This is what happens when you buy camera stuff from Hong Kong. You end up with crappy power adaptors because their plugs are different to ours. Everytime I plug my camera battery charger in, I hear the crackly noise of ionising air, a tell tale sign of poorly made electrical equipment.
I borrowed the awesome Yorri¢k’s 10-22 lens for the week and I just couldn’t resist doing this. I’ve been planning it for a couple of weeks and really couldn’t help myself, even though this is taken 4 days since my last 52 weeks photo. I like how the theme of personal injury/death has been permeating my photographs in the last few weeks, I’m going to see if I can keep it going. :)
Strobist: 580EX 1/2 power into collapsed shoot through umbrella camera top right, 430EX@ 1/16 camera left @ 105mm.
His love for Canon and storing the boxes on the top shelf was always going to end in disaster.
The injuries look more horrific when you see them large.
Strobist: 580EX @ 1/2 into umbrella in doorway on left, 430EX @ 1/8 below camera, 430EX in cupboard gelled red (separate exposure)
Texture by ghostbones.
So I’ve managed to reach halfway in my 52 Weeks project. I was really unsure whether I’d get this far when I started, and now, I’m starting to have so many ideas, I probably could do a 365, but I just don’t have the time (or the effort still!).
Anyway, onto the photo…
As many of you (the non-blind ones) have probably realised, I’m not a “white” Australian, nor am I Aboriginal. I was born here, but lived 6 years of my childhood in Sri Lanka.The first words I spoke were in Sinhalese (one of the national languages), the first words I wrote were in Sinhalese and I considered myself a Sri Lankan.
Since then, things have changed quite a bit. I honestly think people are surprised when I talk to them, they mostly assume I’ll have an accent, but I’m about as Aussie as you get. I love a beer, don’t mind the footy (whatever the code may be) and love to give shit to anyone and everyone in typical Aussie style. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely proud of my heritage and where I come from, but for all intents and purposes, Australia is my home, and I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon.
On the right, I’m wearing the retro 1974 shirt of my beloved Socceroos, our national football/soccer team. Remember, we’re the team that got into the 2nd round of the 2006 World Cup and were robbed by those cheating Italians! I cried after that game, probably the most recent incident of that nature. On the left is the shirt of the Sri Lankan cricket team, my team of choice when it comes to that sport.
I also threw in a few cliches because I thought it would be kinda funny.
I really liked this idea for this week’s photo because of the fact I just hit halfway in my 52s, it’s apt in a cool way.
Strobist: 580EX into shoot thru @ 1/2 camera top, 430EX @ 1/16 bounced into umbrella @ my feet.
When I was in high school, I used to be a practitioner of Tae Kwon Do. I was pretty dedicated, training 3 times a week and managed to get upto within 1 belt of black belt (I couldn’t find that red belt for the photo, only the blue one I’m wearing).
Our Tae Kwon Do was a minimal-impact one, meaning we could hit with open hands, but never to the head. I once pulled out of a jumping spinning heel kick (Walker Texas Ranger’s favourite move) when I realised I was about to hit a black belt I was sparring with and managed to get my leg stuck up on his shoulder. He then took a step towards me so I couldn’t get my leg down and proceeded to beat the crap out of me (with open hands of course). I probably shouldn’t have done that move on him in the first place.
I’m a pretty passive person in day to day life, but annoy me and I’ll open a can of whoop ass. ;)
Strobist: 430EX light blue gelled @ 1/4 camera left, 580EX @ 1/16 power camera right. that’s real water, it’s just a bit hard to tell with the backdrop.
This is the person that I am not.
Struggling for ideas this week… Next week will be good, I can feel it.
Don’t you just love how versatile my hair is?
I spent 20 minutes just looking at this shot, unable to finish it. I randomly ran one of my actions, and boom, something I loved. I dig accidents like that, especially when they’re right in front of my and i’m too stupid to notice.
Strobist: 580EX, 1/8 into shoot thru umbrella camera right, 430EX gelled, behind my back shoulder into white backdrop.
I decided to get off my butt and finally make up some actions of my most commonly utilised photoshop tricks (plus other random ones). There’s 14 there, including a bunch of vintage ones, colour pop and a black and white conversion just to name a few.
Check out the website at http://www.mulletgod.org/photoshopactions
Ok, I’m going to publicly admit it. I’m a nerd. A massive nerd. So much so, that i scored 98 on the Nerd Test here. Granted, it was biased slightly against physicists, but it says I’m nerdier than 98% of the population. There obviously aren’t any standard deviation values with that so you can’t really accept it as being accurate.
I’m proud of the fact that I can solve Schrodinger’s Equation (well I used to be able to). I’m also proud that I can probably build or fix your computer (don’t go getting any ideas). I’m even prouder that I can remember a lot of the periodic table song!
At the same time, I think I manage to balance my life pretty well with a bunch of other things (which I will no doubt immortalise in 52 Week photos at some point). So I hope I’m proof to non-nerds, that us nerds aren’t always the cliche!
Yes, that is a dodgy moustache I have been growing, just for this photo. Now, it’s simply a matter of putting on the 20 kg that the liquify tool in Photoshop digitally gave me!
Ok, maybe I mean 5 kg.
This is the 3rd edition of a magazine made by students at my uni. This one again features a bunch of my photos in full glossy colour, a thing all photographers love to see!
I photographed a bunch of people in the local area and in Sydney for this, the biggest story being an exclusive interview with Jacquie Milledge, the coroner in the Diane Brimble case. Diane Brimble was the woman found dead after allegedly being drugged and raped on a P&O Cruise.
The story was more about Jacquie the person and not Jacquie the coroner so we took a pretty casual shot of her in the courtyard between cases. She’s a very funny and lovely lady, totally different to what I expected from a very highly ranked state official.
Toby Knyvett works as a lighting co-ordinator/technician at Wollongong’s largest theatre. They were in the process of setting up the lights for a performance later that afternoon, so I managed this quick snap.
Dane Tobias is head chef at a new local restaurant (which my mum coincidentally helped design!). He’s just like a typical surfie bum, a stark contrast to a man who once wrote letter after letter to Jamie Oliver asking Jamie to give him a job (which Jamie eventually did!). He’s also worked with Rick Stein.
The magazine also contains a story on an artist Amy, who I mentioned earlier in this post.
I also just realised that most of these photos have the person dead centre in the shot, something I don’t tend to do very much so I wonder why I did so for these… I’m not sure I’ll be around at Uni to contribute to the next edition, but if I am, I definitely will because it’s something that I have a lot of fun doing.
It’s been months since I’ve photographed a gig, I believe the last one was the Laneway Festival. So it was with great excitement and nervousness I headed back to my local haunt, the Wollongong Unibar to check out one of my favourite Aussie bands Cog. Normally the lighting in there is comparable to most pubs (just a bit brighter) but Cog spared no expense for their earth shattering visit back to ‘The Gong’. The bar was packed and the punters excited to see Cog play a range of songs off their new album ‘Sharing Space’ as well as their relatively healthy back catalogue.
Plenty of cool photos from the night, I wish lighting was like this everywhere!
The smoke machines were going on overdrive so there was some pretty cool lighting effects like the shot above.
Bassist Luke Gower is such an amazing performer, I couldn’t resist focusing on him most of the time. Guitarist brother Flynn no longer has much of a chance to move around, considering he’s got 2 of the biggest pedal boards floating around in Aussie music. He spends half his time tap dancing just to press the pedals so doesn’t really create many opportunities to photograph. Plus, the lighting on his side of the stage wasn’t as good to work with.
This man is a weapon, he shouldn’t be allowed to get around without warning signs.
My obligatory Matt Booy homage shot. You gotta learn from the best!
I didn’t really manage to get any good shots of Jakob or Kora, the lighting for Jakob being 2 red backlights, and Kora just had too much crap on the stage to get an angle. This is Jakob’s bassist who provided just part of their massive sound.
The punters had a great night, and I now remember why I loved doing this kinda stuff so much!
The whole Barack Obama fiasco from a couple of weeks ago has made me think about the connotations of calling a black person a monkey.
I’m aware that it’s a word which has a hateful past in the context in which the above story refers to, but at the end of the day, I don’t know what the fuss is about! Science has, through numerous studies, shown that we appear to have evolved from monkeys and apes anyway!
Soph and I use the word monkey as a term of endearment, and we both think monkeys are beautiful, innocent and intelligent creatures that we should be proud to be associated to. There is a lot from the animal world that we can learn in order to make humanity better, and understanding the behaviour of great apes such as the Orangutan and Bonobo are such instances.
So pucker up, grab a banana, throw around some faeces and celebrate being called a monkey!
Trust me, you’ll want to see my banana bigger.
Strobist: 580EX into umbrella @ 1/2 power camera left, 430EX @ full power into a light blue bedsheet hanging off my wall to create a high contrast edge between me and the background to make the cut-out easier.