Shaun's Eyes

R in White Corset

2008-10-01T16:11:00.002+10:00

My new favourite photo.

First one from a burlesque photo shoot with two lovely models and my new 450D.

R on Balcony

2008-09-16T19:32:00.003+10:00

Yeah I'm back. This is actually an old photo though. New ones from my shiny new 450D will appear shortly.

Autumn Glow

2007-01-14T16:20:00.000+11:00

It's been two months since I last posted a photo here.

I'm back in the game.

Godlight

2006-11-15T19:58:00.000+11:00

Sometimes he completely loses his sense of subtlety. Sheesh.

Green & Bronze

2006-09-02T08:32:00.000+10:00

Yep, high contrast low saturation again. I'm becoming a bit of a one trick pony. That's okay, I like this trick. Not entirely sure why. I think it's cos it really brings out the texture of the midtones well.

Ghosts

2006-08-14T10:10:00.000+10:00

From a very foggy morning down at Marieville Esplanade.

Fluff Piece

2006-07-26T19:56:00.000+10:00

Clouds rock, especially when you get above them.

Kat Redux

2006-06-14T22:24:00.000+10:00

Was trying some Photoshop techniques I'd seen somewhere by playing around with some photos I'd taken of Kat a while back, and instead ended up with something much cooler. I discovered something about how I'd shot a few of the Kat photos leant itself to fairly easily producing the above effect. Despite what it mite look like, there's very little actual photo retouching going on, it's almost entirely just grading (Photoshop adjustment layers rock for experimenting). It's a bit of a case of high-contrast low-saturation, bought into control with some standard level twiddling.

Was able to almost completely crush the background to black in a couple of them (as above) while still managing to do something interesting with the flesh tones. This one I did end up cleaning up the dark areas manually a little bit though. Also, in case you haven't guessed, it's been rotated 90 degrees.

Autumn Colour

2006-05-30T18:01:00.000+10:00

Taken in Arthur's Circus, Battery Point. I took the original, desaturated it (took all the colour out, making it black & white), played with the tone until I liked it, then nudged some colour back in. I like approaching an image that way, it makes sense to me because that's how I work with video - I use a black & white viewfinder, which helps with focus a lot and also means I can see the real tone of my image without being distracted by colour. Means I sometimes end up with crappy colours of course, because that comes via an educated guess, but generally if you've got your tone right in black & white you can get the colours right in post.

For those who don't care and just like the pretty pictures, sorry to bore you...

Winter Sunset

2006-05-16T11:40:00.000+10:00

Just because the Elf asked, here's a new photo. Yeah, it's about bloody time.

Took this a couple of days ago from my deck. I don't know why, but winter sunsets are way better than summer ones. Something to do with the Earth's angle no doubt.

The Happy Couple

2006-02-21T17:34:00.000+11:00

The first official ~~publicity still~~ photo from Seth & Em's wedding. People have been hassling me for the wedding photos, but Seth & Em haven't seen them all yet so I still can't release the majority of them. They've seen this one though and are happy for me to post it.

I thought about reframing this one, but decided I'm happy with them slightly off to the bottom right. Dappled lighting can cause chaos but I'm quite happy with how it fell here.

Religion

2006-02-08T21:18:00.000+11:00

Passed this in a store in Melbourne. Made me laugh. I won't write a long rant about why, that's what the photo's for.

For those waiting for photos from That Wedding, you'll have to wait until the happy couple has seen them all first.

Hi Dad

2006-01-30T11:35:00.000+11:00

A new Smith, young Amelia pictured here with her dad. I like the pose & framing but the I'm not loving the colouring. It was quite odd light in that room and I wasn't spending too much time on the photo side of things, there was a new baby to play with. Scary things babies. Far too fragile.

Yeah, it's been a while since I've posted. Not for lack of photos, got quite the backlog. Been quite a busy January...

Into the Blue

2006-01-02T10:21:00.000+11:00

So it's 2006, and the Falls has come and gone again. I wasn't so positive about it this time around, the lineup was good but not awesome. We got in nice and early, had a bloody marvellous spot for basecamp, but then things turned sour. Some virus hit me, and I was not exactly pumped most of the time, and completely out of action on the Friday night (when all the bands I wanted to see most were playing). So that sucked. At least I could hear them from my tent. I managed to recover enough to have a few laughs on Saturday though. Ahh, mosh pits.

Unfortunately, not having enough of the positive elements of Falls meant the negative ones became all to obvious. For one, the Falls population. It's horrifying how many people at Falls are complete morons. The shitferbrains factor is worryingly high. What's worse is that it's obvious a lot of the Dumb Jock™ behaviour that goes on is purely people going along with the crowd. You could tell a lot of the Dumb Jocks™ were actually good blokes, just within a culture that encouraged them to behave like, er, freakwits. It's a saddening aspect of Australian culture. To be fair, a lot of the positive elements of Australian culture are on display too (let's face it, Aussies are bloody champions, it's hard for that not to come through).

Anyway, Adam Hills & Danny Bhoy rocked (comedians) and were probably my highlight. Due to my illness I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked but you'll probably see some more from Falls in the days to come. This photo is from the beach on the first day, the sunlight creeping through and lighting up the water while dark clouds still lingered above. Sambaby bravely strides onwards.

The House Always Wins

2005-12-19T11:52:00.000+11:00

Texas Hold 'em rocks. Never been much of a poker fan, but somehow this variant just clicks. I wasn't running on a whole lotta sleep, but that may have worked to my advantage. I was cleaning up big time. Pulled off a few dangerous bluffs, and assasinated a lot of bluff attempts on me. By the time the Final High Rollers Table was assembled I was rolling in it, from memory with the highest bankroll when we kicked off. A single light illuminated the center of the table, uplighting our final six. Snake-eyes, The Stag, Moneybags, Snowball, The Bluff & Mr Spanky Pants were all ready to throw in on a highest stakes of the night.

Every hand was a dramatic twist. Moneybags had a nice bankroll but he was all nerves. I psyched him out with a calm glare, only to have a dark horse, The Stag, pull the winnings straight out from under the both of us. It was all downhill from there, and I left the table empty handed. I wasn't the first though. Fourth overall, not a bad effort given I didn't jump into the game til mid evening.

Stroke effect & slight desaturation added in Photoshop. I'm pretty happy with it given how dark it was in there, surprised it didn't come out as a blur given how low I had the shutter.

Infested Bike

2005-12-14T11:02:00.000+11:00

Not sure why I like this one. I think it's the solid red, green & black, and the tight depth of field (always cool). And yeah, this is the bike Bron mentioned in a comment earlier. Thanks Bron.

Low Moon

2005-12-07T10:48:00.000+11:00

Sitting low in the Sandy Bay skyline. I'm pretty happy with how this came out despite me still having no tripod (that my FZ30 will fit on anyway). This one was with the assistance of my balcony railing.

Pandora is cool. Like Yahoo Radio only decent quality for free (128k), no ads that I've hit so far, and you can have more specific stations. I started a station based on Sufjan Stevens and it gives me constant new cruisiness.

Noir Dame

2005-12-03T18:04:00.000+11:00

The moment she walked through my door I knew she was trouble, and not just because trouble was my main line of work. I knew exactly what was going to happen. It's always the same. A gorgeous dame will stroll into my office with bambi eyes begging me for help, needing some goon off her back, and before I knew it I'd have powerful men from all corners on my tail, the dame nowhere to be seen, and me left holding the bag.

Still, this one might be different. Besides, I'd had enough paranoid husbands getting me to chase their dallying wives for one week. I told her to take a seat, and tell me her story.

The Tower

2005-12-02T11:26:00.000+11:00

Lately it's been either clear blue skies or completely overcast. Finally had nice textured scattered cloud yesterday, which I noticed when wandering home from work past this old church building most of you will probably recognise.

Knothole

2005-11-28T19:20:00.000+11:00

Random fence in Sandy Bay somewhere.

Didn't get time to get out & shoot much on the weekend unfortunately. More soon.

Kat

2005-11-24T11:44:00.000+11:00

One of the aforementioned shots of Kat. Warmed up a little & slight glow added in post. I want to build up my skills at simple portraits like this, you'll hopefully see more (assuming people let me take photos of them and post them here. Please?).

Angus finally got me to watch 8 Mile last night. I'd been avoiding it, because I was aware it was pretty good, but I consider Eminem a tool so I didn't want to see anything that might allow me to give him any props. I folded though. It wasn't actually as good as I was hoping, but that's probably largely because I'm way too white (oh the irony given the subject matter). The culture it's set in is way too removed from my own, the characters way too different to the people around me. Nonetheless it wasn't a bad tale, and even if hip hop still shits me, the climax was entertaining enough. The film could have relied way too much on the hip hop, given the target audience would've been happy with that, but it didn't really get self-indulgent at all. Which, awesome, because the last thing I wanted to see was a hip hop musical. Ye gads. And surprisingly enough, I respect the theme (getting to your goal your own way), even though the context was so alien to me. Don't totally agree with the theme, but I get it. There's something clearly missing - it set up how relying on other broken humans to get to where he wanted was never going to work, but ended up with him relying on his own broken self. There's only one who can get us to the goal, we can't get ourselves there.

Let's Get Outta Here

2005-11-23T11:02:00.000+11:00

Making a break for it from the sheltered innocence of their inner suburban front garden into the big bad world. Yeah, it's the tail end of spring, you're going to be seeing flower photos aplenty, I figure I may as well take advantage of the season.

Grey

2005-11-22T18:08:00.000+11:00

In typical Hobart spring fashion, after Monday's glorious bright and sunny day things turned 180 for Tuesday. A recently risen Jack insisted on sitting in the drizzle hoping it'd make a cool photo. I think it did. This is indeed photochopped as most of you have no doubt already picked up. I'm going to avoid photochopping generally but if I think it'll make an average photo into a cool one I'll happily do it.

I'm wanting more human subjects to take photos of, I much prefer to have a character in a shot, if I can't find one I'll generally create one (as in Foreboding below). So if I'm hanging around with my camera please be nice and let me use you as a subject, I promise I won't post any shots without the permission of the subject. Kat was my first subject yesterday afternoon, kindly letting me paparazzi her while she was waiting for Bec. Was a great subject, hopefully she'll let me post one of the photos here.

Foreboding

2005-11-21T11:27:00.000+11:00

Yeah. I'm trying a blog again. Only one of these new fangled "photoblogs". Why? Well, I finally got myself a new camera, and I need to make sure I actually use the bugger, and it'd be handy getting some feedback as I progress. So this blog will pretty much just be photos as often as I can with optional rambling by me underneath. So hassle me craploads if I haven't updated in a couple of days. Photos will always be clickable for bigger versions.

Anyway, first photo. I only got a few snaps with the little amount of power that came in the battery, here is my favourite result. Most of them were cliche city (I restricted myself to my backyard, it's a sunny day), but I'm happy with this one as what I'd say is a First Go with the new camera. Titles in these posts will be the title of the photo, and in some cases, like this one, it applies to the ramble as well...