Photographing Children #2

An advantage of being "of a certain age" is that you usually have lots of childhood photographs of your younger relatives to show them as they reach maturity. You might also realise that your own photographic skills have matured as well. In my case - they need to have. Take this photo for example: viewpoint too high, bodies cut off at the knees, all that wasted space at the top, and a tree growing out of their heads! One of the biggest mistakes of my early photographs was not to reframe the image after focusing. The focusing screen is usually in the middle of the viewfinder, so if you focus on the eyes, but then do not compose the image properly, this is the effect you end up with.

Imagine the ways this image may have been improved if I had done a few simple things:

• brought the camera down to the subjects' eye level
• moved to the left to change the background from the next door house to the lovely garden, in the process removing the tree from directly behind the children
  
• turned the camera to a vertical composition to capture the kids in full length.

TFF

Photographing Children #1

Children are such great photo subjects, aren't they? Provided you can keep them still for a nanosecond, that is. Kids that you know well are usually uninhibited around you, particularly if there are a few of them together. This picture of my godson Daniel was taken at one of his birthday celebrations many years ago (he's now at university!), right after the cake was cut. The cake was barely in his mouth before he was off for a trip on one of his birthday gifts.

Children move so quickly that auto-focus is just about essential. Manual focus just doesn't cut it - by the time you have framed and focused, the subject has moved on to the next bit of mayhem. Digital cameras are a blessing too, because reloading film used to be a necessity every 20 or 30 shots, and that takes you away from the action. So the best advice I can give is to put your camera on auto and shoot often.

TFF

Dragon's claw bowl

This beautiful bowl of my wife's has long been a photographic favourite of mine because of its rich colouring and its unusual construction. Today I put it in my light tent, and using two flashes to cross light, I took some photographs of it. Apart from the fact that the all-white surrounds of the light tent make it look a bit like the bowl is floating, I'm quite happy with the result. The colour is accurate and the detail of the fittings is also there. Because of the lighting set-up, the light has wrapped around the bowl and given it an almost three-dimensional effect.

Lighting objects for photography is usually a challenge for the professional photographer, and is more so for an amateur or enthusiast photographer. Without a studio and with portable flashes instead of umbrellas and soft boxes, we still have to be able to provide sufficient lighting in terms of quality and quality to achieve our objective. A portable light tent is an important part of a selection of cheap equipment that I use for this style of photography. It folds up like a dashboard sun reflector into a small carry bag to be ultra-portable, but when it is unfolded it is quite surprising what can be placed inside. The white sides can act as diffusers and also reflectors, thereby providing that wrap-around look.

EXIF: Nikon D300; Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm; ISO 200; 1/60 sec; f8.

TFF

Be prepared

When I was out walking the other day, I saw a row-boat tethered to a jetty, lying on wet sand by the river bank. "Nice image", I thought, "I'll come back and photograph it". This morning I was walking past the same location, and checked to see whether or not the boat was still there. It was, so I went home and waited for some better lighting, then returned with my camera. No boat! It was decidedly unsporting of the owner to move it, really.

So, instead of a photograph of a boat, you are seeing a photograph of boat shoes. The object was to show the different patterns in the rather worn doormat, broken up by the shoes. Rather than convert to black and white, I left a touch of colour in the image, which was composed mainly of browns in any case.

So, it's always better to be prepared. I could have been really prepared by having my camera with me when I first saw the boat, but I had to settle for being moderately prepared by being able to adapt and fashion another image when the boat was removed.

TFF

Moreton Bay figs

Queensland-born author Simon Cleary's first published novel is called "The Comfort of Figs", and I have just finished reading it. It is set in Brisbane, and central to the story are two inanimate objects - the Story Bridge and the Moreton Bay fig. The novel links the time of the construction of the bridge with the present through the relationship between a man and his father.

I found the novel interesting on a few levels. Firstly, the Story Bridge and the men who built it. I have previously confessed an interest in bridges, and this novel interleaves the factual design and construction of the bridge and its iconic status in Brisbane with the fictional story-line.
Then there is the Moreton Bay fig, ubiquitous in Brisbane, and famous for tales of the destruction and the rescue of various fig trees around the city, usually headlined by the amount of money involved in each venture. The novel links a group protesting the removal of trees for a highway and the protagonist via a romantic association with one of the protesters. And lastly, the father-son relationship is explored in all its complexity, with the bridge and the tree both playing important roles in the development of that story.

Photo 1: Workers on the Bridge; Brisbane's Story Bridge, 17/06/2006.

Photo 2: Under the Trees; Moreton Bay fig trees at New Farm, 15/11/2007.

TFF

Hiroshima

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has just visited the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, and has immediately come away calling for an end to nuclear armament. I can well understand his feelings - the Hiroshima memorials had exactly the same effect on me when I visited there some years ago. The stark evidence of mass destruction and loss of human life are almost too horrific to comprehend, and the fact that some countries might be still prepared to visit such a holocaust on others today doesn't speak too highly of our ability to learn from our past.

Did it shorten the war? Almost certainly. Was it justifiable to kill so many civilians to achieve that end? I was born after the war, and I can't answer that question. Was it immoral? Yes, in my opinion. Lots of immoral things happen during wars, and being the "winner" doesn't make your acts any more moral than if you "lost". We all lost.

Many of the places that I have been to and photographed have touched me - Stonehenge, Macchu Picchu, the Great Wall of China. But Hiroshima touched me in a way that no other place has. Not even the Bridge on the River Quai, that I have written about before. Perhaps it is the total devastation of the place that resulted in such indiscriminate loss of life, but I found Hiroshima to be absolutely chilling.

It can't ever happen again.

TFF

A dozen eggs

There's the old joke about the toffee-nosed diner being served by a bored waiter at a hotel:

Waiter: Would madam like the ox tongue for her lunch today?
Diner: Ooh, goodness me, no! I couldn't eat anything that came out of an animal's mouth!
Waiter: Then perhaps madam would prefer an egg?

Boom boom.

As foods go, eggs are quite high on my list of preferred ingredients. Very versatile, they can be anything from a humble boiled egg at the breakfast table to an exotic meringue dessert at an up-market restaurant, with lots of other great things in between.

As photographic subjects go, they are fairly difficult things to shoot. For one thing, they roll around a lot, and unless you are taking action pix (say someone egging Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer, as happened just recently), movement is not normally what you want in an egg photograph. Today I have gone for the plain vanilla photograph of a dozen eggs sitting in a plastic tray to keep them still ready for storage in the fridge.

The remarkable egg - great to eat, difficult to photograph.

EXIF: Nikon D300; Nikkor 24-70mm; ISO 200; 1/60sec; f4.

TFF

Cats

Cats seem to polarise opinion. Many people love them, and at least as many hate them. I don't think other household pets have the same opinion-splitting ability that cats have. We always had dogs when I was a kid, and as a result, I have always loved dogs. On the other hand, I didn't ever have anything to do with cats and therefore I was ambivalent about them at best. That is, until we finally had one of our own. Or, more properly expressed, until one consented to live with us.

The day before we were due to move into our first house, a little flea-bitten bundle turned up on the doorstep of the unit we were renting. We made the basic mistake of feeding him, and the rest is history. He moved to our new house with us, and then to the house after that. We had him as our companion for seventeen years, until a tumour in his jaw prevented him form being able to eat, and we had to have him put to sleep.

That's him above, in the garden of our first house, where he was king of the neighbourhood. Now we are back living in an apartment with no room for pets, which is a shame really.

TFF

Cooking a casserole

Some friends are coming for dinner tomorrow night, and tomorrow I am helping my niece Elizabeth and her husband Aidan move into their new townhouse. So, I decided to do most of the preparation in advance - shopping for the ingredients while I have the use of the car today (I won't have it tomorrow), then doing all the cutting and chopping that takes so much time. I am preparing a "Hearty Beef Casserole", which is just my type of food, really. I like the peasant-style cooking, where the ingredients that are in season are used. The food I like generally has robust flavours and chunky ingredients, rather than your delicate finely-chopped offerings.

Anyway, blade steak (it is always in season at the local butcher *grin*), together with some fresh carrots, mushrooms, celery, some red wine and tomatoes - and voila! It looked reasonably edible sitting on the stove, and with a day for the various flavours to come together, we should enjoy it tomorrow with some crisply-cooked green beans, some mashed potato to soak up the gravy, and the left-over red wine to drink. Sorry, but I am keeping my address a secret!

EXIF: Nikon D300; Nikkor 24-70mm; ISO 200; 1/60 sec; f2.8.

TFF

Red and green

We have a colour post today - the juxtaposed colours of red and green in this lovely plant. I have used selective focus to isolate the two smaller internal petals from the rest of the plant. The areas surrounding the centre have a different texture, although the same colours are repeated. I kept these parts of the plant out of focus so that attention would return to the smoother centre. Red and green seem to be very complementary colours, and certainly look good together here.

I was able to achieve the shallow depth of field by opening the lens all the way to its maximum aperture, and then focusing the lens on that central part of the plant. Being very close to the subject also shortens DOF, and the beauty of a specialised macro lens is that it allows the photographer to focus to a point very close to the front of the lens.

EXIF: Nikon D300; Micro Nikkor 105mm; ISO 200; 1/25 sec; f2.8.

TFF

Bridesmaids

One of the fringe benefits in photographing weddings is that there is no shortage of pretty girls - the bride herself, the bridesmaids, the bride's friends, the groom's sisters and friends - it is almost an endless list. Because of the importance of the occasion, they are made up and dressed up, and they actually want to get their photographs taken.

In my final post in the "weddings" series, I have a picture of my niece Sarah and her bridesmaids from Sarah's wedding last Saturday. These girls were real troupers, too - it was cold and windy, yet they stood uncomplainingly during the outdoors ceremony and for the registry signing, then while all the wedding photos were taken.

Even with all of this abundant natural talent surrounding him, the wedding photographer has to position them and pose them; checking backgrounds, placement of props and also facial expressions of the subjects. All of that before he can even squeeze the shutter.

EXIF: Nikon D300; Nikkor 24-70mm; ISO 200; 1/200 sec; f5.6.

TFF

Sarah's wedding

Here is a picture of the happy couple signing the marriage certificate after Saturday's ceremony. The forecast was for rain and strong winds, but fortunately the weather bureau's timing was a little awry. There was no rain on Saturday to disrupt the wedding, but today it is absolutely teeming down. News reports indicate that 130mm fell around the location of the wedding today, but Sarah and Rob had a window of almost perfect weather for their big occasion.

My admiration for professional wedding photographers remains undiminished. I shot for about seven hours through the pre-wedding gathering, wedding ceremony, post-wedding cocktails and the reception. Phew! Then there is the post-processing to be done!

But there is certainly a wonderful sense of achievement when you see the finished images, and then an even greater feeling of reward when you receive the heartfelt thanks of the bride and groom.

EXIF: Nikon D300; Nikkor 24-70mm; ISO 200; 1/160 sec; f5.6; B&W conversion.

TFF