Cure Kids Charity Auction

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to photograph a Cure Kids charity auction organised by Jordan Mauger. The event was held at the JDV Bar in Merivale and was very well attended and should have raised on lot of money for the charity. I only learned of the event a few hours before it started when another photographer  on my diploma course (Emily Maddock) put out a request for help to photograph the event.

The venue was quite challenging with lots of mirrors and dark brown walls, flash was unavoidable but the ceiling was white at least so some bounce flash was possible. We both had fun and learned a lot and I think the images we have created should be useful for the organisers. I spent most of the evening with either a 50mm or 102mm prime lens with the camera set to manual. I played with the shutter speed and flash exposure compensation to try and keep the images interesting and not too flash heavy.

200 Days and Counting

I have just passed 200 days in my 365 project, I didn’t even notice at the time. The last few weeks have been quite hard, finding images to take and getting them done. My 200th image was a camellia outside my work, quick and easy. I’m hoping my motivation will improve soon.

I did cycle to work yesterday which gave me a chance to get some quite nice sunrise and sunset images while freezing my fingers. Worth it though. I have a few days holiday coming up with the kids off school so that should give me a chance to recharge my enthusiasm, having got this far I intend to finish the entire 365.

Apart from my 365 project I have been kept busy with the start of the next semester of my diploma course, this time a Photoshop module, useful and lots to learn but quite time consuming.

Sunrise

Sunset

I Passed

The results from my first semester on the Diploma in Digital Photography have come through and I am happy to say I passed. I suspect the photography paper I have just completed will be far the easiest in the course as I am just starting work on my Photoshop paper. While I am happy playing with images in Aperture and various plugins I have generally avoided using Photoshop, probably intimidated with the learning curve and the shear array of possibilities. That said one of the main reasons for underaking this course was to learn Photoshop as a means for putting the finishing touch to images so I am looking forward to it although with some reservations.

I have been out taking a few images over the last few weeks, back to Willowbank and Akaroa both of which I enjoy.

 

 

 

 

SmuginForiPhoto v1.0 Released

The first version of SmuginForiPhoto, my iPhoto 11 to SmugMug export plugin has just been released.

Features

• Upload images and movies to SmugMug from iPhoto.
• The caption can be generated from the image/movie version name.
• The caption can be edited directly for each image/movie being uploaded.
• The keywords to be set on SmugMug can be edited.
• Any keywords used are remembered and auto-completion is provided for keywords.
• The destination gallery can be selected from a list or a hierarchical menu based on the gallery category and subcategory details.
• New galleries can be created either using the SmugMug default values or from user defined gallery templates.
• New categories and subcategories can be created.
• SmuginForiPhoto uses Growl (if installed) for status notifications.
• Each image can be exported to a different gallery if required.
• Keywords can be automatically included or excluded from all exported images.

Give it a try…

SIT2LRN 103 Portfolio Complete

I have just finished editing my first set of portfolio images for my diploma course. It took a while to finally decide on which images to use and the order. The final touch ups also took a while! I think they have turned out reasonably well. The intention of the set is to show the progression of decay for a bunch of tulips, starting with the lovely fresh flowers and ending with the scattered remains.

The set doesn’t show a great range of technique unfortunately, I did take a wider variety of images but the final set were all made in a very similar manner using off camera flash and sometimes a black background. On the plus side I didn’t need to go out in the rain and cold and dark to make the images which would have been necessary for most of my other ideas!

I still need to write a few hundred words explaining what I intended to achieve and how I went about it but having written this that should not be too hard.