The idea was to photograph a series of pet-food packs. This seemed easy enough, but it wasn’t as simple as it might seem…

The plastic packs proved highly reflective (as seen on the left image), so a few tricks were required.  Firstly I used a polarizing filter over the lens, then I experimented with polarizing gel over the flashes.  This helped a lot, but the final tweak came via a simple trick – namely to take one photo, move the lights and take another.  The two images were then overlaid in Photoshop, and using selective masking I could paint over most of the reflections showing a non-highlighted part of the pack in the layer below (I left some reflections on purpose to communicate the surface feel)

So far so good…

Had an interesting experience in social media last night when I joined an ad-hoc get together thanks to a twitter post from photographer Chase Jarvis.  Generous with his time (just landed in Sydney two hours before the get together) and actively seeking feedback on his blog and it’s offerings from the 50 or so who turned up.  Smart. Friendly.  Left a good impression. Oh, and takes a mighty fine photograph.

And doing the opposite look-and-feel of the white on whute shot below, this one obviously being all about black. But you knew that.

An interesting shot this one – it involved securing the camera to the car with a Manfrotto suction cup and arm.  The camera was fired by Pocket Wizard, roughly an eigth of a second to get the blur off the tunnel walls, and at the end of the expsoure, the hotshoe fired another PW that in turned fired flashes on the back seats and one on the dash.  Sweet. If not nerve wracking.

This photo looks straightforward, but it involves a little magic.  The trick is in the shadow.  What I have done here is light the flower from above right, and also from below – as it is resting on some translucent white plastic.  The shadow efect is simply black cardboard cut to a shape traced from another light (which was not used in the photo).  That shape is called a gobo as it “goes between” the under floor light and the subject – in efect atached to the base of the white plastic – and voila, one well lit flower with depth added by trick shadow!

Sigh… A word of warning if you’re thinking of setting up an account with Blu Domain. http://www.bludomain.com/

While their templates and web hosting work fine, the back end support really lets them down…

For a couple of months I have been trying to arrange a Domain Name Transfer – a simple process.  They have had me pay two minor invoices to action this, but still I wait.  The customer rep has been patient and helpful, but even now she has gone silent – perhaps embarrassed by her tech people.

Enough already. Time to rant. My opinion, now tarnished, is to avoid these people.

The original $3 departure tax, now $5...

A while back I wrote about the evil pit known as he Wagga Airport Terminal in Australia, but there is another place worthy of special mention – that being Palmerston North Airport in New Zealand.

While Palmerston’s “new” terminal is vastly superior to the previous “box with drafts” that was once considered good enough for fare paying passengers, the current terminal’s claim to notoriety is that they charge a $5 departure tax. Frankly the notion of paying a departure tax to use said facility is beyond comprehension. OK so it was originally $3 and implemented to pay the interest on the new facility, but then it was retained and boosted to $5 to pay for “various upgrades” – which the Palmerston North Airport Website (as of March 2008) helpfully points out as being for things like “road widening – scheduled to start in 2003”

The attendant selling the departure stickers was doing a brisk trade, and he told me that no one really complains about paying to leave. Understandable, as possibly the most entertaining things to do in Palmerston North is hold your breath until you keel over. This forsaken place endures some particularly crap weather and a CBD where every day is like Sunday. Palmerston North’s fastest growth industry appears to be sign writing such is the barrage of cheap and cheesy retail messages that qualify for city art in the absence of anything culturally interesting.

But back to the Departure Tax; the airports web site refers to the tax as a “Levy” as I guess it sounds kinder, but a quick check confirms the word levy means tax or fine, and I think fine would be a better term – a fine for being foolish enough to pass through the facility sounds about right.

Perhaps most bizarre, as you head through to the gap in the fence Departure Gate, your boarding pass is scanned as normal, then two paces beyond this, another person scans the Departure tax sticker. What the? Why can’t the person who scanned the boarding pass also check the levy sticker? Is my Departure Tax just paying the second person wages? (A person I might add, who looked so miserable that he would be best relived of this incredibly tedious and ultimately futile job).

Nothing to be said that can’t be said better by clicking this link…

Following my attempts to emulate Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, this photo is based on the work of C.S. Ball.

Fill-light bounced off card in front of model and below camera, soft boxes from rear left and rear right. ISO 25. High res version from Sinar.

Clarence Sinclair Bull. b. 1896, d. 1979, USA Clarence Sinclair Bull was the head of MGM’s stills department for nearly forty years, Clarence Sinclair Bull, along with George Hurrell virtually invented celebrity portraiture as we know it today, capturing with rare artistry a breathtaking roster of stars in brilliant and often surprising ways. His magical and dream‐like photographs in particular his collaboration with Greta Garbo, whom he photographed almost exclusively from 1929 until 1941 became the classic images of Hollywood portrait photography, instrumental in fixing the essential look of a star and in setting standards of beauty male and female ‐ to this day. Bull’s days at MGM included 200 of his enduring portraits of such legendary film stars as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivian Leigh, Spencer Tracy, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo – in fact he took over 4000 photographs of Garbo. He became Garbo’s favourite photographer (she had clashed with Hurrell and did not care for his manic personality) and as her power at the studio grew, she eventually requested that only Bull photograph her.

Winner of four Academy still photography exhibition awards, his early interest in photography took him to Hollywood in 1918 where he was hired as an assistant cameraman at Metro Pictures. He shot stills of the stars during the production breaks, and when Goldwyn merged with Metro in 1924, he became head of the MGM stills department, and remained at MGM for the rest of his career. Though Bull was experienced in every branch of his department, from lighting to printing and retouching, he is best‐known for his remarkable portraits of Hollywood stars.

An attempt inspired by American photographer Irving Penn’s series known as The Trades. Penn was a master of simple light and careful composition. Although he used studio flash (as was used here, one softbox feathered to left background and one camera right ro subject, triggered by PW), Penn was also famous for using window light – especially his series of portraits taken in tent-like studio that he took to New Guinea and other countries with fascinating results.

Clarity, composition, careful arrangement of objects or people, form, and the use of light characterize Penn’s work. Penn also photographs still life objects and found objects in unusual arrangements with great detail and clarity. While his prints are always clean and clear, Penn’s subjects vary widely. Many times his photographs are so ahead of their time that they only came to be appreciated as important works in the modernist canon years after their creation. (Wikipedia)