Bride & Bridesmaids

, originally uploaded by Tracey Ambrose.

Bridesmaid & guest

, originally uploaded by Tracey Ambrose.

Guests

, originally uploaded by Tracey Ambrose.

Great Uncle & his nieces

, originally uploaded by Tracey Ambrose.

Wedding 1

, originally uploaded by Tracey Ambrose.

The following photos are from the series I do on behalf of Flax Cafe & function centre, Kiwi Valley – Henderson Valley Rd.

Flickr

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Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk: Auckland

I am not a user of Lightroom, and thus I will probably never actually read Scott Kelby’s new book on Lightroom, I use Aperture, and I’m happy to be doing so, at least for now. This did not, however, deter me from signing up to take part in the Auckland stretch of the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk on Saturday. It was the first chance I’ve ever had to get out with a bunch (50 odd) people to simply take photos and chat. It was a great day, although we have very little of that lovely NZ light I fell in love with since moving here, the day was cloudy but at least it only rained for a little bit.

You can see some of the amazing shots taken on the day here at the flickr group sight. I must say that I really did enjoy the experience and I’m happily trying to figure out how to get all my passions to work together because I really would like some more time dedicated to photography. 

I’m managing to spend a lot less time in post processing, partly because I have a little more knowledge of what I’m doing and how to use Aperture rather then jumping back and forth between it and Photoshop, I’m also getting better at using my camera so that my results are a little more predictable. All good things and made this experience that much more pleasurable (I really wasn’t looking forward to the post processing stage I must say).

Things I did find out about myself on the walk, uninspiring lighting makes me start to think differently about what I’m trying to achieve, themes help, my husband has far too much influence over me and I started thinking “what would Craig like to see a photo of?” fortunately he has good taste and I was able to find a few shots (13 out of 70 odd), that really appealed to me at the end of the day. I also noticed that I have a hard time trying to remember to do everything, if I remember to check my aperture and shutter speed settings I forget about my ISO (I ended up shooting the entire day at 800 when 400 would have been much better, this has resulted in a lot more “noise” in the darker area’s of my photos then I’d like). It also wasn’t until the very end of the day that I realised I had also been forgetting about what “metering mode” I was using. I almost feel like I need to write myself a little check list and stick it to camera so that I check then shoot.

Here are those 13 of my favorite images (3 of them are actually of the same homeless guy because I simply couldn’t decide which final picture I liked best).

PhotoWalk – Auckand

I’m rather excited, a few days ago I found out about Photowalk, it’ basically an excuse for a bunch of photography geeks around the world to go for walk as a group with their cameras and take photos of their city. There is a limitation of 50 people per city and I just squeezed into the Auckland walk yesterday due to a cancelation.

I haven’t really been doing a great deal of photography of late, mostly because I’m no enjoying the limitations I’m faced with due to low lighting situations. I’ve taken some rather cool photos but have had to spend more time then I’d like in post processing them so they haven’t really gotten to the finished on the web or flickr stage yet. I’m hoping that being around a bunch of other photographers will help to inspire me a little more, and maybe I’ll pick up a few tips along the way.

Time to get myself organised, hopefully I’ll have some photos to upload soon.

Flax Cafe Shoot

I have a favorite cafe here in the west of Auckland, called Flax, it’s owned by the family of my friend and neighbour (who is also manager there). A few months ago they had a wedding function and asked me to take some photos of the event for their website, in exchange they offered to either pay me or I could eat free for a while, I chose to eat free. Apparently they were very impressed with my work because last week they asked me to do some more work for them. The photos are for their website and brochures and will be focused on the cafe itself, staff and food. 

Getting this assignment has been fantastic for my confidence and the kick in the but I needed to get some of my DIY gear happening. I finished building a lightbox, and a diffuser for my strobe which both worked great. I did find that my box was a little too small to do everything I wanted and that I should have had it raised at a higher level (kneeling on the hard floor hurts after a while). I was also lucky enough to have my friend stand in as assistant (or extra tripod for the strobe) which was wonderful. Having someone there to bounce my thoughts of was so nice and helped me really think through my shots and actually take the time to think about what I was doing. 

This first session took 3 hours, I shot 3 food items and a bunch of coffee & hot chocolates. As soon as I got home I downloaded the photos to the iMac and sorted them, deleting the really crap and rating the better. I learnt a lot from just looking at the various photos of the same item, such as angle and focus point. One thing that I did prior to the shoot was pop into Spotlight (craft supplies) and picked up a huge range of scrapbook papers, including some metallic ones (which included a shiny silver and gold which are great for reflecting light. The papers work as fantastic backdrops for the food & drink, although if they had been a little bigger it would have been even better, I’m thinking expenses, fancy wrapping paper next time.

Here’s a couple of pics of my DIY lightbox:

 As you can see, this isn’t the prettiest of lightboxes, it’s held together with “electrical” tape and the material is a triangle bandage I cut up from our first aid kit.

 

 

 

 

 

Only the base still has all it’s cardboard. The top, sides and back have all been hacked into with a box cutter, leaving about a 2″ frame.

 

 I have a large piece of white card as a seamless backdrop and then I placed different backgrounds over that. The white helps to reflect some of the light too. I’ve also got a piece of the shiny metallic paper stuck to the right hand side (not in the picture at the moment as I was starting to pack things up). The silver paper really did help with reflecting the natural light coming from the left through the window. I also had a lamp with a warm white globe (I wanted a daylight globe but they didn’t have any) clipped onto the front left corner of the box. 

I tapped a translucent (is that the right word???) fabric across the front of a small box and then fitted it around the lamp to soften the light from the lamp. I did the same to a plastic container for the strobe. I really did find that doing this softened the shadows a lot.

One other thing, ALWAYS check your gear the day before. I checked mine the night before and meant I had to do a rush to the shops in the morning before the shoot to buy batteries for my strobe. I also got to the shoot and realised I didn’t have my lens cleaning cloth.

I’m going back today to take photos of some of the fresh cooked food (like hamburgers and mushrooms on toast). The weather is very gray and rainy, which I think might be a good thing as the natural light will be more diffused. I found that when the sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds it was a real pain because I had to keep adjusting my camera settings.

So things to remember today:

• Focal point
• Shooting height
• Aperture size (DOF)

I’m also going to take along some of my favorite cookbooks for inspiration. Ohh, and I may have a wedding to shoot soon too. I’m really going to need a better strobe and bigger reflectors for that one.

I think my current order of priorities, purchase wise, are:

• New strobe & slave control
• Good tripod (old one can be used for strobe)
• Reflectors
• Lights (mostly because I want lights that are energy efficient with white light globes)

Black & White – Trial 1

Last night I attended my first, of 5, classes in Black & White photography & darkroom technique. 5 minutes ago I finished taking my first roll of film. I’m never going to make a good film photographer, unless I have my own instantly accessible darkroom, can you believe that I have to wait an entire week before I can see what I’ve imaged? Last night’s class was primarily an intro, the teacher will only be with us for the first two weeks, she’s over committed herself, and then we’ll have a new teacher for the final three weeks. Personally, I think this shows in the way she taught the class. It’s a five week quick wiz class, I get that, but still she could have actually thought about what she was teaching us and presented things a little better. I know what she’s talking about and what the aim of this weeks assignment is, not because of her, but because I have copy of the Michael Langford, Basic Photography book she’s referring to *sigh*. Unfortunately she was a little all over the place which resulted in unclear instructions and serious problems working out what information was important and what was just interesting.

Anyways, this session is focused on pattern and texture composition, thinking about lighting, selective focus, repetition and movement. Some of the suggested subject matters include corrugated iron (rusted, painted, corroded etc), peeling paint, torn posters, graffiti or natural subjects such as trees/bark/driftwood, leaves, lichen, rocks etc etc. We are using 100 ISO, Rollei retro film (emulsion: 706), it’s a German made film @ 24 exposures.

My other new experience, aside from B&W photography in general, is the fact that I’ve never used a film SLR in manual mode! I used to own one, I had no idea what to do with it and plugged it into auto 90% of the time (with a few experimental days of shutter speed and/or aperture play, not much and not often). So I’ve had to borrow a camera for the class, it’s a Nikkormat FT3 (produced the year I was born), by Nikon. On the camera I have Nikon, Nikkor 35mm 1:2.8 lens.

So far what I’ve liked about today’s session was the fact that I paid a hell of a lot more attention to the texture of the objects, climbing into the patch of nasturtiums under the lemon tree to capture the veins and that sort of thin. I’m frustrated with the fact that I can’t just upload the images NOW so that I can go off and improve them. I also have no idea how well this camera focuses, the light meter is really hit and miss, it’s a needle that moves up and down and is the only battery operated, automatic part of the entire camera. So there are loads of challenges for me, B&W composition, manual focusing, sketchy light metering (using the sunny 16 rule here a bit), a fixed lens and a camera that’s as heavy as a brick. Challenge = learning experience = better photographer (repeat infinitum). Tomorrow I’m hoping to inspire myself to play around with light a little more in my compositions – how? I have no real idea just yet Now, because I have a Nikon D70, I can use the lens from the Nikkormat on the D70 so I’m going to slow myself down a bit and actually take one shot on the Nikkormat, remove lens, place lens on D70, take same photo. I can’t unfortunately use all the same settings as my D70 doesn’t do ISO 100, only 200, but I’ll do my best to get things equal. I’m then going to upload the D70 photos and do some Photoshop B&W conversion so that next week after I’ve developed the film I can do some comparisons, and hopefully give examples.

I’d also like to note that the above photo was taken by me a few minutes ago in a very simple light tent (or box rather) that I made this morning. It’s a cardboard box with white card curved into it to make a seamless backdrop, lighting is 100% natural coming in front on, through the front door. Not perfect and not really suitable for true stock photography uses, but very usable for this sort of thing and great practice for me.