The other weekend, I did a road trip down to Taupo for the weekend and as usual I had my camera with me (I never go on a trip with out some sort of camera equipment with me). I knew I was going to be camping for the weekend which means getting up early and taking advantage of the early morning light. What I had not counted on was the cold snap that hit overnight. The first morning I woke up later than planned and missed the heavy fog and frost by a few minutes. I literally got one frame off before the fog just disappeared! (See image below)

Sunrise and trees

The second morning I got up on time and though there was no frost on the ground, there was still a heavy fog. I grabbed my camera and untied Copper (my Husky) and started exploring the campsite looking for a good moody composition to capture the mood of the morning. I had already visualized the image I wanted to create based on a Christopher Broughton image that he had hanging in his office at Brooks. He had this beautiful black and white print of a stand of trees in snow and when I saw the fog, I wanted to capture something similar to that print. So I grabbed my camera and tramped through the dew covered grass looking for just the right combination of tree formation, fog, light and after about an hour of shooting various compositions, I found what I was looking for.

Tree in Fog

I do have to admit that when I first took this shot, I was not 100% happy with it, but that was because I was looking at it on the LCD in the back of my camera and in color. The fog and light made for a quite flat and boring image in color but as soon as I converted it into black and white I knew I had captured what I was trying to achieve.

On Sunday, I decided to go down to Hamilton to shoot the 2010 NZ Cyclocross Championships. It was not for an assignment or the organizers, it was just for me. I have been quite busy doing a lot of admin work the last couple of weeks that I have hardly touched a camera, let alone get out and actually shoot something of interest to me.

For those of you not familiar with Cyclocross, it is a combination of mountain biking and road riding. It is really big in Europe and getting big in the States. Riders generally ride hybrid road bikes with wider tires and different brakes than a normal road bike. The races are also generally held in the Fall/Winter months to ensure the wet, muddiest conditions possible, plus it gives the roadies something to do in their off season.

Here are a few select images to give you an idea of what it was like:

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Unfortuantely I have not been doing much shooting the last few weeks, but I do have an interesting project that I am in the process of organizing. Once it goes ahead I will be posting an article about that, but in the mean time here are some quotes by various people on photography that I have found to help me when I have a creative block.

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams
This has been something I have really been working on for the last 6 months or so, not just trying to capture moments, but actually crafting the images in front of my camera.
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams
I hardly ever press the shutter button on my camera unless it is to capture an image that I pictured in my mind before the shoot.
“The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in finding new eyes.”- Marcel Proust
I usually return to this quote when I feel like I have been “stuck at home” for too long.
“No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.” ~Edward Steichen
This is why I love to pull out my holga or even my old film cameras to remind myself that you don’t always need the top of the line equipment to take a good photograph.
“ You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.” – William Albert Allard
This is exactly what I am always doing, especially when I am shooting an even with a bunch of other photographers. Very rarely will you find me in the media scrum trying to get the same shots as everyone else. I will be the one at the back of the room looking for a different take on the scene or the guy who climbs up the mountain to photograph the ski contest with a wide angle lens while the other photographers are at the bottom of the hill with their long lenses.

And finally my favorite quote at the moment:
Creativity is just everywhere! It’s all a matter of perspective.

Have a good week everyone and remember to always keep your eyes open for those creative moments.

Lensbaby lenses were first introduced in 2004 and since then they have steadily increased in popularity among photographers looking for a tool to help them create some unique images. For the most part it has been mostly portrait and fine art photographers who have been using the lensbaby lenses but on a recent kayaking shoot I decided to have a play around with my lensbaby composer lens with and without the wide angle adapter to see what I could get with that and I was quite surprised with the results.

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I was shooting with the aperture at f4 and with the movement of the water and the fact that we were shooting at a standing wave where I knew where the kayakers would be for the most part so that I could pre-focus the image for that spot and compose it for the sweet spot to be right where they were doing their tricks. For the drop shot, again this was a set up shot with the kayaker doing a few runs initially that I shot with my normal lens and once I saw how they were running the rapid, I could pre focus right on the edge of the drop and then just wait for them to come into the frame.

If you are looking for something a bit different for your action shots and feel like pushing the boundaries I would highly suggest that you get a bit creative with a lens baby or some other alternative lenses and you too might just be surprised with what you get.

Call me old school if you like, but yesterday I was cleaning out some old files and came across some old negative sheets from my travels through Tibet and Indonesia.

Instead of taking the film down to the lab to get reprints made, I decided to have a play with them on the computer. So I dusted off a film scanner and proceeded to digitize them. I have not done any scanning in a while and I was not sure what the images would look like. I am not going to lie, the actually process of scanning the images was quite tedious and boring. But it turns out that it was well worth the effort. I had almost forgotten what real grain looks like and how it can actually add an extra element to an image. Also the imperfections of the negative itself, bits of dust and scratches (most of which I did clean up digitally) add to the feel of the image.

For those photographers out there who have never shot a roll of actual film and unfortunately that number is growing rapidly I truly believe that until they do actually shoot real film, they will never really appreciate the difference between a digital image and an analogue image. As convenient as digital is, there is something about film that digital just can’t recreate…

So do yourself a favor and the next time you want to take some photos, pull out a film camera and shoot off a roll or two.

This past weekend I wanted to document a 12 hour mountain bike race that I was participating in. It is always a struggle for me to choose between photographing events and participating in the actual event so for this event I wanted to do a time lapse of the event, I though that this would be a good way to do both.

In my last post I mentioned that I was getting a new camera since my surf housing leaked. Well, I picked the new camera up from the shop a few days before the event and since it was exactly like my old camera I just took it out of the box and put it in my camera bag. I did charge the batteries and got all of my other gear organized lenses, gorilla pod, intervalometer, and flash.  I even had extra batteries and extra tripod plates with me.

When I got to the race I unpacked my bike stuff and all of my camera gear and set it up across from my friend’s team site where they would be hanging out between their laps and where my extra food was set up. I even put a chair over the camera to ensure that no one accidentally knocked it over and set the intervalometer to take a shot every 5 min for the whole 12 hours and then I was going to import them into quicktime and add some music to make a cool video of the event. As it got darker I asked my friend as I passed the site to put my flash on the camera to get some night shots and the next time around is when I knew something was wrong since the flash was not firing on a regular basis.

Since I did not check my camera out after pulling it out of the box, I had not reset the default settings on the camera to match my old camera which meant that I had not turned off the power saving setting. So even though I had it all set up correctly, in the end I only got 4 shots, two when I first set it up and two when my friend put on my flash. Here is one of the shots with the flash. The streaks of lights are bike riders with their lights on riding past.

At least I learned my lesson on a personal project and not on a paying shoot. So next time you get any new equipment make sure that you go through all the settings on any new equipment BEFORE you get on location.

I love being an outdoor adventure photographer but it is not always the best area to shoot if you are precious about your gear. Most of the environments I shoot in are not very camera friendly places- beaches, deserts, muddy trails and cliff faces. Over the years I have really put my equipment through the ringer, I  have droped a lens 20 feet while photographing rock climbers in Utah, dented the barrel of my 70-200 lens while backpacking in Nepal, and have had my whole camera covered in rain, mud, snow all in the same day. Needless to say my equipment does not look new for very long, but generally the damage is only cosmetic and for the most part the equipment is much more robust and durable than most people think.

Unfortunately, this past Saturday I had my worst accident with camera gear ever. While out at the beach shooting a surf contest I totally killed my 5D mk II and my Canon 16-35 L series lens. I had planned on spending the morning out at the beach shooting the last day of the contest and then heading over to the bike park to shoot the dirt jump competition in the afternoon. But the surf contest got postponed due to lack of waves and I had to choose between the beach and the bike park. I decided to go to the beach since the surf season is winding down and the bike comp was going to be on Sunday also.

When I arrived at the beach I set up on the rocks next to two other photographers shooting for some of the magazines, we all were basically shooting on the same equipment so after one heat I decided to put away my telephoto lens and get out my water housing. I didn’t want to get in the water too early since I figured the best surfing would happen during the final heats so I took my time getting everything ready and then hit the water.

I had just gotten a new port for my surf housing and I did test the seal in my bathtub with no problems. When I got out to the break I knew something was wrong because as soon as I put the housing up all the windows in the port were fogged up. I thought at first it was just from the change in temperature from the beach to the water. It was not until I got back to my car to open the housing up that I saw that there was sand inside the seal and that is when I knew that the camera and lens was ruined. Once I got the port open there was about three inches of water in the bottom of the port and when I took the lens off the camera there were water droplets on the glass on the inside of the lens (the above photo taken with my iphone through the drowned lens).

Fortunately I learned a few lenses ago the importance of having all of my equipment insured and so I was not too upset knowing that I will be able to replace it with out too much paperwork. But if you do ever find yourself in the same situation and don’t have insurance the remedy would be to submerge the equipment into fresh water for 5 min and then put it in an airtight bag filled with rice and leave that in a hot water cupboard for a few weeks and hope for the best.

Here are a selection of images I shot during the 2010 Louis Vuitton Series leg held here in Auckland. I was fortunate enough to get to spend a day on board one of the boats as the 18th man with the Aleph team. I also got a few shots from North Head and the rest were taken on one of the press boats. I was shooting primarily with a Canon 500 f4 IS hand held while on the press boat and from North Head and a 70-105 f4 as the 18th man.

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