The Batblog by Photobat

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My latest Ad that will be popping up in the new island wedding mag. It’s a bit of a different concept, designed by Felix Balckman. I have another ad which is going into Bride Tas, i’ll post that soon. This ad is for a double page spread, so the break in the middle is allowing for the fold

You can see it big here Any comments appreicated

Some shots from a fun shoot I had the other week, this is Caylan and Edan shot at their grandmother’s house in St Leonards.

Caylan has a habit of playing in the blue metal and making large pot holes in one spot and then little speed bumps in another.

Caylan was about to jump over a fence to show me the carrots in the garden, his mother and I persuaded him that we should go to the front yard… I was later informed that we were not heading towards carrots, but we were heading directly for the septic tanks outlet. So good save by mum!

It’s obvious that these brothers really love each other, Caylan actually took the time to get a few pieces of wood to make a seat for him and his brother.

The background shed is in the middle of a paddock and is a bit ugly. Edan’s mum couldn’t see why i wanted the boys over near it. Once she saw this shot, she understood completely! Matching colours and out of focus texture. My favoutires!

Little kids love to get close to the camera, most of the time they get too close for the camera to focus. Luckily i managed to snap this one off just before he got too close.

Busy! I’ve had quite a few shoots over the last 10 days, starting with 3 shoots in Hobart

on the one day Sunday week ago! Plus there have been a few from last week and I shot another 3 on the weekend. I’ve been shooting babies, pregnant bellies, kids, rocks, families, a miniature dachshund, some individual portraits and a primary school!

The primary school has taken up a bit of time, the idea is to document the kids for a banner that is going to be places in the school yard and some photos to be hung in a permanent exhibition around the school. Basically, I’ve been walking around the school, popping into classrooms, hanging around the playground at recess and then some more class rooms. Ans no I’m not a stalker! It’s been great to work with the students and staff. It’s the first time I’ve been in a primary school in a long time, and I’ve enjoyed watching all the kids interactions, it all brings back memories of when I was at primary school.

I’m also really looking forward to next week, the AIPP are holding their Southern Exposure conference at Cradle Mountain, about 100 people are heading there, which istehe most people ever! The presentations should be inspiration and educational, but as usual, you tend to learn the most over dinner and a drink talking with the other attendees. I’m also hoping to get out and do some shooting around the mountain, nothing tooextreeme!

Stay tuned, a lot of posts coming up with heaps of shots. I reckon I can almost fill up a new gallery with the new shots!

But for now… some teaser shots!

This is Brendon. He’s an Australian comedian, but not known here as he moved across to the Uk many years ago. He came back to Aus a few years ago to do the Melbourne Comedy Festival, which is when this shot was taken. If you have met Brendon, you dont’ forget him, loud over the top, but once you get past all that he’s a great guy and now a really big award winning guy.

Each year at the Edinburgh Fringe festival they have an award for the best show, it used to be called the Perrier but now it’s call the if.comedy award, and Brendon is the latest recipient! to give you an idea, the last Australians to win the top award was Lano and Woodley, back in 1994, and the new commer was won by Tim Minchin a couple of years ago.

So well done Brendon, let’s hope you can bring the show out to Aus next year!

Read more about Brendon and the award here

For a while my wedding album options included the twin matt option for wedding albums, but over time it somehow disappeared. But now they are back!

The twin mats combine any of our standard colours as either the top or bottom mat to create the appearance of a matted frame. You can also have gold and silver for the bottom mat.

Mats are available in charcoal, white, indigo, forest and cream. The sample pictured has a white mat on the bottom and a black mat on top.

The twin mats really give the albums a bit of an extra kick and look really cool. If you would like some more information on pricing, please get in touch and i’ll get it to you. The twin mats are only avalible wedding albums, so unfortunalt they can not be used in the portrait folio albums

As promised… the dirty shoot! This is Sharron with her kids Caitlyn and Brandon. And it all started out quite civil… apart from the rain, but we were only hiding in the rotunda for about 5 minutes untill it stopped.

Notice how clean everyone is, Brandon is wearing a new t-shirt!

the ball that they bought along to play with ended up landing in some mud, and instead of cleaning the ball so there was no mud on it, Caitlyn decided it needed more mud on it and procedded to get alot more mud all over the ball her hands. She then expertly transfered the mud onto Brandon, who retaliated and the war was begun!

As everyone was dirty, there was no need to be precious about keeping clean, so some more dirtier shots were taken before it was mum’s turn to get a bit dirty.

So just to make sure that there was a full load of washing, Mum was attacked by both her kids with some dirtly leaves!

This was probably the dirtiest shoot i’ve ever done! And yes, i too had to wash my clothes afterwards as Caitlyn also took a liking to throwing dirty leaves at the photographer! I didn’t mind too much, we did get some brilliant shots!

I’m so glad that Sarah managed to win a silent auction for a portrait session at a fund raising trivia night last month! She used the session to get some shots taken of the family, including her husband Alan and the kids Ella-Jayde and PJ!

And how cute are the kids! They both have really great personalities and once they warmed up to the camera , it wasn’t hard to get some great shots!
PJ is only 6 months old and is getting so determined to get up and walk around! He spent have the session holding himself up with his arms!

Ella Jayde had a great time running around in the bubbles and also discovered how to use the bubble making machine!

There are so many brilliant shots from the session! Thanks again to Alan and Sarah for having the shoot, it was heaps of fun!

This week I had the opportunity to go on coordinating a workshop with one of Australia’s top wedding photographers, Rocco Ancora. He’s so good that Vikashni and I have him booked for our wedding!

The day was all looking to be perfect, no fog! The last time we had a speaker in Launceston their flight was cancelled due to fog and I had to quickly book him onto another flight so he actually arrived to do his presentation. This time it was a security scare that threw the spanner in the works. I managed to get a local photographer, and mentor of mine, Rob Burnett, to do a presentation at the last minute, while I waited at the airport to pick up Rocco, whose plane arrived 2 hours late!

It’s always fantastic to see how other photographers work and bounce ideas off one another on how we all do things. I am really inspired from the session today, so look out anyone booked in for a portrait soon, I’ll be trying out some new lighting techniques that will make your shots even better!

I keep in quite regular contact with many photographers around the country, most of who I’ve met through the Australian Institute of Professional Photography, Australia’s top organization for photographers. Having all these people to talk to, share ideas and generally chat about photography is one of my major educational tools. We all help each other out which benefits all our clients! Photographers are a magnificent bunch, and if you are an aspiring photographer, I really recommend you join the AIPP and go to some meetings, it’s the best way to continually evolve your photography!

Check out Rocco’s website. http://www.imagesbyrocco.com.au/ The photo at the top is a quick snap I took at the end of the day when we retired to a local bar to discuss airline security.

 Next time we get a speaker down they are going to be booked on a flight arriving the night before!

Form a shoot on Saturday, it started out with us all sheltering from the rain… which when it did stop, provided fantastic light…. and mud.. the mud became a major player in the shoot… stay tuned for more shots from this messy messy shoot!