Locations | Kajo Photography - Fineart Landscapes and Panoramas

Archive for the ‘Locations’ Category

Model Shooting with off-camera flash

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

It has been a while, but I just never got around to processing the actual shot of the model shooting in the old train shed. I posted the video about it here while back. Here it is again in case you missed it:

Thanks to Brent Pearson who put this video together.

A bit of background information about this shoot. We were almost a dozen photographers crammed camera to camera (with tripods intermingled) in a small side room of a large derelict train shed here in Sydney. It is quite interesting to walk around and admire all the graffiti. Here is a shot I took about a year ago at the same place:

Anyway our makeup artist-turned-model Mandy was showing a lot of talent for modelling and she was happy to pose for us.

Brent came up with the idea of a girl wandering home after a horrible party just to find herself not being able to walk anymore and taking a rest at this very place, high heels off, clothes and hair messed up, smeared make-up…you get the picture.

The lighting was simple, yet tricky. We had a large softbox at the top and right of the frame. Triggered with two hot-shoe flahes via pocket wizards (we had 10 of them thanks to Oat from hangingpixels.com). Btw. be sure to check out his lighting workshops, they are fantastic.

The walls were light-painted with torches after Mandy had packed up. My resulting image is a combination of 9 exposures, pretty much one for every part of the image as well as a base image with Mandy in it.

The floor has been lit with very low, horizontal torch light, which gives it the grunchy feel and makes the dust look more prominent.
It’s been lots of fun to shoot with so many skilled and experienced portrait and fashion photographers… even though my passion remains landscapes

Posted in Gear, Locations | 1 Comment »

Finally a nice sunrise

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

I was overdue for a cracker sunrise, and although I would have hoped for some more clouds, the colour in the sky was simply amazing. When we arrived at 5.30am, and the sun was still one hour away from rising, there was some pretty pink colour in the sky already.

Processing:

None of the colour in the sky got enhanced. I simply darkened down the sky with the grad tool in Lightroom.

At the time of shooting I used a 2 stop ND grad. The lighting actually required a 3-stop ND which I had in my bag but forgot to clean the day before. With a sunrise like that you cannot afford to lose any time cleaning your gear. I made sure I would not blow out the sky (by checking the histogram on my screen), so I would have no problem later on in LR to bring down the exposure another stop.

I added more detail in the water with some local sharpening and contrast adjustments.

The splashing wave in the frame was pure luck. I had a few shots with splashing waves, but this was the only shot which had most of the elements the way I wanted them to be.
Sometimes I am too lazy to spend one hour in photoshop, to enhance a shot by 5% when I am very close to the result I wanted to achieve in the first place.
I prefer spending less time processing and more time shooting lol

Posted in Locations, Software | 1 Comment »

Different perspective

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Just wanted to show you Brent’s shot of the same morning. His theme was about the photographer (me) struggling with wild weather conditions to get THE shot.

What I like about shooting with other people is the variety of images that you come home with as well as the different way of processing.

Brent Pearson - Man vs. Wild

Posted in Locations | 2 Comments »

Of storms and photographers…

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

The alarm rang at 4.15am. After a very short night, I made my way up to the Northern Beaches – about a 45 min drive from where I live – to meet up with Brent. Our destination was Long Reef (see map below) to get some photography done.
On the way there it was raining cats and dogs and Brent had to take a detour due to a collapsed tree blocking the road.

I was looking forward to some wild conditions – always good for very dramatic photos.
Armed with umbrellas, tripods and cameras we made our way down to the reef. Low tide allowed us to cross to the top end of the reef – always shooting away from the almost horizontal wind to keep the lenses away from potential rainfall.

The waves were huge and crashing on the rocks, splashing high up and, shortly after, hitting Brent and me. And our tripods.
I have a very sturdy tripod – a Gitzo 2540 – usually nothing makes this tripod move. However the surging waves had so much force that I had to hold it down with some of my weight.

We had a blast! Not only is it a good thrill to battle the storm and the waves, you also get rewarded with very special photos.
We could hardly believe our luck – for a full 1.5 hours not one single drop of rain fell down.
How is that for a great start into the weekend

And here is a satellite view of this incredible spot:

View Larger Map

Posted in Locations | 2 Comments »

Nature Photography at its best

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Nothing is more rewarding than those very special places on earth which are hard to get to. Antarctica is surely one of them.
Similarly Gosses Bluff in the Northern Territory (West McDonell Range) is one of those special places. Too magnificent to be captured on camera.

140 Million years ago, this massive meteorite crater formed a huge mountain range in an otherwise completely flat area in the Southern Northern Territory. It is almost perfectly circular and well worth the 30 min off-road track (only for serious 4WD’s). Not many visit this spot for the same reason – it is almost impossible (and dangerous) to get there even with 4WD.

Fortunately it was the rainy season when we visited this place and it created a beautifully and lush oasis in the centre of the crater.

The forces that were at work here (100 million times the power of the hiroshima bomb) were most likely enough to have created an ice age on planet earth.

The following shot is an 8 shot Pano stitched in AutoPano Giga.