Karijini – Beatiful Place… Beautiful Model

While we were at Karijini we had a very pretty waitress called Tahlea who not only had a great smile, but a gorgeous personality.  So I propositioned her to see if she would like to join Mark Stothard and I for an off-camera flash shoot in the gorge the following morning.  Tahlea was certainly up for the challenge and we had a really enjoyable time shooting in and around Kermits Pool.  Here’s just a couple of the shots I took.

While Tahlea was a bit unsure about the whole “modelling thing” at first, after just a few minutes she really got into the spirit of the session and enjoyed being photographed.  I used one Nikon SB900 with a brolly to light Tahlea.

Plenty more images coming of Karijini… I’m not even attempting to process my best images until I get back to my desktop computer.

BP

Karijini – One Of The Best Photo Locations On The Planet?

I have been fortunate enough to photograph many of the iconic landscape locations in Australia and the USA including Canyonlands, Bryce, Arches, Antelope, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Olgas,  Kings Canyon etc. etc.   but I think Karijini National Park in Western Australia is as good as any of these… and may even be better than most!  It is without a doubt one of the least known but amazing locations in Australia.  This posting is going to be the first in a whole series of postings that outlines my experiences of the past week.

I have just returned from an incredible workshop that was run by 3 of Australia’s top photographers.  Christian Fletcher, Peter Eastway and Tony Hewitt.  I was one of 17 other participants who joined this workshop in order to shoot this incredible location in the company of some truly talented professional photographers.

Getting there was a chore… we opted to drive up from Perth which was 16 hours driving each way.  I shared a car with Mark Stothard, Peter Ng and Keith Lightbody.   When we set out on the journey I did have some concerns about spending 32 hours total in a car with three others… especially when Mark started playing his eclectic library of music… I was dealing with the Arabic disco music but drew the line at Zorba the Greek and Nanna Maskouri!!!  I had to take more control of the iPod…. after that adjustment we got on just fine.

The only incident of note came after we made camp… we got up for a sunrise shoot around our camp site…. This is when I got a tasted of just how competitive Christian is about getting the great images.   I was walking over towards an old abandoned caravan that Christian had just finished scouting…. however as I approached, I was blocked by an electric fence.  I surveyed the fence with caution and then Christian seeing my dilemna said “Don’t Worry Mate…. It’s not turned on”.  So while carrying my camera and tripod I put one leg between the fence to squeeze between the strands when all of a sudden my upper thigh touched the wire and I got a hell of a boot from the fence.  I bounced off the top wire and back to the middle wire for a second boot… then a third boot…. before extracting myself from the fence.

Christian looked at me and laughed “Oh I guess I was wrong about that fence”.   So I decided on getting my own back by photographing Christian in front of his van that he had just had sprayed with a custom spray job…. He was trying to keep it quiet.

I will be posting a series of blog posts with details of what it was like to explore and photograph Karijini National Park as well as participating in this incredible workshop.  I will share some of my images and I will complete the series with a high definition video that I have shot in Karijini.   You guys should check that out to really get a sense of what it is like to photograph this incredible place.

More posts to come shortly.

Brent

Karijini Here I Come!

I’m so excited.  Tomorrow afternoon I leave for what I’m anticipating will be an incredible photography workshop.  I’m heading out to Karjini National Park in the Pilbara for a workshop that is being run by Peter Eastway, Christian Fletcher, and Tony Hewitt.  Three exceptionally talented pros are taking us to a landscape Mecca to immerse ourselves in the gorgeous colours of the outback and this magical place.  I will be offline for the week, and the guys have asked me to run a guest class one night on Night Photography and Light Painting, so that should be fun…. I’ve got a special idea in mind that I’m going to try to execute with the group.

As usual I will be taking my little video camera, so when I get back I will share with you the behind-the-scenes mayhem of this incredible workshop.  Just to make you a bit jealous I am going to leave with some incredible imagery from Mike Fletcher (Christian’s brother).   He shot this with a Canon 5DII.   Enjoy…….  See you all in just over a week… hopefully with some half-decent images.

A Great Tool For Photographers!

Hey folks

Somebody recently pointed me to a new tool for landscape and urban photography…. so of course I was pretty interested and checked it out.  In the first week that I have been using the software it has already helped me immensely and I urge you all to check it out.

It is called The Photographers Ephemeris… Now I don’t know about you but I didn’t know what the hell an Ephemeris was (but I do now)…. It’s basically tables of astronomical movements (sun, moon etc.)  Now while I was relying on various other sites to give me information about sun and moon positions, what I like about this tool is the integration to Google Maps.  You can simply put in an address or location, and you see a placemark appear on the Google Maps screen showing sunrise, sunset, sun & moon position at any point int the day overlayed over the Google Maps!!!  It’s Awesome.

The thin orange line shows the direction of the Sun at the time I was shooting. On the right hand side you can see the elevation of the sun at that time is < 30degrees

A Recce shot at the Old Dunlop Factory

Let me relay a real case study of how this has helped me on a shoot that I am planning later today.  Last Saturday I went to the abandoned Dunlop Factory in Alexandria for a scouting trip in preparation for a shoot that I am planning today.  I took this photograph of my son as a scouting shot.   I rang the model and set a time of 3PM on Sunday for the shoot figuring that as the sun sets the ambient light will be lower and I’ll have more control with my strobes.   Now yesterday I was playing with The Photographers Ephemeris and I typed in the address to the search box at the bottom and my location came up.  I then adjusted the calendar to todays date and moved the time slider to 3PM.  It immediately showed me that the angle and elevation of the sun was wrong for my shoot.  The old warehouse has big open sides on the second story, and I didn’t realise that they were facing due West.  This would mean that the setting sun would shine right into the factory and give me too much ambient light.  So I called the model and re-scheduled the shoot for 90 minutes earlier when the elevation of the sun would be higher (about 40 degrees).

This is a great tool, it’s available free for Mac & Windows platforms, and you can buy it for your iPhone as well.   I have bought it as well as downloading it on my Mac at home and I have also made a donation to the developer of this great bit of software.

Head on over to the developer’s website where you can download the application and also watch a couple of quick tutorials on how to use it.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Brent