thing about owning an aging digital SLR is that you don’t mind so much if it gets a bit wet so even though the spray off the waves was pretty bad I still got some shots. I also took my F5 which was pre loaded with some expired Ilford Pan F+ 50 ISO film so it will be interesting to see how they come out since I was getting up to about a 10 second exposure, hopefully I will develop that roll in the next day or two.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200. 1st two shots with a Cokin ND8 and Cokin ND4 Gad
Fort Buckley WW2 Remains
Some shots of Fort Buckley. I stress these were just test/location shots as the day I went the light was super bright 🙂
Fort Buckley at the entrance to the Kaiwharawhara gorge housed a couple of guns for defense of the inner harbor and was originally built around 1885.
When I was there at the end of 2009 it looked like the area was getting an upgrade with a new walking track down to the gun pits.
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8, ISO 200
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