The Batblog by Photobat | Portrait and Wedding

The last few weeks have been a little crazy, seems like I’ve only spent a couple of days in the office. Actually, I have only spent a couple of days in the office. We have been all over the place, started off with a bit of speaking over in Perth WA. Great place, great photographers, great people, great food, great wine, great coffee and great grates too (you know I love urban shots!).

The whole reason for the trip was to do a presentation to about 80 photographers along side David Oliver, Christian Fletcher and Ric Syme. I really enjoyed the event and had heaps of good feedback. While out west I finally got to visit Jorgensen Albums, this is the place I get all my wedding and portrait albums hand made by a team of skilled and passionate people. I’ve been using these guys for about 6 years now, talked on the phone, emailed and sent Christmas cards to, but never met them in person. They were all taller than I expected.

I must have said a funny. Christian Fletcher, Me and David Oliver doing a joint Q and A at the end of the presentatioin, photo by Vikashni Moyle, she is talented!

It was fascinating to see all that went into making the albums and the amount of staff working away. I’ve got some images I’ll post soon. Then it was time for not working time. Summer is coming and I can see it’s going to be very busy so any time I can get at the moment is spent with Vee.

We managed to pack a lot in 2 day, both in things we did and things we ate / drank. There was catching up with photographers, checking out galleries, drinking wine, tasting cheese, waiting for sunsets that were always obscured by clouds, and then also some more wine tasting. The Margaret River / Dunsborough area were incredible, and I am looking forward to heading back there one day.

Some Holga action north of Margaret River

Clooney at Barwick Vineyard

Voyager Vineyard

Vikashni shooting the sunset, somewhere south of Perth

Then home for a couple of days and just as I got back into the swing of things it was off to Hobart. Hobart was a mix of Vee time, client time, learning time and speaking time. It was all based around a presentation I did for the Tasmanian Division of the Australian Institute of Photography. Vee also managed to into the talking spirit, doing a presentation to the happy snappers on social media. I was proud of her little talk! My talk was about evolving in photography from shooting body parts to shooting weddings and other stuff.

When that was all wrapped it was off to home for a few hours, a quick trip to the office and then on a big metal bird to the home of iconic music houses and water crossing structures. Yes, Sydney. A few days up there learning things, getting inspired and hanging around with some awesome photographers.

A shot of the back of a guys head with some kind of iconic bridge in the background

So I’m back now fully inspired and ready for action. There will be some changes about the place, nothing too major and all very cool. It may even involve some new products and saying good bye to some old ones. Looking forward to new ways of processing my images, getting new things up on the website, getting back to some old ways of shooting and catching up with all the clients who are coming back for their Christmas photos. Anyways, hope you are well and things are moving at a manageable pace in the right direction for you.

Oh and Congrats to Deb F for being the latest random Batblog comment prize winner! Some cool things are heading your way once I find out where to send them! Remember, big prize of limited edition art print will be drawn at the end of the month for a person who comments on the Batblog. Why not leave one now???

I first entered the Australian Professional Photography Awards in 2001, and got nothing. I had no idea what I was doing back then, I had talked to a photographer and sent in what I had. So nothing came of it, the next year I was a bit more on the ball and picked up a couple of awards, and have been getting some ever since.

This year I received the honour of Master of Photography with 1 Gold Bar from The Australian Institute of Professional Photography. I was presented during the awards ceremony in Sydney with a gold bar to be added onto my Masters ribbon.

How this all works is that for every silver award you get one point and ever gold award you get two points. If you receive 5 points with in 4 years you become an Associate, I received this in 2003. The next step is that if you receive 10 additional points within five years you become a Master of Photography, I received this in 2006. From then every additional 10 points gained within 5 years gets you an Gold Bar.

So after my name I get to put, Alan Moyle M Photog I

Just as a trip down memory lane I’ve put together a podcast of many of the award images over the years. These aren’t only APPA ones, they include images that have received awards all over the place.

Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA9F1gqW7aU[/youtube]

Shot in the various carparks of the world this is a series of Urban Details from last 4 years. Sometimes there are things we may see every day but not pay very much attention to.

 

 Urban Details: Carparks: Play Now | Play in Popup

Just back from a weekend on the coast for Vikashni and my first anniversary. Freycinet was fantastic, vineyards, national parks and the stars.
More photos soon.

Don’t forget about the 10% discount only till Friday! Phoneus on 6334 8789, or email to production@photobat.net!

Another year and the Epson Tasmanian Professional Photography Awards have been run and won.

This year I managed to pick up 8 Silver awards over 4 categories.

In addition to this I also picked up

2009 AIPP Tasmanian Wedding Photographer of the Year (sponsored by Bride Tasmania)

2009 AIPP Tasmanian Portrait Photographer of the Year (joint) (sponsored by Fuji/Photoforce)

2009 AIPP Tasmanian General Photographer of the Year (sponsored by The Edge)

2009 AIPP Tasmanian Wedding Album of the Year (sponsored by Seldex)

And was named the 2009 Epson AIPP Tasmanian Professional Photographer of the Year.

Basically I’ve gone from no trophies to 5 in a day! Was kinda embarrassing going up to receive all the awards!

Big thanks to the AIPP for running the event, the judges, Zakk and Matt, Rocco, Phil K, and of course to my beautiful wife Vikashni. Plus thanks to all my fantastic clients, I am really lucky to have so many fantastic people to photography and share happy times in their lives. I love my job love sharing it with you all.

And well done to Zakk to for getting his first silver award! Click here to see it

The below images are the silver award images.

You may also hear me if you listen to ABC Southern Tas tomorrow morning and also HO FM tomorrow morning.

And my other entries that played a part in winning all the catergories are below

The last shot is of Tara Badcock’s clothing titled Theda Bara’s Cocktail Party, pink silk camisole top.

 I might blog some of the stories behind these images in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Over the Australia day weekend I shot Peter and Jacqueline’s wedding in the spectacular Bay of Fires Area. You never know what you are going to be dealt with on the East Coast, but you can guarantee that no matter the weather it is always a beautiful spot and that Angasi will deliver a fantastic reception.

The dress was “Beach Formal” so Peter’s mum made a suit for his little bear that he was given on the first day of his life. The bear was a witness to the whole day and even sat on the rock where all the paperwork was signed.

Locations are always a hard choice for weddings, but I don’t think that there was any doubt that the grass area out the front of Jacqueline’s parents shack / holiday house would be perfect. Great views and a warm sun made the ceremony great and a bit of fun too. So many smiles between these guys during the ceremony, I think everyone could really feal the love of these two.

Pete and Jac wanted to feature the landscape in their photos. Not a hard thing to do with these kinds of locations less than a minute walk from the house. A nice and playful couple too, we managed to get some really beautiful shots.

I can’t thank Peter and Jacqueline enough for letting us come and photography their day, the family, friends and location were a photographers dream!

Suppliers: Flowers by Fig (becoming one of my favourite florists), Dress by Timeless Elegance (Have you seen their new space?), Bear Suit by Peter’s Mum (My teddy bears are jealous), Catering / Reception by Angasi (Perfect as usual), Celebrant Jill Harper (highly recommend Jill, she is fantastic, have a visit of her site), Band Pete Cornelius (East Coast local legend).

Somthing a little different, this podcast is from a few days I had in Croatia a a couple of years ago. I spent most of my time in the Istria area in the north. It was a spectacular place with the venetian arcitecture and agricultural areas. i hope you like it.

 

 Istria, Croatia 2006: Play Now | Play in Popup

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…