My Mission Australia Project To Help Youth Homelessness

This is Maryanne.  At 18 she was kicked out of home and became homeless.  As Maryanne said, it’s actually very easy to become homeless and a hell of a lot more difficult to find a home.

I’ve always loved it when I can combine my love for photography with a philanthropic cause.  Earlier this year I went to Tanzania and made a video for St. Judes, the year before that I was in Uganda supporting an school for aids orphans.

I just finished a project with Mission Australia.  I photographed and made videos of four kids that either are still homeless or were homeless.  It was fascinating for me how different each of their stories were.  While some kids came from the stereotypical broken home,  others grew up in what you would call a totally normal family.

I enjoyed photographing the kids and trying to capture something of themselves in a dignified way.

I have made small vignettes of each of their stories.  If you are interested in understanding how kids can find themselves homeless, head over to my Vimeo site and check out the short videos.

This is Nate.  Nate’s parents were both heroin addicts and he was kicked out of home when he was 13.  He fell in with the wrong crowd and was led down a life of crime.  Nate was jailed at 17 for armed robbery.

After going through rehab, he started Mission Australia’s Creative Youth Initiative where they teach disadvantaged kids art and music.

This course turned Nate’s life around and since then he’s been going to TAFE and has almost completed his Diploma in Music Production.

I really enjoyed meeting all of the students.  I hope my photography and video editing help Mission Australia raise funds to help Australia’s young homeless problem.

Brent

Photoshop Tutorial – Processing Death Valley

 

I had a request for a tutorial on how I processed the image above.  So I have put together a short 4min tutorial on the processing of Death Valley Image.  Enjoy.

Brent

 

 

B&W Graphic Portrait Project

Here’s a project that I have recently kicked off.  I want to put together a body of work of models shot in front of very graphical buildings or backgrounds.   All the work is black and white and have strong graphical elements in it.  Here’s a few shots that I did as a test/starter.

This image of Carly was shot in front of the cool chain-mail curtain hanging around the building on the corner of Bent St and O’Connell St in Sydney.  If you haven’t seen this chain mail, it’s pretty cool.

Same building as above, but just around the corner, I really loved the black and white contrast of the steps and column.  Both of these images printed up nicely in B&W.  I’m enjoying the challenge of “seeing in B&W” as I scout Sydney in with a whole new mission.  Both shots were taken with one light, an Einstein shooting into a Parabolic Light Modifier.

Today I went scouting and found a few more locations that have potential…. see what you think….

I saw this wall in a courtyard and loved the black and white graphic patterns…. There’s a ton of it lining the whole courtyard, so I figure I can play with big patterns (if the model is close to the wall), or small patterns if the wall is in the distance.

This second shot is of a huge sculpture outside another building.  What grabbed my attention was not only the textures on the steel sculpture, but also the way the light was beautifully graduated around the curved surface.  I’m thinking that could be a pretty cool abstract background.

I’m Back!

Hey for those of you that follow my blog,  I apologise for my absence.  I just looked and it has been about 3 months since I have posted.

I have had a bunch of crap going on at work.  The specifics aren’t important, but it’s amazing how distracting stuff like that can be.  I found it totally distracted me and zapped my creative energy big time.  I had no desire to do any Photoshop work, and I wasn’t using my camera anywhere nearly as much as I normally do.

But I’m back… and with a vengence.  I have worked on a few projects recently, and I’ll post on those in the next few days.  I’m also only 3 weeks away from what I think is going to be a photographic trip of a lifetime – Namibia!!!!  I’ll also tell you more about that in the coming days.   I’ve been using some great new plug-ins for Photoshop and generally starting to have a lot of fun again.

I’ve also got a couple of tutorials that I’m planning.

So again, for anyone that gives a toss…. sorry for my absence.

Brent