Anywayz, I just wanted to share some photos that I took for a magazine that got published in December 2011.

Enjoy.

He was so playful in fact, that a few times he would run straight at me full speed to make me think he was going to run me over.  Then at the last second he’d pull up, stop, and just look at me with this “ha! gotcha!” sort of expression.  I don’t know how I was able to hold my ground and keep my finger on the shutter release with 800 odd kilo of horse bearing down on me.

Stevie lives with two other horses.  Teddy and Flynnie.  All of whom have very different personalities to each other, which made for a very fun day.

Teddy is a bit older and a lot more laid back.  So laid back in fact that while I was taking a few pictures of him he kept turning around because he just wanted me to scratch his butt.  Boy did he loving having his butt scratched.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to scratch a subjects butt just to get them to relax for a photo.

Flynnie is just downright cute.  He’s a miniature horse and what else is there to say?  He’s just that.  A short, scruffy looking, tiny little horse.  Very cute!

The day was a great success and I learned a bit more about horses and I had a great time taking a few photos, which I always love to do especially when it’s something new.  But also when it’s a new camera as this was my new (old) Nikon D2Xs camera’s maiden voyage.

Here are a few of my favourites from the day.

Visit www.jamiecarl.com.au to check it out. And as always.  Mum…. I hope you like it. If you’re reading this, you may be interested to know what the software is that’s running it.  Well, it’s totally custom and 100% written by yours truly.  It’s also fully customisable, so if you’re interested in getting a customised version up and running for your portfolio website, please feel free to contact me.

Enjoy!

These photos are from a quick visit to a dressage meet here in Canberra, just to get a sense of what all this horse stuff was about.  It was an opportunity to meet Stevie and his owner/rider, Jenny, and learn a few things about horses.  Like not standing too close the back of them.  Fortunately I didn’t learn that one the hard way as I hear they can kick with quite some force.  Looking at how muscular they are too, I don’t doubt it.  Would you want 800kg of horse kicking you in man parts?  I don’t think so.

This coming weekend we are going to get a few photos of Stevie on his home turf.  I’m thinking about approaching the shoot like a ‘high fashion’ shoot with Stevie as the model, and see what we get.  Apparently he will be fine with the flashing and blinking lights of my strobes, but we’ll see.  I don’t want to upset him, but I think it would be quite cool.

But for now, here’s a few photos of him at the dressage event.

We all know cars are just giant mechanical clumps of steel and plastic, but as modified car enthusiasts we like to think of them as more than that.  However, we sometimes forget that the car we drive around now is filled with technology that has come from years of building upon each one that came before it.  The cars you can buy today are vastly different from even the cars available only 5-10 years ago.  So imagine walking into a place where each step you take deeper into the yard, the older the cars around you become, and the longer they have been there.

It was quite an awe inspiring experience.  I was filled with a sense of overwhelmed amazement to see some of the cars that were there, but at the same time a deep sadness consumed me.  To witness the state of those cars many…MANY years after their day was over, their glory had faded and they had turned to rust.  It wasn’t just merely a ‘trip down automotive memory lane’.  It was an adventure through time.  Seeing first hand where we had come from and how far we have come.  It makes you wonder, how far have we got left to go?

What will I be driving in 50 years and where will the car I’m driving now be by then?

What about in 100 years?

Now for some photos.  Car lovers….. get your box of tissues ready….

The two major types of shoots that I do these days are the automotive shoots, and the real estate stuff.  Funnily enough, they both make use of very wide angle lenses.  For automotive, this is for the interior shots while for Real Estate, it’s for pretty much the whole lot.  To date I’ve been making do with my old Sigma 10-20 f/4.5-5.6.  The problem with this lens is that there are many problems with this lens.  It’s slow at f/4.5, the DoF is crap and the worst part, it’s DX only meaning I can’t use it on my D700.  Well, I can, but it’s pointless as it ends up having the same angle of view as the 24-70 at 24mm.

So, now I have a 14-24 f/2.8 and it’s been on the camera most of the time since.  What a damn fine lens.

Anyway, this whole post is just a huge lead up to this picture that I took yesterday while shooting a friends car for a magazine.  He brought is baby Supra with him, which is an RC car that he had painted the same colour as his BIG Supra.  haha, What a dork.

Looks cool though:

Ok, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I have something really exciting to show you guys.  A while back I wrote an article showing off something I was working on to help with the motion shots in my automotive photography.  Some of you may remember my ‘Wireless Tethering’ device.  Yes, we all know it’s an oxymoron, but that’s what makes this so damn cool.  Well, I’ve recently updated it and it’s now even cooler, not to mention more practical.

Read on to find out more…

Turns out the original design, while good enough to get me out of trouble, just didn’t ‘feel’ right.  I always felt like it was about to fall off the camera or break or something.  So it was time to re-think how it was all put together.  I ended up coming up with something that not only makes it look more professional, but hides and protects it, and makes it possible to mount on a tripod with a flash trigger in the camera’s hot-shoe.

So, to skip the fussity fuss, this is what it looks like now:

As you can see, I have it mounted inside my MB-D10 vertical grip.  To do this I used my spare MS-D10 battery holder which holds 8xAA batteries.  I then cut off the battery mounts from one side so that I could fit the Trulink device board inside but still be able to mount 4xAA batteries, which is what is required to power the Trulink board.  I then modified the battery circuit by pulling out the top connector plate at the back of the battery holder and effectively cutting it in half.    At the same time I cut off the top contacts so that the batteries would no longer supply power to the camera and become a completely independant circuit.  I then soldered a wire to the remaining part of the back plate, ran it up the front to a switch, then soldered the last wire to the bottom contact plate to connect the positive.

Fitting in the Trulink board was probably the most tricky part.  In the end I just drilled a hole for the antenna to stick through, then I grinded down the plastic around it so that it would sit flat and straight.  I then had to use a washer as a spacer because I needed the antenna to screw in tight to hold the board in place.  After that it was just a matter of wiring up the power and modifying the USB cable to the right length.

In the end, it all sits straight and firm and fits into the MB-D10 perfectly.

If you’re wondering why, while I’m ok with soldering, I didn’t just solder the USB cable onto the board to remove the need for the USB-A connector, well, I tried that and it just didn’t work for some reason.  Not sure why.  Possibly a grounding issue.  But this works and the USB-A connector sort of acts as extra support anyway.

So that’s it.  It wasn’t really a major exercise in the end and it just required a bit of fore-thought before cutting anything up.  If you do stuff up though you can get another MS-D10 on eBay for like 20 to 30 bucks (I got a spare for US$19.99).  You can also see by the photos that I drilled a hole in the wrong spot because I didn’t plan it too well in the beginning.  I just plugged up with a little rubber grommit that I found laying around.

Oh, as for software, I’m still using Breeze Systems, nkRemote and it’s doing me quite well.  If you’re after a pretty neat, simple remote camera control application for Nikon cameras, give it a try.  They have different versions for Canon as well so Canonites have a look too.  No, I’m not endorsed by them or anything.  I just think their software is cool.

I’ll have some photos of it in action at some point.  I have an automotive shoot coming up this weekend that I am planning on using it at.  It will make it so much easier to be able to sit in the car and wirelessly stream LiveView from the camera and taking pictures.

P.S. Sorry for the uber slackness on posting!  I’ve been really REALLY busy!

Finally, here’s a photo of it all together and on a camera.

So yes, this website is being hosted on dial-up. So yes, it’s painfully slow, mainly because the backlog of emails I’ve been sent are finally coming in.

Please bare with me while we get everything back online after the big move.

Thanks.

In automotive photography we try and choose a backdrop for our photos that compliments the car, without stealing the focus from the car.  This, at times, can be quite difficult and in my opinion can make or break a good image.  I’ve always put just as much effort into choosing a good backdrop as I do lighting and shooting a car.  However, when you roll the car into a purpose built studio made especially for photographing cars on a plain white background, you can throw all that out the window.  There is NOTHING to distract the viewer from the car so make sure you use a car that people actually want to look at.

So when I was sent an invite by Rob of Performance Wedding Cars to come down and try out his new studio, appropriately called The White Room, I got all super excited about finally getting a chance to try a high-key automotive shoot for myself.  Then he told me that he’d organised a pair of Ford Cobras, an old ’77 XC Cobra and a new BA Cobra, I got even more excited!

Then he told me the cars were white…….  Panic…..

Let’s step back a sec in case you don’t know what I’m on about.  If you don’t, go out and pick up a copy of {insert major automotive publication name here} and there will most probably be a feature article of a car where the photographs have been shot against a plain white background.  This is a technique called “high-key” lighting.  A technique I have used (far too) often with people subjects using my 3 metre wide portable backdrop kit. I’ve gotten pretty darn good at it actually.

The thing is, people are easy too shoot because they’re not ‘shiny’.

Shooting cars is a whole ‘nuther ball game when it comes to strobed lighting.  The shiny surfaces will reflect light from just about any angle and it becomes an art-form in itself just setting up a shot so that don’t get those stupid big bright white dots in the paintwork.  Roll the car into a giant white room and you’ve just solved half of your problems.  Rather than having your strobes trying to directly light your car like you would outside, you can point those tiny strobes at the big giant white walls and voila!  You have the ultimate reflector.  Large enough to light up every nook and cranny of any car.

Now, none of this is to say that once you get the car in a studio that all your problems are solved.  In fact, you have a whole new set of problems.  In a nut shell it comes down to balance, fill/spill and powah!  Get those things under control and you’re good to go.  Power is obviously the biggest concern as you will be losing quite a bit of light when you bounce it off the walls.

I used my Alien Bee AB1600s bounced off the walls and some smaller GY180 strobes as front fill.  The ABs were set to @ 1/8 power and the GYs were up full ball @ 1/1.   I even had to throw an SB600 @ 1/2  to fill out the back corner.  All in all, quite a bit of wattage went into these shots.

I hope you like the results and I’m looking forward to going back to The White Room and taking another crack at it.

Stay tuned…