For the second day of shoot Life Is Better Blonde's music video 'Mine', I was bought on again as stills photographer, set up in an industrial style kitchen in Melbourne's north, both subway and bathroom scenes were filmed alongside the kitchen scenes.
Shooting was a blast and my first real test with my new Fuji set-up, which performed admirably. Check out some of the highlights from the day below, and give a listen to the final track above!
Been looking to share this one for a while but alas my trip to Japan got in the way. I had the greatest of pleasures contributing to the production of Vance Joy's latest music video as official stills photographer. Over the course of three days, I was allowed to capture the whole production from wardrobe and make-up to pyrotechnics. Below are a handful of photos from the shoot that give a little insight to the crazy stuff that was happening.
Day Two meant that it was explosion time - healthy dose of awesomeness always goes well with Tinnitus. Crazy weather this day, freezing cold fog in the morning then searing heat during the day and just before wrap; hail storm. Sure the location was 2 hours out of Melbourne, not far enough I guess.
Day Three was both wrap day and the day of filming the 'extras' and the plot twist at the end of the video. What a weekend though. It's always a privilege to be able to step behind the scenes and document productions like this.
So this one is from a little while ago, but I never got around to sharing it till now. I was invited along by a good friend and incredible film-maker Michael Lincoln to come document the filming of a music video for a local band 'The Trotskies'. There's nothing like rocking out on a rooftop somewhere in Melbourne at 2am in the morning which made for an awesome shoot and night.
I've done a lot of work with the Kettlespider guys. Often I'm invited in on their rehearsals and shows to capture the inside works of their sound; so much so that they have become quite good mates. Through this I've been able to in a sense capture a more naturalistic side and be more of a fly-on-the-wall.
With Progfest coming up, the band is hitting the rooms again to shape and sharpen their songlist for the full day event at the ever-loveable Espy.
Usually I tend to shoot quite wide, particularly in a room of this size, in order to immerse myself in the energy of the band, but this time I decided to ease back and take a more distant approach for the majority of the evening.
Switching between the 135mm f/2.0, 35mm f/1.4 and my trusted 50mm f/1.4 I loved the variation of separation combined with the isolation of the narrow depth of field.
I always love shooting these guys. It's not often that I listen to prog-metal these days but the Kettlespider guys are always a blast to listen to and watch. I recently helped film them perform two newer/unperformed tracks at Black Pearl Studios and after finally editing it all down, the videos should be up in the coming weeks.
Tundra, the first of two tracks will be up this Friday in preparation for Progfest, and following up a fortnight later the staple track Evolution will be released.
I'm super happy how the videos came out. It was a learning experience to say the least. A lot of frustrations and set-backs came to fruition but the end result was worth every moment of it and I can't wait to share the final results.
It's ben a few months now since I have started at Platform Eight. I joined the creative team not too long ago as a photographer and had an awesome time. When the opportunity came up to shoot some folio work, I jumped at the chance to step out side of my comfort zone and experiment in the lower pressure environment.
The post-production guy Sebastian has the most magnificent head of hair I have ever seen. It's incredible. I had the opportunity of getting a model in or working with anyone, but for as long as I live, I'd regret it if I didn't use Seb for at least one shoot.
I ask Seb to channel Questlove. No photo-shoot can go poorly if Questlove is involved. #industrysecrets
Above is the final shot. We were working in a smallish space but had enough room to set up some white seemless and stack some records around. His style really went with the 'vintage' era of vinyls so with the help of some local op-shops, I managed to load my entire boot full of old LPs to use.
A boot load of vinyl ... Literally.
There was something strangely relate-able to this ...
After a full day of shooting and going through a bunch of different looks and styles (I was also teaching a work experience student, but that's another post all together) we finally sat down and worked out our floor plan. I had originally intended Seb to stand among the vinyls but due to time and furniture constraints we winged it and got him to prop himself on a small step ladder for a more 'relaxed' look.
I decided to instead reach for the Broncolor kit than my go-to speed light kit. More power a different set of modifiers suited the shoot more and meant that I could over-power the afternoon sun coming in from the rear window completely.
I used the small square soft box as my key light and the strip and zoomed bulb as my fills. Once we had the lights setup, we tweaked the records some more until we got the right amount of chaos. Because I had originally envisioned Seb standing, the stacks were to be neater but with his more relaxed posture I wanted to shuffle them around a little to add to the casualness.
I set up the 3 Broncolor heads with a strip for the fill, bare head with a zoomer as the background light and the key light came down from above out of the mediumish soft box. The main light was set to 8.0 power (6.0 is the lowest on their odd arbitrary scale) while the fill lights were at 6.0.
It took around an hour to do the full shoot and everything went relatively smoothly albeit a toppling stack of wax or two (thankgod for assistants). That said, after a good 7 hours of constant photo taking, I was starting to wear out and missed a crucial fault in Seb's suit.
After changing the position of his arms, his suit collor folded in on itself and created this horrible shadow. I didn't even realise it on my first pass of selection when editing. I blame the lack of coffee, but it gave me some good practice at retouching the suit back in.
Below is a before and after of my editing. I started by duplicating in the right side to the left, then cloned and stamped in the correct texture. Once I had rebuilt the collar, I burnt in some shadows to give a more natural appearance. I'm not a retoucher by any means and would have preferred taking 30 seconds to fix the collar then and there than spend a good hour fixing it in Photoshop but sometimes things don't go as planned and my slip of concentration ended up costing me some valuable down time. I'm grateful though that it was a straight forward fix and that even though it's not perfect, it saved a shot from the 'rejected' bin.
Before and after of the work done on the collar, I'm not a 'Photoshop' guy but I'm pretty proud of how it came out.
This was by far one of the most exciting shoots I've done. Despite the uber-long day, just being able to take my time and play around with a variety of different shots and bits and pieces of gear was well worth the effort.
I'll be posting the other shots from the day as well as the stuff I went through with Harrsion the (friendly neighbourhood) work experience kid in a blog post to come.
So it's been a few weeks now but after finally recovering from my trip to Victoria's (or South Australia's; depending on which side of the border you ask) Big Desert National Park, I feel it's time to share you some of the images I captured, and much more importantly, the footage my older brother Billy captured!
It's been a while since I've had a break from the day to day goings on so having free reign over an entire week (sort of) was great. I was able to walk around with my camera and just shot freely in between helping my brother with his research.
Now I'm no scientist. I wish I was. I know my periodic table, I know mitosis like I know my toes, but alas, science and the inner workings of our universe is not my forte. So to the best of my knowledge Billy, the elder of the Geary brother's research is based around predator and prey interactions within the Big Desert national park.
Chris and Billy hammering in some camera traps in the setting sun.
All done in camera with the help of a trusty head torch (happened to be a nice red tone) and a larger torch placed inside of my tent. Took me a few tries to paint in a correct exposure but end result is purdy. Deakin University have even graciously shared it on their twitter feed promoting Billy's research.
You can read a bit about it on his supervisor, Euan Ritchie's blog where Billy has written about some of the finer details. Tagging along for the trip was Billy's also close friend and Wild Melbourne Co-Founder Chris McCormack. Together we spent a good 4 days collecting and deploying camera traps to find, film and identify what animals can be found in our wonderful wildlife areas. My brother has compiled a compilation of some of the best images into a YouTube video which can be viewed below. Aside from Dingos, Emus and a plethora of pesky Ravens there's a exciting amount of variety to the animals in the area; check it out!
While our trip had planned to be for 6 days, we did have to cut it short. Unexpected rain caused roads to flood and the thick clay and sand of the the terrain clogged even our specialised tires. Unable to continue on safely (we were somehow driving sideways at one point) we decided to call it a day and head home. Better safe than sorry.
Our 4x4 tires were turned to slicks with all the mud. We would have wrapped ourselves around a tree had we not called off the rest of our trip
With more trips scheduled I'll be definitely heading back to document more of my brother's research but unfortunately the next trip on July 10th falls on a very busy week for me. If you're keen to follow along, head over to my brother's twitter account @billyg84 as he's always keeping it up to date with new and exciting breakthroughs and news.
Here's a recent shoot I did with David Knight, a local acoustic musician. He was looking for some simple and clean shots to use for a run of posters and press photos for his upcoming tour. I had a few locations in mind, but had one in particular I'd been wanting to utilize for a long while.
While the sun was still visible over the buildings; we headed to South Melbourne to Ron Robertson-Swann's 'Vault'. An abstract piece of public art, it's a hulking tangle of yellow steel that would be perfect for a back drop provided we had the right light.
We started while the light was behind a patch of clouds and with the softer light worked on some cleaner backgrounds with little variation in exposure. When the sun came out and gave off some harder light, I stepped back and used the varying angles and surfaces of the sculpture to give a more abstract and eclectic image.
David was really keen to experiment so we played around and got a nice set of images that he could use. Rather than going for something a little more cliche, we walked away with a unique look and series that we're both really happy with.
Recently got together with an excellent mastering engineer who recently built his own studio. Nick has been working on this studio for the past 6 months building and piecing everything together and now that the space is finally completed he needed some shots to launch the new business.
The 14mm f2,8 is insanely wide, which works wonderfully in smaller spaces.
The shots were to be used throughout his website (which looks fantastic) as well as for general promotional purposes such as social networking etc.
A slightly more isometric view of the room. The walls are baffled and completely floating.
Nick has put an insane amount of work into acoustically tweaking the room so it sounds as good as possible. The walls, which are floating panels made from acoustically transparent baffle, pair with the stepped ceiling. Nick tried to explain the theory behind it all but 99% of it went over my head.
Environmental portrait to go along with his engineer profile.
While he was only originally after room shots, I thought it would be best to supply Nick with some portraits and working shots to go on the website. It's a one man operation and it's always good to put a face to the name. We did a quick posed shot, then worked through a few different angles as he showed me how everything worked.
It's always hard to visualize the final product when looking at singular images, but once Nick released his website to the public I was over the moon how it looked. Some quick screen shots are below but for the real thing, go check it out for yourself!
Not so long ago, Groovin’ The Moo made another pass through the sleepy town of Bendigo. It’s the second year I’ve shot it, and just as it did last year, I left with a sense of accomplishment and excitement (and a hefty dose of tinnitus …) Here are a bunch of shots that I felt worthy of sharing, I’m still revisiting my archive from last year and finding more and more photos that I love, and I can imagine that I’ll be doing the same come next.
Continuously exploring Melbourne's streets, I often find myself stumbling across certain compositions. Plays of light and shape, movements of people within their environments.
Fuji X100 // VSCO Polaroid 690--
I've been experimenting a lot with VSCO presets of late. I find they are critical in speeding up my workflow as they give me an ultimate starting point in the direction I want to take my images. While some condemn the use of actions and presets in post production, the ability to immediate move between moods and styles from which to further edit and manipulate increases productivity ten-fold.
A shout-out has to go to Morgan Roberts, who besides being a stand-up guy, knows a thing or two about editing and put me onto VSCO, a decision I have absolutely no regret for.
