The Batblog by Photobat

Saturday, Sunday and even Monday saw me out of town and all the way down south in Hobart. We even transported the office so the viewings we had down there were in the hotel apartment where Zak and I were staying. We even took the espresso machine and Coco Bean Chocolates! If you were down in Hobart you may have seen that Saturday afternoon saw a huge range of weather in a short time, one minute it was nice, then windy, then a flash flood followed by locusts! (well, i saw a grasshopper). We had a shoot booked in for the early evening and there was no way to predict what would happen, so we decided to postpone this one (normally it would be all go with the amazing weather, but i was scared of the 9 month old flying away).

So Zak and I played a game in the hotel room. Basically we had to see how many unique photos we could get out of the one hotel room using only what we had in the hotel room. There was no video light or reflectors either! We tooko it in turns, shot for shot, if you stuffed up your shot, too bad, it was gone and the camera was passed over. I reckon we got at least 50 differnt shots in the one room. My favourite is below… i’ll have to get Zak to post his favourite of me in the next few days.

Sunday and Monday were spent in the company of many other photographers and students at the AIPP Festival of Photography. A couple of photographers from Sydney were down to share some insights into what they do and how they do it. Generally there was a bit of inspiration being thrown around.

I’m not sure how many others noticed the interesting occurrence that all the photographers ended up having lunch at Say Cheese..

Our speakers were:

Grand master of Photography David Oliver. I have known of David since I first became a member of the AIPP and he has no idea how much of an inspiration to me he is… well, he may know now… This was the first time I had seen him speak and I again got a heavy shot of inspiration. Check out his work here

Graham Munro was our other speaker, and it was the third time i’d seen him speak but the first time that I really had some time to chat with him. He is the only speaker I remember from the first AIPP National conference I went to… maybe because he told a few to many jokes, but also for the imagery. I guess you could say that you never know what you will get with Graham as a speaker, he pulled out the goods on monday and I have about 8 pages of notes to disect (and a few jokes to memorise). Check out Graham’s work here. Plus a different photo of Graham here as portrait of the week

And then on the drive home there were some clouds… so a work in progress below. So what do you think of it? Leave a comment if you like, i know i would like you to!

Glen Campbell, great photographer and even better country singer, ask him to belt out a few lines of Rhinestone Cowboy if you ever meet him. He loves it when people ask him to do that.

Shot for portrait of the week, a couple of weeks ago.

Tacks

Many Launceston folk would remember a few years ago there a photorgapher at the Examiner called Glenn Daniels. He ran off got married and had a baby and started to work for a suburban newspaper in Melbourne. I just found out that he has made it onto the short list for the News Awards Photographer of the Year. Which I think is pretty dam cool, he’s up agains photogaphers from much much bigger newspapers who had a hell of alot more oppotunities than he does for good images.

Well done Glenn, I really hope you get up into the final, win it and get a trophy or somthing!

This shot was taken Christmas Day 2005, we were both alone for the day so once Glenn had finished work we went and hung out near some old boats, ate oysters and drank some beer. I also took some photos, which I know you will find unusual for me!

I asked my smart wife Vikashni to write a little introduction about RSS feeds, just incase you didn’t know about them… so here goes, V’s first post on the Batblog.

Have you ever of noticed a RSS logo or link on websites that you have visited? Have you ever wondered what it is? This article is a basic overview of what an RSS feed is and how it can save you time on the internet.

So what is a RSS?

RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It is a way of delivering information to you from constantly changing websites straight to your computer.

Initially they were set up for news websites so that the latest headlines were constantly updated to your computer, now that the technology has spread other websites which have new contact added to them have taken on the RSS technology as a way to keep people up to date. For example you now find RSS feeds on everything from real estate websites that update you on the latest listing through to celebrity news sites that up date you on Paris Hilton’s latest dog fashions!

So what does this all mean for you?

If you subscribe to a magazine, the latest addition will arrive in your mail box as soon as it is released. RSS feeds work the same way with out having to pay for subscriptions. You can scribe to your favorite websites RSS feeds and use a RSS feed reader to look at the latest content on that website.

By using your RSS reader you can subscribe to all of your favorite blogs and news articles and have then arrive in one central place, saving your search time.

How do you subscribe to RSS feeds?

To subscribe to RSS feeds you need to use a RSS reader. There are a few different types of RSS readers, there are ones that you can install on your computer, others that are web based that you log into and your email program may also have an inbuilt reader.

Personally I prefer the web based reader because I can look at my RSS feeds from any computer that has internet access and I do not have to install any new software on to my computer.

Various email programs have RSS readers built into them, check your email software’s help guide for information on how you can set this up.

Using the popular web based readers is probably the simplest way of subscribing.

A lot of web sites have buttons like the image below

By clicking on the type of reader that you use it will take you to your RSS readers site and add the subscription to your RSS feed list.

Web based RSS readers

Google Reader

My Yahoo

Bloglines

Desktop RSS Readers

Windows: SharpReader

Mac OS X: NetNewsWire

So that is the basic overview of RSS, so don’t be afraid to try to subscribe to some feeds. Also, there is a video here that explains the whole RSS things in a very clear way.

Feel free to leave any comments with other suggestions about this topic, thanks for reading!

You may have noticed over the years that I have received a few awards from the Canon Australian Professional Photographer of the Year awards, organised by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography.

The top shots from the year go into a national traveling exhibition, which will be in Hobart later this year All the award winning shots go into a book, the latest of which just arrived this morning.

I still get a buzz seeing photos in print, the books are full of spectacular images and is very inspiring. That’s my shot of Rusty the dog and Gerry above him.

You can buy copies of the 2007 book and many of the previous year books here.

I had some new Holga shots processed, I’m still enjoying playing with the little plastic camera. I picked up some tungsten balanced slide film and got it cross processed, give these strange colouring… no photoshop!

Using this toy camera has made me really have to think about many different aspects of the art of photogaphy, thinking about different light, compositions, using shadows, understanding how a film is going to work in certain light conditions and most importantly, how dam expensive it gets to buy and process film, let alone get it scanned.

For those photo types out there, these are shot with expired Fuji 64T slide film, cross processed standard C41 way. The blue cast comes from the film being balanced for tungsten light and the images shot in day light and the contrast is increased because of the cross processing.

I’ll be adding more photos into the new Holga Gallery on Photobat.net soon, but for the time being head over to my flickr site for more images.

I managed to take a couple of days off over Easter! One of those days off did involve half the day sitting in the office tinkering with potential award entry images. It washard to force ourselves to get out of bed early enough to get some nice landscapes up the Tamar. But we did it, some of mine are below and Vikashni’s will appear on her flickr sometime http://www.flickr.com/photos/vikashni/ . It was fun getting back to shooting some landscapey type stuff, including some long exposure stuff and some more experimental things. I also played with some light using my lovely Vikashni as my model, back light and flare were what I was after, and after the sun went down I managed to get some nice softer images.

This is the same area where I did my first shoot with Vikashni a couple of years ago now, that was before we were together! It’s fun to go to a place we had shot in before and come up with something completely different.

And yes, we had just watched The Virgin Suicides

The Gorge

Jelly fish near Deviot

Some poles at Gravelly Beach

Some shots from Greens Beach

Sea Port in Launceston

The Gorge Pool.

More to come…

V and I ventured out to the the middle of nowhere to catch up with super talented Tasmanian designer / textile artist / all round fantastic person Tara Badcock and her amazing clothing creations. The location is an old abandoned church just up the road from where Tara lives, it’s full of hay and is the best location i’ve been to in a long time.

We took quite a few shots around the church with Gina the dog not wanting to be too far away from his owner Anoushka, our model for the evening. V jumped in and did a fantastic job with the make up and also did a marvelous job of holding some lights, with some help from Tara.

You should head into Coccoon and Two Four Two in Launceston or Love and Clutter in Hobart to buy some of Tara’s fantastic pieces.

You can find more Tara at
www.paristasmania.com
www.flickr.com/photos/tarabadcock
www.teacosyrevolutiontara.blogspot.com

Last week v and I headed out to Tara Badcock’s place for another shoot. this time it was all about clothes that Tara had created. So just to tease you here are some details that have little to do with the actual shots taken.

This is Gina, the model Anushka’s dog.

I’ll upload some of the top shots from this shoot late next week if i get a chance. Still have the 2007 Top Shots presentation to get finished