Graffiti and Weddings don't normally mix but....

Hosier Lane and likely many of Melbournes other graffiti covered lanes are not only a playground for tourists and photographers alike but have also become a very sought after location for wedding photographers.

Pretty much any weekend day if you hang around for a couple of hours you will come across a wedding photo shoot in there.

Quiet interesting to see the different styles of weddings and photographers that show up and direct the shoots, some are super organised with an entourage of assistants multiple shooters and tons of equipment and take over the place directing the public to stay out of their shots.

Others turn up with 2 photographers a couple of cameras and get it all done with minimal apparent effort and no interfering with the general public.

The cool thing from an enthusiastic amateur photographer point of view is that it adds a whole other side to taking photos in places like this and gives you willing subjects and situations which you can try out different kinds of photography that is perhaps outside of your normal style.

Harden the F*** Up

After having purchased a Bower 7.5mm lens for the my E-P5 over 9 months ago and having used it once and been put off by the lack of auto-focus, last weekend I decided it was time to take a spoonful of concrete and just get out there with it.

I had just found out about he Maryborough Wings and Wheels event (http://www.wingsandwheels.net.au/) so on Saturday I decided to bolt the 7.5mm lens onto the EM-1, setup focus peaking on/off on Fn2 and with that done I was all ready to go for a relaxed Sunday drive in the country.

So arriving late morning armed with the fully charged battery and empty memory card I started out slowly playing with focus and focus peaking trying to get used to things and after a bit of zooming in as far as possible while reviewing the initial images, I pretty soon worked out that I could leave the focus set in between the 0.25m and infinity everything in the image would be sharp at F11 at a distances I like to shoot and can get close to the subject.

de Havilland Vampire

This Vampire jet image was from the first few shots I took, and it came out as I'd hoped. After those first few shots I started to get more comfortable and started enjoying the event and taking photos more.

Cobra Engine bay

One of the main benefits of this lens and camera combo is how light it is compared to a more conventional DSLR, which meant walking around with it in hand for hourws wasn't an issue even taking a few photos just holding the camera out above the cars to get different angles.

Selfie reflection in Jaguar grill

After biting the bullet and just getting on with it, I have discovered new confidence in this lens and can't wait to get back out there with it. Over all I'm really impressed with the quality of the images produced by this little lens, for the money it's amazing value if you have a need for a fish-eye lens.

Ford Falcon 351 GT

Olympus E-M1 for motor sport photography

This year I had the opportunity to head over to Adelaide for the Clipsal 500 V8 Supercars race, it was the first time I'd been to Adelaide for this race and a very long time. The last time I was there for a race was for the Australian Grand Prix in 94.

I wanted to take my new camera to see how it would perform but was concerned that the Olympus 12-40mm f2.8 PRO kit lens would not be enough to get the reach I'm used to with the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens. The answer I thought, was easy. Rent the new Olympus M.Zuiko ED 40-150mm f2.8 PRO and i'd be off and running, but checking the inter-webs for local stores who would rent that lens proved less then fruitful, unless I wanted to rent it for a minimum of 6 months which was a little longer then I needed it for.

So I decided I'd just take the old faithful Canon 5d and 70-200 plus a couple of other lenses. In a last minute change of mind while packing, very late the night before the very early flight. I decided to just try it, and packed the E-M1 with the 12-40 f2.8 and a Bower 7.5mm lens and see what I would come back with.

So getting to the track and while walking to the seats I grabbed a few photos at a Ferrari club display with some very cool cars.

Ferrari 458

Once in the seats the Porsche Cup series was on the track and this was the first time to try out the camera in action, the zoom as expected left a little to be desired but with the zoom set to the max 40mm (80mm factoring in the crop sensor) and after a little while of trying to get the settings dialed in for some panning action shots this is what I was able to get.

Porsche Cup entry #77 Nick McBride - Bob Jane T-Mart Porsche

This is a cropped shot of the Bob Jane Porsche with a little tweaking in Lightroom, not to bad even considering the crop to make it a decent size in the frame.

One thing different with this camera compared to the Canon is the number of frames it can shoot per second, it's damn fast. I decided not to update to the latest V3 firmware before this just in case something wasn't quite right and I didn't have time to sort it out before hand. But will be putting it on ASAP now to compare the differences and see how much better the new faster C-AF mode is going to be.

Another action photo from the track was of a 2010 Ferrari F1 car doing some demonstration laps, also quite good managing to track the front of the car, also cropped to increase the size of the car in the frame (40mm is just not enough).

2010 Ferrari F1

Somewhere where the I was expecting the E-M1 to be more at home was in some of the track side entertainment and attraction, nothing wrong here, although again more zoom would have been nice in a couple of cases.

Track side bikini fashion show.

 As expected this was no problem for the camera, although it did take me a while to get used to the button layout compared to what I'm used to with the Canon. I still find the Canon controls a little easier to use quickly, but I think it's more a matter of adapting to the new camera.

This is the last of the images for the blog a shot of the classic podium photo shoot where they get the winner with the crowd in the background.

It took me a little while to get comfortable with the camera but eventually I managed to get into a groove and managed to take some photos I'm happy with and I definitely thing this camera can do the job, and do it well (as I would need anyway) just need to get the right lenses and it's quite a capable camera.

Hopefully I can find someone renting the Olympus M.Zuiko ED 40-150mm f2.8 lens before the Grand Prix next weekend so I can give it a good go then.

More of my photos from the 2015 Clipsal 500 can be seen in my Google+ album (Clipsal 500 Album).

The B&W Project - Challenge #3 - Tools of the Trade

Tools of the trade the next challenge in the #BWProject26. hmmm, nothing to exciting for someone in IT field. To try and fit in with the goals of using flash and liquids there was only one option throwing water on a keyboard or mouse. The mouse option would probably have been slightly less interesting with less things for the water to splash off.

The next thing was to find a dead keyboard, having thrown out a keyboard which had been ruined by coffee mid last year. I briefly contemplated purchasing a cheap $5 keyboard but it seemed a little wasteful to ruin a brand new keyboard just for a photo so it was lucky that I found a dead keyboard in the office.

So since starting this project I had ordered some cheap soft boxes and some clamping style flash mounts for the soft boxes and all the bits arrived finally in time for this challenge. Everything seemed to fit relatively well together and it's interesting wrestling with the soft boxes trying to assemble them without "incapacitating" myself. But once it's all together it all seems to work as I expected (rightly or wrongly).

So the next major goal was where to setup and how to set it all up so that there would as little permanent damage as possible from the splashing water, so it was to the kitchen and commandeering the kitchen table and the kitchen.

Once things were setup there was a lot of trial an error placing the soft boxes the keyboard and seeing what worked best before any water was stilt. Initially i was trying to get the table as the base for the keyboard but that was just not going to work splashing water all over it and I didn't have anything large enough or photogenic enough to cover the whole table top. I remembered a sheet of clear acrylic plastic lying around waiting to be used in another project non photographic project and I figured it would give a nice reflection to sit the keyboard on that, but being clear it also gave a very clear view of everything under it as well.

While looking at the keyboard sitting on the acrylic I noticed that there would also not be an easy way to crop anything that the acrylic was sitting on so I found some boxes from a recent PC build and used those to prop up the acrylic sheet off the table. Next step was trying to get something with a nice solid color under the acrylic and I found a black cloth which under the acrylic gave a really nice reflective top to work on.

So after about 50 or so test shots moving lights, trying different backgrounds I had established ground zero.

Ground zero.

There was no turning back once the water starts flying....

I was shooting tethered using Olympus Capture and didn't want to have the laptop next to the splash down area so I used a wireless mouse to trigger the computer to take the shot. Just when you think you can introduce any more lag into a system you add a wireless mouse.

So pressing the left button on the mouse clicked the button on Olympus Capture which then sent the signal to the camera which also triggered the wireless flashes, yay...

So now the "easy" part, time everything perfectly to get enough water and splashes in the image. about 20 shots later and 5 or 6 glasses of water later I lucked out and got something which I was fairly happy with. There were a few shots with nothing in the frame at all, some with water just entering the frame, some with only a few drips in the air. It's just part of the fun.

Once I was happy with the shot there was the worst part of the job to do, the big cleanup, this is where I was beginning to regret selecting liquid photography to try out ;-). About 45 minutes later it was time to look at Lightroom and see what needed to be tweaked.

Processing....

Once I'd settled into the Lightroom editing it was relatively easy to process the setup was already fairly monochromatic and thankfully there was only some minor tweaks to do in Lightroom with a hint of the Liquify filter used in Photoshop to straighten out the back of the acrylic as it had sagged a little with all the water on it, and then removing some extraneous droplets that felt out of place.

The result was this.

1/250 sec, f7.1, ISO 400, 27mm

No more regrets choosing liquid photography now.

The setup....

This is a photo of the setup taken quickly before the cleanup with the phone. There was a soft box on either side of the keyboard one from slightly above, another on the floor behind the table pointing up at the white wall.

Not a lot of room but it seemed to work out and even managed not to knock over the camera tethered to the laptop on the kitchen bench just below the bottom of the photo.

Equipment....

• Camera: Olympus OMD E-M1
• Lens: Olympus 12-40mm f2.8
• Triggers: Pixel Opas
• Flashes: 3 x Vivitar cheapies.
• Stands, clamps, soft boxes: ebay cheapies.

Lessons...

• Try to plan things out a little more ahead of time and look at what might be needed as far as materials to water "proof" the area.
• Look at better flashes the recharge time is quite long and the consistency between shots with the cheap flashes leaves a bit to be desired. Maybe better batteries or try to rig up a power pack.
• More water protection = less cleanup (hopefully).
• More room would be awesome.

hmmmm wonder what the neighbors would think of doing this outdoors at night and setting flashes off every minute or so... 

Bring on the next challenge.