I was invited yesterday to take some photos of the premilinary judging at the 2006 Moda Italia, Moreton Institute of TAFE fashion parade. My friend Carly and from what I can tell her friends there all made it to top 20 and the final judging in October to win a scholarship at a design school in Italy.

This was a new experience for me, shooting with a Digital SLR and external flash on moving subjects at night. It’s much different from portrait and wedding photography where you can control the subject’s movement. After reviewing the photos, most of them looked slightly blurred, or seemed out of focus. I was shooting at ISO400 at around f2-4. I would have thought that with the flash that I could shoot basically as fast as I wanted, but that wasn’t the case.

Most shots are under a 40/sec, which means that any movement whatesoever is going to blur. You will see that some of the “better” shots which don’t show that blur, the model held her pose longer than usual. Whilst others were speedy gonzalas’. Anyways, I possibly should have gone to ISO800 but i really dislike that noise it produces at that sensitivies. BUT, it is better than blurred photos.

Anyways, check them out for yourself here

I was interested in making some saffron rice recently. I went to the shop to buy some saffron and guess how much it costs!? No, not a million, but about $13-15 per 1g container. The container weighs more than the saffron inside it! I didn’t buy any.

Anyways, I found an indian food supply shop in fortitude valley, its in the arcade between the mall and chinatown.. I can’t remember the name sorry.

Anyways, it was $5 a container there, a much better price. So I bought some.

I had a quick look on wikipedia to see why it’s so expensive and here are some yielding facts:
Wikipedia:
“Only in October (in the Northern Hemisphere) do the plants begin to flower. Harvesting of flowers is by necessity a speedy affair: after their flowering at dawn, flowers quickly wilt as the day passes.^[14] Furthermore, saffron crocuses bloom within a narrow window spanning one or two weeks.^[15] Approximately 150 flowers yield 1 g of dry saffron threads; to produce 12 g of dried saffron (72 g freshly harvested), 1 kg of flowers are needed. On average, one freshly-picked flower yields 0.03 g of fresh saffron, or 0.007 g of dried saffron.^[13]“

Oh, I ditched my rice cooker, I literally got sick from eating the flaking teflon from the worn dish inside. I will get a new one soon, till then its pan cooked.

I’ve had a big month of Photography work and I think i’m getting photographers eye. I think a lot of pirates used to be photographers, arghh!

I did two weddings, both with my mum Lou (yes i needed someone to hold my hand), no silly, she is a wedding photographer. Lou Bowman of Bowman Photography is a traditional film photographer on Brisbane’s southside.

If you attended either of these weddings and wish to purchase prints, please use the contact form on the right to enquire or call me on 07 3122 3763. Prices are $10 each for 7 x 5″ prints, contact me for other size prices.

On the 26th of August, Emily and David got married at The Bardon Centre at Mt Cootha. This was a fairly casual wedding which made it a fun and enjoyable day for everyone involved.

On September 2, I was again with mum shooting a wedding, this time the wedding of Deb and Craig at Shangri-La gardens at Wynnum. This venue has been totally revamped and has changed since I last did a wedding there. It’s brand spanking new and is VERY classy inside. This was another casual wedding, where the ceremony and reception were at the same venue. We went to the water to take a few photos after the ceremony.

Marc and Lisa came around for some portraits in my studio last friday night. Neo helped with the operations of the shoot, see if you can spot him helping. We got some fun shots, including fan-induced red eye shots. I guess you had to be there.

The following saturday I took some family portraits for Cameron and his family at Newstead Park. Midday was probably the worst time to try and take photos. We did however find some nice shady areas to shoot. I got some fun shots of Cam and Shannon playing Paper, scissors rock in the background with their parents in the foreground. This is a fun technique for the people in the photo and is something I’d like to use in the future.

Later that day I drove towards samford on the north west of Brisbane to do some work for Carly Faragher, a fashion designer at Moreton Tafe. She needed some photos taken of her designs with some models. It was a pretty good time of day (2:30pm) to shoot photos, however because it was out in the “sticks” there were a lot of shadows cast by the trees. The idea of shooting out that way was to get some photos with some horses, which was some of the inspiration for the designs.

The shoot went pretty straightforward, whilst we had to work around the horses, we found other opportunities for great photos, including a ride-on lawn mower. No I didn’t play the lawn mower but yes there was a real one there that made for some interesting photos.

I have a few fashion events coming up thanks to Carly, so keep an eye out for some more of my work in my photo gallery. I will make a post here when I make the updates.

I’ve uploaded all of these photos on my photo gallery. I’ve re-arranged my gallery so that albums are in categories. It was starting to get a bit out of control, but I think it works more efficiently now. So obviously the Wedding photos are in the Wedding Photography category. Youse can work out the rest.

I’d love any comments about my latest photos, please feel free to sign up for FREE and add comments to any of my blog posts.