Over the past year I have done a number of short term branch swaps with fellow Community Newspaper Group photographer, Justin Benson-Cooper. These ranged from two to four weeks and enabled both of us get out of our daily routine and into a different area.
Justin works for the Myaree branch of CNG, covering for the Southern Gazette and Canning Times papers. I’m quite familiar with the papers and area having worked for them back in 2004, as well as growing up in nearby suburbs that the papers cover.
In February, Justin and I did another branch swap for two weeks as part of a eventual four week swap over the next few months.
One thing I like about covering for the Southern Gazette is going back to my former high school, Wesley College. There is a special connection between Wesley and my photography, having learnt most of my early photographic skills from there and developing the passion I have for it today.
The following shoot I had with swimmer Kris Taylor was not only shot at Wesley College, but Kris was also a former Wesley boy.
Preparing for this shoot I decided I would bring out all the big guns in photographic gear I had. My new Elinchrom Quadra lighting kit was brought out for the first time, and I was really looking forward to seeing the results after spending a number of weeks testing the unit at home.
During the shoot I had some flash syncing issues with the Quadras, something I hadn’t noticed during my testing over the weeks beforehand. However all was not lost, and I managed to get a few portrait shots along with some shots underwater using my EWA Marine bag housing. The syncing issue with the Quadras I had was eventually resolved thanks to some suggestions I took from members of the Canon Digital Photography Forum (http://photography-on-the.net/)
Going back to the office to process the photos from this shoot, I usually automatically delete or ignore all the shots where something had gone wrong whether it be a flash not firing, or image slightly soft or blurry. I noticed a particular portrait I shot of Kris, where the flashes had fired and the image was full of colour and detail, everything I usually love about a photo. However, the image didn’t warm to me. Just as I was about to move onto another composition, I noticed the exposure after featuring the same portrait minus any flash, which I put down to the flash not recharging in time. It was a bit underexposed and had a bad blue cast through it, but I thought to myself that with a tiny bit of Photoshop work I could bring it back up and make it look smick.
So with about 4minutes of Photoshop work which included taking out most of the blue cast from the image, bringing up the detail in certain areas of his face and burning in some areas the image below was the final result which ultimately became my favourite photo from the shoot.
The above reminded me of a time back at Wesley when I took some studio portraits of a model. I developed the black and white negatives to find them to be really thin (lack of detail) due to shooting four stops under exposed I later figured out. I threw them out but my mate Oscar Chong saw me do this and took the negatives out of the bin and told me to go print them up. As a result, one of the portraits won me my first photographic competition.
Technical info:
Canon 1D Mk3
1/20th @ f/6.3 - ISO 50