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!

After Crete we headed to Folegandros, and fell in love with the place straight away. It wasn’t packed full of tourist, the whole vibe of the place was relaxed and it was spectacular.

So many churches, apparently a long time ago the ruling Turks (?) would not charge taxes for properties with churches on them… so everyone built churches!

Yeh…. GARLIC

Probably one of my favourite shots from the whole trip

So next we head off to Santorini… next week… hopefully…

After Athens we headed to Crete, initially we were planning on heading to somewhere else but trying to get the maze of flight and ferry connections to work, Vikashni and I decided that Crete was our best option.

We stayed at three very different places0, the best being Kato Zakros a beachside village that was tiny. Fantastic to wake up to the sounds of the water and just walk a few meters to the Tavern for breakfast.

Windmill ruins, Lasshiti Plateau

We rented our car from this guy in Sitia, Mr Kazamera

The most historic monastary on Crete, Moni Toplou, is across the road from this little church.

One of the friendly patrons in Kato Zakros

Some old gentlemen having coffee who we completly managed to not have a good cross cultural conversation. Even with thephrasebook we couldn’t communicate that well, we pointed at words and phrases and they pointed at their eyes… it seems that when you go to have your afternoon sit down, reading glasses are not high on the to take list.

Ag. Georgios

The historic little town or Herakloin, not recommended to drive their at peak hour…

 More photos soon… next stop Folegandros

Some photos from a little old town called Athens. Things that first hit us about Athens were, the amount of graffiti, how dirty it was and in some places, the amount of cats.

Really, the fascinating ancient sites would be much better if there wasn’t a whole city around it! We stayed in Plaka, right in the old part of Athens. It was really good to get up and just have a wander before the tourists really arrived. One of the most dangerous things in Athens is probably Bretto’s.

The posters are up! All over the place you should be seeing a selection of these images displaying the work of Tara Badcock and Monique Germon. It’s all part of Design Island which is on around Tasmania at the moment. The shots were taken in Hobart and also out near New Norfolk.

I’ve always been a big fan of Tara’s work, I didn’t know much about Monique’s work before; but i’m a fan of it now i’ve seen it.

The whole shoot was probably the most involved lightingI have undertaken in a long time, reflectors, off caera flash and even mixing it all with video light. Lots of fun

Big thanks to Zakk and Rainier who did a very good job of holding all the lighting equipment

Fashion by Tara Badcock and Monique Germon for BEAUTIFUL EMPIRE project: as part of Tasmania’s Design Island 2008: Crossing Hemispheres, in May.

For more information about BEAUTIFUL EMPIRE, please view the blog (link is below), for updates during the coming weeks.

Photography: Alan Moyle (photobat)
Models: Mandy Renard and Anoushka Hughes.

www.moniquegermon.com
www.paristasmania.com
www.beautifulempire.blogspot.com
www.photobat.net
www.arts.tas.gov.au/flash.aspx

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…

Initially, Pete and Amanda contacted me they were in Tanzania doing what doctors do in Tanzania, helping out to make the world better for everyone. They were my first skype booking and dropped by in November to meet and have some engagement portraits taken.

I didn’t recognise Pete when he dropped in on Friday to have a chat about his wedding. last time he dropped by he looked like this…

Now he has no mustache, less hair and a pink t-shirt… in fact most of the Groom-al Party had pink t-shirts. As you can probably tell by the photo, we took some photos of the guys before they headed off for the Dove Lake Circuit at Cradle mountain.

The girls were busy getting prettied up at Lemonthyme Lodge, about half an hour away from Cradle. There was a fantastic sound track playing and much fruit cheese and chocolate.

Once everyone was ready to roll, it was down to the ceremony, also at Lemonthyme Lodge. Pete’s school minister traveled down from Victoria for the ceremony along with family and friends from almost every state and some international guests too.

I love this shot, taken before the ceremony of Pete, Amanda’s brother Chris and Grandfather. Just one of those moments that sum up the atmosphere.

After the ceremony Amanda turned into a 4WD bride and we went for a little walk down to the river to some a few shots, which some how turned into a Flash Gordon quote-fest. The river was perfect and provided some much needed shade, i think the interstate guests were amazed at how warm it was.

The reception was decorated with hundreds of candles and the cake had a very Australian theme with gum nut babies as toppers!

Pete and Amanda are heading off to Lord Howe island for a little bit of a break before heading back to Alice Springs to be Dr and Dr Wallis at the hospital there. I think the people of Alice Springs are lucky to have a couple of amazing and fun people as doctors.