The Batblog by Photobat

way back when I was starting out shooting weddings I had the pleasure of shooting Sarah and Greg’s wedding. I always love catching up with previous wedding clients and photographing their kids.  I was assured Nina would take some time to warm up to me, but we were playing in no time.

The great thing about shooting on farms is there are heaps of locations, the best spot was in the wheat field.

We will get some great photos of George, Nina’s brother when he is the same age as Nina, so that there will be some matching photos and ages on the walls at the Gibson house!

Georgie and Garth’s wedding from earlier this year is being featured in the latest issue of Tasmanian Life magazine, go check it out!

I knew I was excited all last week for a reason, first wedding of the season and it was a cracker!

I met Monica and Craig when I was shooting Renne and Nathan’s wedding (also a corker of a wedding), Renne is Monica’s sister, and as with Renee’s wedding, all 5 Grech girls made up the female component of the bridal party, Craig had is 2 brothers and best mate on his side, who basically grew up with his family so we shall just call him a brother anyway!

It all kicked off with breakfast with the boys at the Macquarie Foodstore, then off to the Tote to place some bets on the Caufield Cup, where Craig discovered a horse in another race called Sous Chef, which is what he is, so money went down on that one. The horse many of us placed bets on ended up didn’t even make it to the starting gate.

Anyway, some U2 helped the guys get ready and but the slower soppy Bono songsstarted as were were about to take some shots, so I suggested a switch to a bit of Pulp Fiction.

Off to the girls at the Old Woolstore Apartments and Monica arrived back after an amazing amount of time at the hairdresser, but it was worth it the hair was perfect. Everyone slipped into their dresses, which incidentally were made by her maid of honour and sister Lauren, she did a great job on Monica’s wedding dress. We gto some great shots around the woolstore.

The ceremony was at St Mary’s Cathedral, I’d never been in the church before and it is really beautiful. Showing off another talented sister, Renee sang during the ceremony, many other family members were also involved through the service.

As usual, I was asked where to go for photos… dark alley ways are always great, especially one with a big purple wall. Monica and Craig did a great job with colour scheme at the wedding, and it was refreshing to be able to find somewhere unique to compliment them.

The ceremony was at Morilla where I got to see the amazing cake that Monica, the bride herself, created from scratch. Talk about a talented family!

It was a really fantastic day, the colours, locations, the great Kombi vans as bridal cars, but the real magic of the day was between Craig and Monica, you can tell how well they are suited to each other and I know they are going to have an amazing life together… starting with Thailand for the honeymoon! Have a great time you two, and bring me back some photos.

Some photos will be added to this post soon… but for starters… as I know there are two newly wed people in Melbourne airport waiting to see something, here is a little slideshow… I hope the computers have flash installed…

I presented a talk for a camera club a couple of weeks ago, initially I was just going to show some photos and talk about what I do. After starting to put together that talk, I decided to change my approach and explain a little bit about how my photographic style involved, mostly through the influence of other photographers and artists.

This had me thinking a lot and as always the first inspiration and most important inspiration was Peter Dombrovskis. I have many photography books, but the book produced with his images are the most looked at.

Every year as I was growing up, my mum put the Dombrovskis calendars on the back of the toilet door, and I credit my ideas in composition to many hours looking at his work. So when I first seriously started taking photos, I photographed landscapes. Which over time lead to luckily being awarded the 2000 Dombrovskis award for Landscape Photography, presented by the Tasmanian government to a young Landscape photographer. By getting this award I met Peter’s wife, Liz, who has become a good friend and advice giver over the years.

Unfortunately I will never get to thank Peter for his help, but I really wanted to take a portrait that represented him. So I asked Liz if I could take a portrait of his camera, the bits of metal, glass and leather that took the photos that I am still in awe of.

And for some technical details this is a large format Linhof Master Technika 5 x 4 inch flatbed field camera.

You can read more about Peter, view some of his work and buy a calendar to hang in your toilet, or anywhere else you like at http://www.peterdombrovskis.com.au/.

Thanks Liz for digging it out for me!

I knew when Ros came in to have her pre consultation that these little girls were going to be fun to shoot, Ashlea and Chealsea were supposed to be asleep by the time she arrived, but they had their own ideas staying wide awake. Anyway, I went out and had a great session with the Rees Family, which also included dad Martin, and also Sophie and Maddy.

Maddy gave me a tour of the house at the start of the session, she was full of energy and loved showing me around. We got a great series of shots in her bedroom.

The twins are 9 months old and were very cute the whole session. These shots are taken on the floor near the kitchen where there was some fantastic light. We moved into another room a little later to get some more moody shots like the one up top of this post.

Sophie was great helping me out getting the babies to smile, and she had no trouble turning on a smile when it was her turn in front of the camera.

This was the first Launceston Show i’ve been to since I was in grade 8. Vikashni and I did all the things you do at the show, we ate dagwood dogs, thought we knew how to win the big prizes, looked at the fluffy animals and bought show bags! I do feel a little ripped off, I asked for the King Gang show bag, you know King Rats, King snakes etc, but didn’t realise until I got home that it was a bubble gum bag.

I think when I was younger I would have been bored with the dog and cat shows, but this year I really enjoyed looking at all the different cute (and not so cute) pets. So much to to take photos of in the dog area. I think I will have to spend some time at a dog show and document all the dogs and owners.

And there wasn’t too many cats on show, which was disappointing.

As we were leavin, we bumped into Karena and Jeremy, Jeremy is running for council for the Greens and Karena was there giving him a hand as was their baby bump!

This is Angela and Chris’s new son Tim! Angela took up my pregnancy portrait special a couple of months ago (see here). So James has a little brother and we played a bit before the shoot, he was a bit more receptive to havening his photo taken this time and was dancing all over the place! Tim was great too, behaving very well for the camera. we got some really terrific shots, my favouties are posted below

And my favoutie little series from this shoot to finish up with…

Stay tuned, there are more before and after pregnancy/newborn shoots coming up in the next couple of weeks.

This used to be part of my office chair, if it still was a part of my chair I wouldn’t have fallen off the chair… twice.

And in other news I won a statewide ABC radio quiz last night!

After forgetting all about daylight savings for the second time in a year (we didn’t forget last time, just put the wound the clocks the wrong way) Vikashni and I got up a bit later then we should have and then went for a drive to get some coffee. We were planning on just heading to Josef Chromy’s vineyard but drove straight past it to go to Dr Harry’s Clucky Chook Cafe for a Devonshire Tea. It was such a nice drive, I managed to take a couple of little snaps on the way. Plus on the way back we did stop at Josef Chromy, I think it’s impossible to drive past there without stopping, really smooth coffee, superb service and not to mention the wine.