Last night, I (with my family and 300,000 of my friends and neighbours) descended on Melbourne’s CBD for the inaugural White Night Melbourne event. It’s an all night party celebrating the arts running from 7pm Saturday to 7am Sunday. The organisers had hoped for 100,000 people so they must have been a little blown away with the final estimates.

From shortly after 7pm, people on foot took over the streets. The trams weren’t running. Cars had nowhere to go. People lined the streets from side to side.  For us, with two young kids, the crowds were a little overwhelming. The performers and the art installations were a little hard to see. If you looked hard and watched the crowds, there were gems to be found like the performer pictured above. He was the voice half of a duo making some great music in Flinders Lane. How happy is this guy!

I don’t know if it’s going to be an annual event now, but we might have to leave the kids at home next time so we can be more mobile and stay out later.

 

Taken on a borrowed camera, edited on a borrowed iPad, and uploaded using a borrowed laptop.

In this image, we have a makeshift game for the kids. Take a beached log and float it out perpendicular to the beach. Then challenge the kids to see how far out the log they can walk before they fall in. Lots of laughs and very cold kids.

 

Enjoyed a Sunday shoot with this little supermodel…

Here’s a fun little series showing my five-year old (at the time) dancing atop the Remarkable Rocks in South Australia as the sun dropped behind her. I really love how she gets such joy from something so simple as just being outside.

Still in Israel, this was a scene from our tour of the Judean Desert. Along the way, we came to a cistern that the local Bedouin families use for water. This girl was watering her goats as we arrived. At least, that’s what she was trying to do until we got in her way. I felt a bit uncomfortable invading her space, but our tour guide clearly had no qualms. He just pulled up to the cistern, hopped out of the jeep and stepped onto the cistern blocking her access to the water entirely. The guide seemed entirely oblivious to her, almost like she didn’t exist.

She looks young to me – maybe 10 or 11 years old and yet, here she was managing a herd of goats on her own and apparently well out of sight of home. Maybe this seems normal for people raised on a farm, but for a lifetime city-dweller like me, she seemed old beyond her years.

This week, after many happy years, Duffy (aka Duff, Duff-Duff, Duffers, Duff-man, Duffy-dog) passed on. Duffy is my in-laws’ Cairn terrier. He was a friendly, playful, loyal little dog who loved being part of the action (especially in the kitchen). He loved going for walks and was very protective of his territory (that little guy could ration out little sprays of pee for miles!). He was a much bigger dog in his imagination than in reality. He barked with authority at the really big dogs on the street (as long as they were behind a fence, and even sometimes when they weren’t).

While he was a pretty, easy-going dog, sometimes he had a whole lot of stubborn in him. Once, while on a walk he grew a bit tired and lay down without warning. My mother-in-law didn’t notice and started dragging him along. He still wouldn’t stand up. Now, that’s stubborn! And when he was stubborn, he did what he wanted, when he wanted.

He was the big dog, in charge of his little pack. He leaves behind the younger and feistier Rascal (aka Razzy, Raz-Ma-Taz, Razzle-Dazzle). The house is sure going to seem quiet without him. So long Duffy.

Seriously, who would force their kids to come out modelling for photos when it’s -30C outside? Not me. I just asked and she agreed. Honest! Still, judging from the pose, there was still a little bit of ‘hurry-it-up-Dad!’ going on.

The above is my first time with a technique or method that has earned the name the “Brenizer Method” (Brandon Brasseaux shared this technique in a recent post). It’s named for the photographer who popularized the method. Mr Brenizer seems to prefer calling it bokehrama because it is simply a panorama shot with a shallow depth of field. The exaggerated shallow depth of field really makes your subject pop.

I shot 49 images, but this is a stitching of fewer than half the images. My decision to select just fewer images was primarily subject size in the frame, but also the processing to include a greater number of images was testing my patience. I used a 100mm lens set to f2.0 for the images. Manual focus allowed me to retain a consistent focus throughout the images.

To give you an idea of my proximity to my model, the initial frame is just her head and shoulders. I was pretty close.

Give it a try if you like, but make sure you leave plenty of time for your computer to crunch away. This is processing intensive.

This is the look you get when your already pretty-darn-happy child takes her brand new bathing suit out for a test drive.

Ok, so obviously this isn’t the picture I missed. It’s hard to miss pictures of rock climbers in the park. Climbers are everywhere. These crazy rock formations pop up all over the landscape and there seem to be climbers and almost all of them.

The picture I missed was of the tight-rope walker. A group of people had stretched a rope between two of these rock formations and as we were driving past, one brave soul was walking across this rope. The sun was behind him so he was silhouetted. It was a stunning sight – big dark rocks, a rope, and a lone tight-rope walker silhouetted against a brilliant blue sky. In the right position, I’m sure I could have captured the sun peaking through.

The problem was that I didn’t have a telephoto with me and he was too far away for the lenses I had. Best I could do was a 100mm and the person was too small by far. I didn’t want to lug my big lens with me on this trip so I left it at home. I wouldn’t have used it on any other occasion, but it would have been worth all the hassle just to get that shot.

…lots of stops. At least, that’s what works for us. It’s all about give and take. We sit them in a car and hope they’ll understand that the four hours of driving will be worth it and we agree to stop if they spot a particularly good-looking playground. Of course, when you’re a kid, almost every playground looks good. Let’s face it though, I like the stops too. Good to get out of the car and get a breather.

This image is from the shoreline of the Leschenault Inlet just north of Bunbury, Western Australia about two hours south of Perth.