This is my second post about activities around Wellington this last week. If you are unsure about the term ANZAC then please read my first post.
Just about every town in New Zealand has a war memorial that names those killed in the various conflicts that New Zealand has taken part in. In Wellington we have two, with the larger one taking the form of a carillon and located by the newly built Pukeahu National War Memorial park.
Starting on the 18th a 15 minute light show was created that was projected onto the carillon and then followed by another lightshow on the front of what was originally the National Museum.
We went on a perfect Sunday evening and set up the tripod to record the carillon show. The tower is actually a musical instrument and if you got there for the 7:00pm start the show was accompanied with the bells. It was a very moving experience. The video below is a taste of that carillon show
We then headed up the hill and watched the second lightshow. There was no room for a tripod this time so you will have to excuse the movement in the images.
For reader in other countries, firstly an explanation of what the next series of post are about.
When World War 1 broke out in 1914 Britain called upon its overseas colonies to provide troops and in both Australia and New Zealand large numbers of young men (and a few women) signed up. By the end of the war some 100,000 Kiwis (as we refer to ourselves) had served which at the time was 10% of the countries population. A large number of those were killed or injured and it is estimates that a third of the population was affected in someway.
In early 1915 the British Military leaders brought together divisions of Australian and New Zealand troops and they were called the “Australian & New Zealand Army Corp” or ANZAC for short. On April 25 1915 the ANZAC’s went into their first action landing on the beaches of Gallipoli in modern day Turkey.
The mission was a disaster from the start with inaccurate information and essentially incompetent British commanding officers, so of who had little regard for the safety of their men. For 8 months they tried to hang on against fierce opposition to no avail.
Since then on April 25 each year in towns and cities all around Australia and New Zealand the spirit of the ANZACs, and everyone else who fought in the many wars since are remembered.
This year marks the 100 year anniversary of the landings and as such there has been a much larger focus, than in the previous years. In Wellington events commemorating the centennial started last Saturday and there was plenty of opportunity to get out an take photos.
To do them justice I am going to split up the entries into a series of posts. Once I have them all loved I will come back and edit this post to place direct links into them.
Over the weekend of November 7 – 9 I was involved in organising the Regional Convention for the Central Area of Photographic Society of New Zealand. We offered a wide variety of speakers, workshops and fieldtrips that pretty much covered every aspect of photography.
On the Saturday I took part in a “Natural Light Portraiture” session run by Dave Sanderson (www.manipula.co.nz). It could have been subtitled “How to shoot at the worst time of day” as it ran right through the 11:00am to noon on a day that turned out brilliantly fine.
Now I will generally admit that I am not a natural light shooter, as I prefer the control that one can have with strobes. However if you shoot weddings then you need to be to able to shoot regardless of the conditions.
The key, as Dave explained, was to try to locate something to provide an element of shade. This could be a tree, building or even a reflector used as a diffusion panel. Alternative you shot in the open and used a reflector to reduce some of the harsh shadows that the sun would cast.
We had three models for the shoot who were all very new and the three groups took it in turn with each model. I am reasonably pleased with the shots that came out. They are nothing stella but then when you are merely practising a technique you don’t expect super results all the time.
Using a wall to bounce back an amount of light.A reflector out of shot fills in a little bit of shadow on the face.A group effort in using a reflector as a diffusion panel which shades the model
Scott Kelby is a Photoshop expert from the United States who runs a very successful training operation. If you are serious about Photoshop and photography then it is likely that you will have come across one of his books or videos. A number of years ago (7 in fact) he came up with the idea of getting photographers in groups, worldwide together on one day and encourage them to walk along a pre-planned route and take images and then share the results.
This year the 7th Photowalk occurred on October 11 in 1,052 locations around the globe with some 20,164 registered to take part. In reality that number was probably a lot larger as people showed up without registering.
The Wellington walk was organised by Hutt Camera President Brian Harmer and covered some of the alleyways and lesser travelled lanes in central Wellington, and the up an over the lower slopes of Mount Victoria, around the inner harbour finishing for a drink and snack at Mac’s Brewbar.
Now there is a saying “that you can’t beat Wellington on a good day” which is quite true, however the reality is that those days can be limited. Fortunately we struck the jackpot at the day was brilliantly fine and with next to no wind.
The walk was scheduled to start at 5.00pm and run through to 7:00pm so we ended up shooting in almost perfect light. All up there were around 35 people gathered at the starting location. It had originally been just me joining the group but I managed to convince my wife to come along.
While we started off all together it did not take too long for the group to spread out and by the end the stragglers came in nearly 45 minutes after the first group. They all seemed to have really enjoyed themselves.
Below is a sample of the images that I ended up taking. It was quite amazing how much diversity there was in quite a small location within the city.
At the start of the walk the alleyway is lined with old brick buildingModern high rise apartmentsOld suitcase outside a junk shop in Dixon streetRetro is very much in fashion in Cuba streetThe cafe culture in Cuba street is very much aliveThe Havana coffee shop in Wigan Street.The late afternoon lights creates pattern on this apartment blockIn need of some TLC is this house in Elizabeth StreetThe early evening light and conditions were perfect
I have just spent three full on days photographing the Body Arts Rocks Conference 2014 which was organised by BodyFX .
The event was held over three days at the Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt and it consisted of a range of workshops and competitions. I met with Nicole a couple of weeks before to go over the draft agenda and to try to plan what was needed and also where I could set up studio lights. The intention was that I would cover the workshops to document to event, as well as providing professional images of the finished looks in the competitions.
Shooting in the Dowse proved to be quite a tricky exercise as each of the four rooms that were being used had completely different light levels ranging from lots of natural light to non. They also ranged in size.
I had taken my D600 and D90 cameras with me and initially had speedlights fitted to both. The D90 was originally intended to be there as backup. The initial shots with the bare lights were too harsh so I fitted the Rogue Diffusion Panel to the light mounted on the D600. After the first shots in each of the rooms it became apparent that I didn’t need the flash in Room 4 and rather than keep swapping setting I set up the D90 for that room only.
As I have found that TTL metering with flash is not that accurate I set the flash to full power and then altered the camera setting. On the first day I played with the ISO between the rooms with mixed results but by day two I had a solid set of combinations of aperture and ISO that I knew would work in each room and also depending upon how close the subjects were too me. My aim with the shots was to get fairly close to a correct looking exposure as I knew that I could adjust it in post. I wanted a very quick turnaround of the image though so I made sure that the adjustments would be minor.
With the documentary type shots I moved from workshop to workshop and tried to record not only what the presenter was doing but also the participants.
By the Sunday I had built up a good rapport with a number of the attendees as well as a few of the models so when the time came to record the progress of the body painting competition everyone was comfortable with me being around.
I was told that BodyFX had experienced some issues with photographers in the past supplying images in a timely manner. So I made sure that this would not happen and the images from each day were processed that night and delivered the next day.
I have received quite a lot of praise for the shots that were delivered which was very pleasing. It was an enjoyable but very tiring three days.
Hell Pizza sponsored the Friday night dinner so I was asked to ensure we got some shots they could use.The finished Zombie makeupHannah looks stunning after Yolanda has finished airbrushing her makeup onContestants in the Beginners Face painting competitions work. They had 45 minutes to create something.The winning look in the Advanced Facepainting competitionJulian applies mud to the models hair in order to create the zombie skullNick Wolfe demonstrates how to create a monster skullEmily Walker with her stunning creation on Hannah that won the body painting competitionThe flat earth was the inspiration of this painting by Karen HavicanA close up of Hannah’s headdressNick Wolfe paints up the prosthetic that he added to his model in the showcaseA close up of Stacie’s face.The four contestants in the Extreme Makeup competition. The artist had 2.5 hours to produce this look. Third from the left was the winner.Julian from BodyFX ran a fund session on communicationAmazing looking wounds created from Nicole Heydenrijk’s class on GellsNick Wolfe and the two models he painted in his first sessionAnnie Reynold from Australia demonstrates how to create advanced butterfliesLace inspired masksNick produced some very intricate designsOne of the workshops centred around half face animal designs and was run by Christy Lewis.The detail in the body painting was very impressiveThe makeup room was full on for the whole 5 hours that the artists had to work.Contestants in the Beginners Face Painting competitionAnnie applies finishing touches to a makeup that also included gemsModels compare looksNick turned Tom into the terminator in around 5 minutes.Families visiting the Dowse on Saturday also ended up being painted.Working through the Extreme Makeup competitionDan applied most of this makeup to himself.
Ashleigh-Jane Cole is a very talented young lady. Earlier this year she modelled for me at the waterfall and in the process made the length of fabric I was using into a dress. She won a designer award at the Trentham Racecourse Wellington Club and now in the process of recording her new album. Today she appeared live on a local radio station and performed all her own material, including one that she only finished just before going to air.
Yesterday she posted on Facebook and asked if any photographers were able to record the session for her. There is a major restructure going on at my paid work so the opportunity to take an afternoon off and do this was too much to resist. The studio is a fairly restricted place and so I knew that I could inly take the minimum about of gear and certainly no light stands. It gave me the perfect opportunity to test out the Rogue Flash Panel that my son bought me for my birthday & Christmas. It ended up being two presents because when the request went in we did not realise that it actually came in two pieces.
Despite there being little room to move around I was reasonably pleased with the results.
Josh provided acoustic supportAshleigh-Jane and Anita
My daughter attends an all-girls school that three years ago decided that they would no longer run a senior ball for year 12 & 13 pupils. It was replaced with a year 13 Graduation Dinner held in December. The girls have never considered that the new event replaced the previous one especially as parents are invited to the Dinner.
This year a group of year 13 girls hatched a plan that if they organised a charity event and did not involve the school at all then there was nothing that the school could do about it. In other words they staged a rebellion against a school ruling. The event was called the “Blue Dragon Charity Dinner”. Blue Dragon is an organisation that works in Vietnam saving children from slavery & prostitution.
Now while it was not being called a “ball” they certainly wanted everything that went with it so my daughter asked me would I be willing to take formal photos against a backdrop. I was only too willing to comply.
The venue for the event was the function room in the Wellington rowing club. Having been to previous balls and knowing the amount of space that ideally work for formals, I was concerned that there was not going to be enough space. This proved correct however you make do with what you can get and so we shot is a passageway. The major issue was that we could not get the backdrop wall to wall and this did mean that for larger groups it did not go all the way across the photo.
I used a very simple two light setup with a large 1m Softbox camera left and high being the main light with a small 40cm Softbox set camera right and positioned lower down.
It was quite a fun night with a constant line for photos meaning that I really did not get much of break. I generally took 2 images of each person or group.
The photos were intended to be delivered via Facebook and as I was travelling to Melbourne part way through the week processing them took priority on the Sunday. After going through and eliminating obvious duds (fortunately not too many) I went through and keyworded the images in Lightroom as to whether they contained a couple or a group, and then whether it was a serious or fun shot. Then I applied these keywords as filters so that I could compare and select the best images using a rating system.
Once I had my selection I then cropped them and exported them to Photoshop for a final fix up which in most cases related to extending the backdrop. Content Aware Fill and the clone stamp were used extensively.
Reaction to the images has been great although I did learn something about security in Facebook. The photos were loaded to a group and when the girls started to tag them that generated a request to me to confirm the tags. This only happens if the person is not your “friend” and there is no way to deactivate it. My daughter took a photo of the point when my notifications hit 99+.
The girls even insisted that I hand the camera over and get into one of the shots
For some time I have wanted to get into more themed photoshoots and one that had sprung to mind is steampunk inspired. For those of you who have never heard of it, Steampunk is a role playing/costume science fiction type genre where Victorian era clothing and modern equipment is fused. However the modern equipment is made to look like it used the technology available to the Victorians.
Apparently there are two separate streams, namely one based on Victorian England and the other on the American Wild West.
Rather than seek out a model and hire the gear, I thought that it may be quicker to approach those people who are actually serious about it so I found the New Zealand Steampunk group on Facebook and posted a message.
I was then contacted by one of the Wellington members and told that they were having a high tea afternoon, and I was welcome to come along. This was being held in an old villa in Island bay. I took along my speedlights and a single white shoot through umbrella which was used to provide some fill light as the room had a large window to provide natural light.
In order to create a more authentic look the images were turned into Sepia toning. I was quite pleased with this starting point.
“The Color Run” is a commercial activity that originated in the United States although it has links back to a Hindi festival called Holi. Basically runners do a course and at particular sections of it coloured powder is thrown over them. I am sure that in the original form there was deep meaning to this activity but in the modern version it is all in the name of fun.
Actually I should probably change that and say that it is in the name of making money. Although a charity gets associated with each event the organisers are quite open then they are only receiving a contribution.
The Wellington event was held in Upper Hutt using a park that is very close to home so after checking the map I decided to go down, take a look and snap a few photos. The power used is a edible corn-starch which is very fine. It has a reputation of getting past the weather seals of cameras and lens so I was being particularly careful. The oldest kit lens in the collection came out and it was fitted to the D60 that is used now only for my photo a day work. I also stood well back and made sure that I stayed up wind of the competitors.
That way I knew that if it got damaged it would not be that bad. The major drawback is that the d60 does not have a built in focus motor, and neither did the lens, so the only option was manual focus.
Now I have been to a number of so called “fun” runs but quite frankly this was the happiest one I had ever encountered. The people and the volunteers throwing the powder were having a great time and the photos show that.
As photography is my passion and not my living the actual time that I can devote to it dictated by the working week. Occasionally that means that the weekends can get a little crowded. The one just gone is no exception with four separate photographic outings over the two days. I intend to write each one up as a separate blog post over the next week, but here is a teaser of the “sneak peaks”
The lovely Megan from Saturdays shoot at Palmer HeadsSunday Morning “The Color Run” in Upper HuttThe Colonial and Mrs Hudson from the Wellington Steampunk GroupJade looking lovely in a bridal makeup shoot on Sunday afternoon
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