Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2018 i Australian Photography

Ever notice that once you started taking your photography more seriously, you were quickly roped in as the default family photographer? I’ve shot weddings, a family reunion, birthdays, and plenty of other family events over the last few years, and that was even before I started editing this mag. Capturing our friends and family is what most people think about when it comes to taking photos. I’d wager it is also these photos that will have the most meaning to us in the long run. The challenge with portrait photography is most people’s immediate reaction when a camera is pointed at them is to joke around or put on their ‘camera face.’ More often than not it’s this unnatural expression that separates snapshots from more meaningful portraits. The question is,…

Believe it or not, little has changed when it comes to luggage allowances in the past 100 years. With more than 37 years experience (averaging 20-50 flights a year) to all parts of the world, I have only been told once my carry-on luggage was too heavy. Likewise, I have only ever paid excess luggage once. On both occasions I was stopped and I solved the problem with minimal pain. Before you depart, think about how much camera gear you need to take. When I am asked this question, my answer is to “take enough camera gear to do the job - no more or less”. I do not take gear I might need. My kit is very travel friendly, yet allows me to be creative. Ensure you know your…

Over the last few years, there have been a number of attempts made within the photographic community to share the image-making process and to experiment with collaborative publications. Spanning ideas of posting SD cards around the world, leaving disposable cameras on the street and sharing thumb-drives with strangers, these projects have come and gone, some more successful than others. But it wasn’t until recently that a Brisbane printmaker conjured up an idea in the shower (the birthplace of all great epiphanies) that Australia’s most promising collaborative photographic project was born. After a social media post describing the idea instantly gained praise from a network of eager participants, the AFP400TX project was born. CREATIVE LIMITATIONS For Brisbane-based photographer and printmaker Renato Repetto, the process of working with film and traditional darkroom-based…

1 CONNECT WITH YOUR SUBJECT The key to taking successful portrait photos is your ability to create a rapport with your subjects and make them feel comfortable with you. This can be done fairly quickly if you are relaxed, good-natured, enthusiastic, and interested and respectful to those you meet. The skill of meeting someone new and making them feel relaxed around you in a short time can be practiced by approaching others with a smile and a sense of curiosity to learn more about them. It’s important not to come across as being shy. It’s also best not to rush in with your camera to take someone’s photo, but rather take the initial moments to get to know each other and establish a connection. 2 CLEAN & COMPLEMENTARY BACKGROUNDS It’s…

Cape Woolamai, Phillip Island, Victoria. Sony A7RII + FE 4/12- 24 G. Multiple 30s exposures at f16 to test Sony’s new ultra-wide Zoom with NiSi filters 10, 6 and 3 Stop. High resolution files can be viewed here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm35d9BY “I don’t really think of myself as a regular, commercial photographer,” says Mark Galer. For someone who has worked as a photographer for more than thirty years, it’s an unusual statement – but one that starts to make more sense when you look at Galer’s varied career both in-front of the lens and behind it. Today Mark Galer is an ambassador for Sony and Adobe, a master of Lightroom and Photoshop, an author of more than 30 books on photography, and a former senior lecturer and program director of the BA…

I have always been interested in slow shutter speeds and in combining elements from multiple images and this image from the Nullarbor Plains combines both of these techniques. Travelling west on the Eyre Highway in December 2011 with my wife Denise, we pulled over and I made several attempts panning the camera across the landscape. First, I tweaked the saturation and cropped the image to straighten the horizon. At this point I figured the image needed something to make it look more ‘Outback’ and break up the clean lines. I added a well known Nullarbor road sign (also taken on the same trip) with some make shift shadows behind the sign. More than forty years since my last visit to the Eyre Highway my love of the emptiness has not…

I’ve heard it said that if a naturalist could choose only one place to visit from the many incredible areas where diverse wildlife species are found then the island of South Georgia in the far southern Atlantic Ocean would be at the top of the list. This image, which shows a large breeding colony of King Penguins, was taken at Right Whale Bay on a cold rainy day on my first visit to South Georgia. I was the expedition doctor on the ship – that’s my ‘other’ job; one that fortunately has taken me south many times. While standing a respectful distance away from the colony – there are strict guidelines for wildlife interaction on the island – I was still close enough to consider a number of photographic compositions.…

GREEN When we picked the theme for this month’s photo comp we didn’t expect to see quite so many photos of plants! With such a great selection of tree-mendous images we’re not complaining. Here are the best of the bunch. THIS MONTH'S WINNER HEIDI HANLON Green Shelf EDITOR’S COMMENT There were some great images this month but this one stood out for one reason. Heidi has managed to imbue this photo with a sense of emotion, not an easy task with such a simple subject. There’s something filmic and almost foreboding about this photo. The composition is simple, with the row of ferns placed centrally, but the way the light illuminates the fronds and then falls off to nothingness, leaves you wondering about what lies in the shadows. There were…

Give me a mid-range zoom and I could come up with decent photos of pretty much anything. Tell me I have to use this lens for an entire assignment and, while I might grumble, I’d still come back with a reasonable set of images. But let’s face it, collectively they’d be a bit banal and the range of ‘looks’ would be very limited. Legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was dubious about the way some lenses added their own distinct inflection to the image, hence he used 35mm and 50mm lenses a lot of the time. That was his style, but for the rest of us, using something way outside the norm allows us to create images with a very distinct look. Three ‘exotics’ that I have used extensively are the fisheye,…

I believe faith is essential nowadays if you want to survive as a professional photographer. In an age where one billion photos are uploaded to the Internet every day, you need some faith just to believe one of your photographs can be unique – to be that one in a billion. And you also need a little faith to keep surviving, particularly on those quiet days when your phone is not ringing. Some days that faith pays off, like when an editor sends you a message – “Hey Ants, are you free on the 12-18 April? Indonesia?”. Australian Photography had been invited to join several other travel writers on a “famil” to Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Larantuka, a small town on the island of Flores some 900 kilometres east…