Friday 25 November 2011

My new 2012 Calendar and Hanging Out with Ken Duncan

Hi again everyone,

Well the last few weeks has been pretty hectic, both with work and photography.

Handing over the proofs to Sam and Briony Breese after their wedding in October was so satisfying. They absolutely loved the shots, which always makes all the hard work worthwhile.

I also managed to get out for a seascape shoot at Portsea Back Beach on the Mornington Peninsula. This would be one of my favorite places on earth. The secret location was pointed out to me by good friend and fellow photographer Nick Skinner. A pretty cool spot by all accounts, a bit tricky to get to though, as some climbing over precarious rocks during tidal shifts is required. Slapping a polarizer and a couple of grad filters over the setting sun made this place explode with colour!

This shot is also featured in my new 2012 calendar "A Southern Exposure". It's my pick of water-themed shots taken over the last year along the Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas, the Bass Coast, Phillip Island and the Yarra Ranges here in Victoria, Australia. Since the first handful arrived on my doorstep last Thursday they've been quite popular, and I already have to back-order another run to keep up with demand. I'm astounded at the quality of the product that Redbubble have produced for me, the A3-sized layout and sharp, vibrant images look amazing... and for just $25+ delivery, they make a great addition to the wall for the next 12 months, or grab one as a present for someone. "A Southern Exposure" is available here.


Last Saturday I was again lucky enough to spend a little time with Ken Duncan. For those of you who don't know who he is, Ken Duncan is probably Australia's most famous and talented landscape photographer, and probably most notable for his stunning 3x1 wilderness "panographs" and photographs of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. He was at his Melbourne gallery for an exhibition of his new work shot with the most drool-worthy Phase One P645 digital camera, and to launch his new book. So my friend Aidan Curtis and I hopped in the car and off we went. Ken and his wife are always so warm and welcoming, and Ken always has lots to share and will make the effort to spend time with every person there. It also gave me the chance to catch up with friend and talented large-format landscape photographer Chris Munn. Chris's work is absolutely beautiful, and like Ken Duncan, shoots predominantly in the 3x1 panoramic format that the 617 large format film cameras create.

So head to my store, grab yourself a bargain, and grab a print while you're there, or maybe some gift cards for your holiday presents, and until next time, catch you later!

Cheers,
Sean.

Saturday 19 November 2011

Sam and Briony - October 15th, 2011


I'd like to congratulate my long time friends, Briony and Sam, on their recent wedding. I had the honour and pleasure of photographing the day, and it made me so happy to hand over the proofs last week, and see the huge smiles on both of your faces.


 
Congratulations,



 














Monday 10 October 2011

Back in the swing of things

Hi all,

Well many readers will know that I recently resigned from one of the sites I worked at doing IT and Network Administration. It was a tough decision, and one not made lightly. It's certainly made more time for myself, but had other negative impacts. On the plus note, I have a little more time to concentrate on my photography and starting to rebuild the relationships in my personal life which have been negatively affected due to my previous schedule.

I managed to head down the Bass Coast here in Victoria last Friday to have a bit more of a play with my B+W ND110 3.0 10-stop ND filter. It basically means that, paired with my Grad ND filters, I can produce long exposures, in the order of minutes, in the daytime, as long as the sky is a little overcast. It produces some strange results as far as motion and colour rendition are concerned.


Initially I was heading down to The Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island, but decided last minute to try a new location, and turned off towards Corinella. At a not-so-clearly signed point in the road, I made a wrong turn and accidentally found myself in the township of Corinella, and not at Tenby Point as I'd planned. This is where the barge to French Island launches, and there's a rickety old landing point near the pier there which was a great find.


After a bit of a wander around the beaches and pier, I realized that photographically, Corinella has little more to offer, so I hopped in the car and drove down the road to Tenby Point. Now this little town literally has a handful of streets, a beach, a couple of farms, and that's it. I walked down the path to the beach to immediately find myself at high tide. This was great, as there's a bunch of trees which are on dry land at low tide, but are in the middle of the water at high tide. I took full advantage of the situation and grabbed a few long exposures.

At this stage I noticed some old jetty pylons sticking out of the water further down the beach. Shooting with wide lenses a lot I think warps my perspective. This old jetty looked a lot closer than it actually was.

15 minutes later I was standing on a rocky promontory looking at these pylons several hundred metres out in the water, far too far away to shoot effectively with anything but a telephoto lens, which would destroy the depth of the shot. I should come back here at low tide to photograph the old jetty. I wandered back up the beach and grabbed another couple of exposures of the tidal trees and hit the road.

It's amazing the artifacts that creep into a shot when you're working with such heavy filters and long exposures. The purple in the sky is infrared pollution, as the Grad ND filters allow a little of this wavelength through over such a long exposure. Sometimes very cool, sometimes annoying to get rid of!!! It plays havoc with your white balance.

On another note, this Saturday I have my first wedding shoot of the season. I'll be photographing the wedding of Briony Gill and Sam Breese overlooking Port Phillip Bay from Oliver's Hill. Should be a bit of fun, and I'm looking forward to it. For this shoot my good friend Aidan Curtis has loaned me his Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L glass, so it'll be nice to shoot with a good fast zoom. I've made sure this time to charge and take plenty of batteries... which past experience has taught me is a good thing. Flash guns use bucket loads of juice!!!

So until next time, Adios Muchachos :)

Sean.

Saturday 6 August 2011

All quiet on the western front!

Hi All,

It's been a few weeks since my last update. This is due mainly to a huge increase in my workload (I'm a network administrator and IT tech full time... and then some) due to staff changeovers and misguided staff implementing several large projects at the same time, never a great idea. This has meant less time (read: no time) for my personal work, and I'm itching to get shooting when possible!!!

In the last few weeks though I've finished processing shots from a maternity session I did for some friends/clients, which I'm quite happy with.


Also, I performed a commercial shopping center shoot for the Centro group close to home. That was an interesting day I can tell you. The day started well, the centre manager called me to confirm I was still going to be on site, and let me know that all management staff and security staff would be briefed as to what I was doing... seems straight forward. I arrive on site and begin the external shots, which were no problem. I then move to start the internal shots and within shooting 3 frames I have the local centre manager tearing towards me yelling and carrying on that what I'm doing is illegal and I'm to vacate at once!!! Perplexed, I explain the situation and he retreats unwillingly, no doubt to call my client and realize he hadn't checked his phone messages and/or email and feel like a right clown for making such a scene in the first place. One can't help but laugh... no point getting worried.

So I finish up with the internal shots and head down the road to perform a few external shots at another of their sites, and immediately everything turns bad. The traffic is horriffic, the weather turns bad, myself and my equipment get doused when the heavens open.... so I snap the few externals and run for the car, hoping what I got is good enough (as it turns out I'm a bit dubious, but I've informed the client and will re-shoot if needed). On the way back I dropped in and visited an old school buddy of mine who now operates his own wedding and portrait photography business, Studio Que. His work is absolutely stunning and it's great to see him getting ahead in something he loves.

So all in all not so bad a day!!!





So with my business shoots taken care of I decide to head down the Mornington Peninsula to shoot some landscape/seascape work at a place I'd never shot at: Sphinx Rock, wedged between Sorrento and Portsea ocean beaches, in the Mornington Peninsula National Park. This was the best idea I'd had all week. The sun was setting beautifully, the tide was low, enabling me to get right out to the shore break on the wonderful rock shelves that dot along this coastline, and there were few people about due to the cold.
So off I go, dry shoes and socks and a towel in the car as I do get up close and personal with this kind of shooting.

The first stack of shots were difficult to maintain due to some hard light, but as the sun sank lower and the light softened and wamed, things began to fall into place. I came away with a handful of shots I'm very proud of.







Then... it's back off to work for me, and the nightmare hasn't let up since. I normally wouldn't rant about that here, but it really is getting beyond a joke at one of my sites, to the point of affecting my personal life and health in a major way... somethings gotta give!!!

So I'm hoping to head out for some landscape or achitecture shoots again very soon, when that will happen, I don't really know yet... I can be sporadic and random when it comes to my landscape work.

At this stage I only have one wedding shoot booked for the rest of the year, which should be a bit of fun. Apart from that I'm not booking major projects like that due to the theft of my time and energy by unsavory influences, lol.

Don't forget to visit my Redbubble Gallery and Web Store and my Website, and most of all, thanks for reading and for all of your support!!!

Cheers big-ears!!!

Sean.

Sunday 3 July 2011

Lacking Time, Commercial Real Estate and Hanging out for a Landscape Shoot!!!

Hi All,

Well this is my first officialy blog post after setting this thing up, so hopefully it's somewhat interesting, although I highly doubt it, lol.

Recently I've been finishing off a couple of portrait sessions I've shot in the last couple of months. The results have ranged from pretty damn good to a bit ordinary, but what shoot doesn't? lol. I've decided to scale back this side of my work, and keep it predominantly for private bookings though people I know, as the workload involved is tremendous.

Next week I'll be undertaking another one of my commercial real estate shoots, this time for Centro Properties Group, who own and operate lots of shopping malls here in Australia. This one is a big one, two centres, one of which I have to photograph every store and the front standards, along with several internal funky shots, and the 2nd is similar but without the separate shopfront shots. Should be a bit of a challenge as I've only handled a couple of shoots like this before.

Well it shocks me to say the last landscape shoot I did was 3 or so weeks ago with good friend and fellow photographer Nick Skinner up at the Rainforest Gallery just outside of Warburton, Victoria in the Yarra Ranges National Park. It was a stunningly beautiful location if you did the naughty thing and trekked into the forest a little off the walking platforms. It's always a bit interesting shooting with Nick. He operates at a different pace to myself, and although we came away with some similar shots, we also had quite dirrerent work at the end of the day. He's a talented photographer for sure and is constantly amazing me with his quality work.

I'm hoping to get out a couple of times during the current school holidays here, seeing my hours should be less horrendous doing the IT support stuff I do on a day to day basis. I can't wait to use my shiny new Canon EF-S 10-22mm ultra-wide lens some more. A possible trip to Cat Bat and Tenby Point are on the cards, an old jetty I've located on Port Phillip Bay, and I'd love to hit up Sorrento Back Beach again, but wander further towards Portsea and Sphinx Rock.

Also don't forget to check out my website seanfarrowphotography.com.au, my Redbubble Profile and Web Store and hit up my Facebook Page to check out my latest work.

Cheers,
Sean.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Welcome to the official Sean Farrow | photography blog!

Hi all,

I decided recently to start a blog to post my stories and experiences as a landscape photographer in Melbourne, Australia.

I'll post news, updates and tips here as often as possible, so check back often.

Don't forget to check out my website www.seanfarrowphotography.com.au/facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Sean-Farrow-photography/109301905770982, and my online landscape portfolio and web store at www.redbubble.com/people/fazz1977.

See you all soon!!!