NEX 5n - Nerdy geeky camera review.

Like the title says.. this is a review.. sorry, there wont be many pretty pictures like I normally like to post.. why?... because I went and bought myself a new toy.. however i've justified my purchase is it will be my new 'travel' companion instead of my beasty D3s. So I guess I should explain why I bought the NEX 5n... well.. there were a few reasons why, but the main reasons were:

1. The large APS-C sensor, whereas most mirrorless cameras were either Micro 4/3's or the Nikon CX format, which i was really quite disappointed with. 
2. The camera is well priced for what it is and what it can do
3. The size! amazing!.. I've always wanted a DSLR in a small compact body, and this definitely ticks all the boxes in that department

Right, so they're the main reasons why I bought it, so lets see it..

There we go.. That's it.. This small little camera packs the same sensor as the amazing Nikon D7000 but only a fraction of the size. I bought the 16mm 2.8 pancake lens (pictured) as my walk around travel lens, perfect just just about most things. I only received it today in the mail so I haven't had much time to take it out for a real spin. However I might do it tonight when the sun sets.. we'll see how we go! 

And here is the Fujian 35mm 1.7 CCTV lens that I bought for a pricey $40.. can't complain ; ) Probably my favourite lens at the moment, really produces some amazing photos. 

So like I mentioned, this thing is SMALL! i've never held such a small interchangable lensed camera before and I like it! I am still amazed that this little toy like camera has the same sensor as traditional DSLR's but in such a smaller package. The down side to these cameras is that they are mirrorless, meaning that you don't have an optical view finder to look through like you would in traditional DSLR's. With these cameras it means that you look at the back of the LCD screen to line up and shoot your images. Unfortunately for me and my wallet, I find it hard to adapt shooting that way and bought myself the Electronic Viewfinder. EVF. The EVF is nice, it's bright and displays all the relevant information, however it cannot compete with an OVF - Optical view finder. The advantage with the EVF is that you can see how the image will turn out, live on screen unlike an OVF where you really need to be wary of the camera meter and some what "guess" the exposure in tricky lighting situations. 

Compared to the iPhone, the NEX 5n is a little shorter, but obviously is a bit thicker. But still! SO SMALL! 

That is a standard Nikon lens cap that I use, which I consider to be small, The NEX in height is smaller than even the lens cap! amazing.. 

So how does this thing compare to my tried and trusted D3s? Lets start with the size difference first off. 

And there you go.. Can really see why this NEX would be a perfect travel companion, especially if one was to travel through rough terrain and every extra bit of weight would make a huge difference. I've always been reluctant to buy a 2nd, smaller DSLR such as the Nikon D5100, D7000 etc, as I always knew that even if the body was small, the lenses would stay the same, and in most cases, it's the lenses which REALLY weigh me down and add onto the weight. The beauty about the NEX system is that it has the ability to attach any lens imaginable to the system, which is probably one of the other reasons I really liked this camera. With my current Nikon gear, I would be able to have bought adaptors to use the older manual focus lenses I had back home, however the body would still be big and not solve the issue of size and weight. 

For camera nerds out there, the NEX shoots RAW and full 1080i/p movies at 50 and 25. I've only briefly used the video function but I can say it looks great. Back to the RAW shooting. This is vital to me as RAW files always out resolve JPEG images and allow the photographer to tweak minor adjustments such as WB and exposure after the image has been taken. The 5n packs a 16.3 mp APS-C sensor, which like I mentioned earlier, is the same sensor as the bigger Nikon D7000 for 1/3rd the price. Sure, there are pros and cons with these systems, but having lug the D3s up mountains, through forests and in extreme heat conditions, this is certainly a welcome change, as I can be confident that the 5n is not a sacrifice in quality. 

Okay, so the 5n sounds great and amazing, suits all my needs and wants, does this mean the DSLR and D3s system is now dead? Definitely not. I have always been a believer in using the right tools for the right job and the D3s will always have a spot in my camera bag. Why? simply because the D3s and DSLR's in general, are built like tanks. Take the D3s for example. Full metal magnesium alloy construction, weather sealed, better battery life, better ergonomics, better screen, faster focus, faster frame rate, I could go on for ages. The D3s will never be replaced for high paying and important jobs, as I know that camera back to front like the back of my hand, and shooting with it has become natural instinct. The 5n is another species, where it offers my DSLR quality but in a tiny package. That is all.

As a photographer I am always wanting maximum quality, and this NEX system satisfies my needs.

SO speaking of IQ, how does it compare to the D3s, Nikon's flagship camera as of February 2012, until the Nikon D4 was announced.

It took me a while to remember which one was which and I had to look at the EXIF data to find out. Ok the exposures and WB are slightly off, but these are straight out of camera jpegs, just to sorta show how the nex competes with big BIG brother Nikon. The top image is the Nex and the bottom is the Nikon. The bokeh or blurriness in the background is quite similar, but you can really see the advantage of that big beautiful full frame sensor when you look closely at the foreground in the bottom image, and how it is out of focus, having only the blue jar in focus, whereas the Nex is still relatively sharp infront of the jar. 

These images were shot at 16mm on the nex which equated to roughly 24-28mm on FX. I tried to shoot the images exactly the same, with the same aperture, both wide open at 2.8 and same ISO of 200. I tried to shoot same shutter speed, but because the NEX has no mirror, the flange distance (distance from lens to sensor) is a lot shorter than the D3s, the NEX will always expose brighter than the D3s when shot at the same shutter speed. These tests were really a way for me to test the bokeh and see how it looked compared to each other. The top image again is the NEX and the bottom the D3s. When looking at the bokeh, you can really see the advantage of the full frame sensor, and that smooth soft bokeh. The blurriness is a lot 'creamier' in a way is more pleasant to look at. The Nex with the smaller sensor has less bokeh and thus results in images not having that same 'look' as a full frame sensor. Remember, this is due to the size of the sensor and not the camera. 

The NEX system has the biggest sensor available, besides full frame, and is the same sized sensor as professional APS-C cameras such as the Canon 7d and Nikon D300/s cameras. 

Shooting at wide angles usually makes seeing bokeh more difficult, so I tried to test the bokeh with a different lens - The fujian 35mm which is about... 52mm on a FX camera. 

At longer focal lengths, the bokeh is exaggerated more and this test meant that the images were very very similar in look. Both images shot at 2.8 and at roughly the same focal length. The NEX is the top image and at this focal length, to see the difference you would really have to look very closely. Unfortunately I was too lazy to do proper tests and ensure the images were exposed properly, that I might do next time, but this was more for the 'look' of the images more than anything. 

Right, so that about sums up my review.. A bit drier than more normal blog posts but I just needed to do a quick review of my new toy haha. 

Ok, until next time.

Ciao. 

February.

Hasn't been too exciting this week, nothing new has happened that I can think of which is super news worthy. The floods around Queensland (un)fortunately are not in Gladstone. Would be nice if they were as the fella who won the APN photo of the year awards last year was in some town where the water levels were stupidly high and the town just inundated in water.. like they say, their suffering is our reward.


Anyway, I have none of that stuff, but what I do have is. 

Kids jumping in the water.. Everyone at work and centro (headquarters?) seems to like this photo.. I personally don't know why, I just had to shoot 15+ kids who were going to the swim champs and I wanted an interesting way to shoot them all. haha. Took about 3 or 4 goes to get EVERYONE in the air or somewhat in sync with each other. 

There's a big boxing match coming to Gladstone pretty soon, and these dudes are promoting it, or behind it really. Long story short. We were in the Entertainment centre and all the lights were off so i needed to light them up somehow in an interesting manner. I had one of the lights (left) and shot it out towards the seats @ 50mm spread to light everything up, and another light (right) on a tripod shooting at the people. 

In hindsight I would have reversed it and had the left light on tripod and right light on the floor as the left side is way too hot and adds a bit of distraction to the bottom left corner, A bit of underlighting would've created a nice effect on them anyway, so i'm a bit annoyed about that. SO... this image is probably 75% there.. also I think the back is about 1/2 - 3/4 over exposed and the front 1/2 a stop under.. 

Just fyi, here's a quick 2min touch up in Lightroom. It's definitely not perfect but you can see it's just  little more balanced. If we shot RAW, no probs.. but we shoot jpeg and this is what happens.. or user error.. 

Me and My Ride at the Ambulance station was meant to be about.. you guessed it, an Ambulance truck, car, thing. Somehow we (I) ended up shooting this girl and her Mini Cooper. Not complaining I reckon it looks really nice. No user error this time.. 2 lights in a tripod camera right, to light her face and body so we got an even light all over. 

Sometimes we get pretty sad stories, and this is one of them. The girl on the right is dying from cancer/disease, I can't remember off the top of my head, but she basically has a few months to live. Young mate on the left proposed to her and are due to be married in March. Really sad. I felt pretty shit after I left. The both of them really love each other which is really nice to see. Bittersweet. He has a tattoo on his neck with her name on it. Very sad. Shot it with the 50mm at 1.4 cos i knew I wanted a dreamy look. Very soft and intimate. Little kid in the background ruins it but I didn't have the heart to tell him to sod off. Natural light, no flash. 

Happier times now. Soccer. This time it's a different perspective and shot to the usual soccer type shots. Well for me anyways. This was taken behind the goals as this guy pelted a free kick. I prefocussed as I knew the camera would struggle to track him and I really REALLY wanted the shot. his face is a little off, but the feeling is there. I like how you see him follow through his kick, the ball is in a good spot and those guys dodging the ball really adds to it. My favourite soccer shot so far. shoulda shot at f4 and up but I was already on 12800 or 25600 ISO, didn't want to push it too far.

I really like this photo too. Made the back page yesterday for sport which i'm happy about. Trial bike riding. not TRAIL bike riding so i'm told. Umm... natural light, 16-35 @ f5.6 and 16mm. got down nice and low and tracked her coming down and snapped away, panning with her to make sure she was sharp. very happy with this photo. Nothing more to really say about it.. haha. There were lots of other photos but this one all falls together quite nice. =]

Now like i've mentioned a few times, i'm doing a little project for myself, which is essentially photographing Gladstone and keeping memories of this town. This is the latest photo i've take in this series. It's the NRG plant, and like its name sake, it produced energy for the town and is one if the biggest in Queensland i'm told. Slow shutter speed to make the water milky and clouds blend. I have done a bit of post work to it, but 95% of it is colour correcting. The plant has very orange ugly lights to it and I really didn't like how it sat against the blue sky/background, so I essentially dropped the orange channel down to a bare minimum and left it with a very cold, eerie sombre colour scheme to it. I think it makes a huge difference and I quite like it. 


There's a photo competition on town which is to show off Gladstone. I will be entering this photo as well as the one I took last post with the transmission towers.


Anyway, that is all for this post.. short and sweet. There may be another post soon that is not photo related.. wait and see... excite excite! 


Ciao. 

ramblings

I know I said last time that I wouldn't put any of my work photos up, but I've had a change of heart.. I'll do it, but just not so many. Long story short, I feel that, I am not profiting off these images, and using them for my own personal use, I should have the right to put them up on my blog!

Now that that's out of the way, there are A LOT of photos since the last time I said I wasn't going to put any up, so i'm just going to pick a handful of photos that hopefully show a bit of everything from of the past month of so.. this is going to be tough, as I love spamming the page full of photos!

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

I guess this is really quite self explanatory, but what I like about this photo is just that it gives a different perspective to the typical horse racing type shots. I was shooting this with the 16-35 f4, so, besides it being a very wide angled lens, it means that things are a lot closer than they appear. As you can see by the edge of the barrier on the top left, i was directly under the barrier and this horse would've been maybe 1-2m away from me, galloping at full speed. I was lucky enough to get the shot framed nicely, but also to have all 4 of the horses feet off the ground. I only got 1 shot at this photo, as I was told to move away, as there was a possibility that I might spook the horses being that close!

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

We do things in the paper like Me and My Ride etc. Just showing off people with their cool cars/bikes/boats/trucks - whatever the hell they want. It's a stock standard photo but I think its quite nicely composed, lit etc. Just had a single speedlight to camera left, pointing straight at the guy to light him up and make him pop a bit more against the red car.

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

This photo was quite fun, as one of the reporters was telling me we were going to be doing a story about chess. He had an idea about the players sorta, staring each other off, which I thought was a cool idea, but I really had this idea in the back of my head too. We shot his, but this one ended up being used. I had another photo, where there was a whole line of white pieces, not just the king, and I think it looked better, but unfortunately at the time i didn't realise he wasn't smiling and it made it look really serious, but still i think that this image is pretty cool, considering the story! 

Basic lighting info: 2 speedlights, one to the left and one to the right, shooting both directly at his face/body to give some nice cross lighting effects. 

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

Part of being a newspaper photographer means that you have to go out and get random photos, ones that sometimes make no sense to you, and sometimes ones that just seem really stupid and pointless. Weather photos sometimes give me the shits as the reporters sometimes, out of the blue, ask us to go get weather pics. This is an example of a weather pic. Sometimes I hate them and sometimes I love them. This is one that I quite like. I was doing a story about some guy and his boat, and realised his friend had some kids sitting in the car doing sweet FA. So I asked if it was ok to steal the kids and get a quick weather shot. What I hate about weather shots, is that they have to have people in them. Can't jsut take photos of flooded roads or lightning etc. HAS TO HAVE A PERSON IN IT, cos the theory is "having faces in the paper sells papers.." sigh.. anyway. Saw these kids and shot it. Turned out nice. I like it. Obviously with the umbrella, you know it was meant to be a weather pic about the rain in Gladstone. Unfortunately there was a clearish patch over where I was at the time, so the dark rainy clouds really couldn't be seen, but you can still sorta see some grey dark clouds in the corners. I've done about 4 weather pics since then, and I swear the same umbrella has been used in every single shot! 

Some quick camera info, 16-35mm @ 16mm to get nice and WIDE and see the background as well as our subjects. Subjects are lit with 1 speedlight to camera right, and I under exposed the sky by about 1-1.5 stops, to get it dark and moody. 

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

Now, this image is not the best but I do like it for some reason. The story was about cane toading and how to catch them etc. Just basically had a mum and her 2 little ones out near the duckpond looking for cane toads. This was obviously a staged shot, as I wouldn't be able to get that sorta lighting if it was on the run.  What I like about the image I guess is how its lit. There's a nice spotlight feel to it, and i especially like how the tree has been lit up, and the foreground is almost black and creates a natural vignette on the ground. I dunno. I like it. And yeah, Speedlight, camera left. 

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer 

Yeah I know, it's a pretty stock standard swimming photo, but again, I like it. Just so sharp. Natural light, with 70-200. great combo.

Copyright Christopher Chan/The Observer

Those of you who are familiar with F1 photographs, a lot of shooters like to drag the shutter (long exposures) and get blurry shots of cars. Well, blurry background and sharp cars. I went to shoot go karting the other week and seeing as there is only SO much you can do with car photos, I experimented. I'm annoyed cos I asked for this photo to be used in the paper, they ignored me. stupid. I think i was shooting the lowest ISO my camera could shoot and at like, F22. Normally, you'd never do that for so many reasons, but I needed the shutter speed to drop to about 1/30th to get it slow enough to get some movement in the shot. It took a lot of trial and error to get it right, mostly  always it was because the driver was never in focus or sharp. Took a lot of tries but then they turn out, they look pretty cool!

Copyright Christopher Chan

This photo. Is not from or for the paper. I mentioned a few weeks ago when I took photos down at Tannum beach I wanted to take photos of Gladstone, something like a little project, that I could take away with me and remember this town by. I've had this 'shot' in my head since i first moved to Gladstone. I was driving around and saw it, tried to take a photo, but it just never worked. Granted, I wasn't using an ND or Grad ND filter, so the images looked bland, flat and just ugly. Today, I wasn't planning on shooting, as the clouds were low and dark, gloomy, just not ideal landscaping conditions, but, for some reason or other, I went out there and knew I had to come here. As soon as I arrived, there was a break in the clouds and due to the humidity in the air, the light created these beautiful shafts and glow around the power lines/station things.. i dunno what they are.. But yes.. the light, just created this light. Just magic. Unfortunately I didn't have time to switch over to my telephoto, put on the ND and Grad ND and then take the shot at a much tighter view, but I think this wide shot still gives a good sense to the atmosphere at the time. Bit of a composed image, I had a long exposure of the water, and blended it with a shot of the clouds to get this dreamy sort of look. I hope you like it, I really do!

THat's it for now, thanks for reading, be sure to check me out time to time for more photos and adventures. Until then,

Ciao.

-Edit- that horse photo has been used before but... oh well.. doesn't matter! 

New year, new post

I haven;t been posting on here as much as I said I would. My bad. Apparently i'm not allowed to show my photos on my blog anymore.. which is kinda shit. I'll still post some up but I'm afraid it'll be limited.. we'll call it self imposed censorship.

Anyway, went out and did something that I haven't done in a while, which was shoot for fun. Headed down to Tannum beach and took a few landscapes with my ND8 filter and Cokin graduated ND filter. They basically stop the light from coming into the camera, so you get nice slow shutter speeds, ie. milky smooth water. 

This is the first photo I took for the day. well not first first, but. the first one I liked. I used my special technique of using welding glass and putting it infront of the camera, to get ridiculously slow shutter speeds. This was about a 20second exposure, at 5pm @ f5.6? something stupid like that. THe welding glass is so dark it looks black. Unless you put it up to the sun, you wont see any thing through it. The drawback is, that the welding glass gives off a terrible green cast...

Yeah.. not very pretty. I mean, if you were going for an, outer space, martian green landscape then, yeah, welding glass is perfect. Unfortunately for this application, green was not the desired effect we wanted. I like black and whites, so converting it to b/w didn't bother me at all. I've been wanting to do the whole 'slow shutter speed black and white' look for a while and have never really gotten the chance to. Lack of subject and not caring enough to do it, being the 2 major reasons. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, however I have a few problems with the welding glass, eg, light leaks, so i've bought another one and i'll look to improve it so it will be more reliable in the future. Until it does arrive, this works fine. 

I haven't used the Grad ND filter for a long long time and i've forgotten why I used to love it so much! This is one exposure, no HDR no photoshop, all one photo, with a few contrast tweaks. Using the Grad ND and ND8 filter combined really saturate the colours and make the image pop. Something photoshop can't do. Nice slow shutter speed to get the waves looking milky and smooth. Haven't done landscapes in a long time and I really miss it. Will definitely go back to Tannum and get more shots. 

The last 3 shots were.. how I would say 'art wank' more abstract artsy photos. I really liked how the slow shutter speed made the water look like smooth milky carpet and the Graduated ND and the ND8 filter really saturated the colours creating some really nice, minimalistic abstract photos. It's a shame the horizon was hazy and obscured the moon to show its full potential. The moon was a beautiful red from the sunset and I loved how it just rose above the horizon and the boat sailing across as well. Quite unnoticeable but i think it adds to the image. Hopefully if I go back next time, there wont be any haze and I can get a nice clean image.

Anyway, short post this time, hopefully I can put some more of my work up there, otherwise it'll be more of this stuff! 

Ciao.

Oops, i've been away

I know I said I was going to constantly update my blog, but i've been away.. and or busy. So therefore, I have a few photos to show for the few weeks I haven't updated for. So lets just get started and straight to the pics.

I can't even remember the order these photos were taken in, but I think this is probably one of the earlier ones this month. This guy had won (earned) a contract with some NRL training camp where he gets to be on their watch list and potentially play NRL. I don't know NRL so it's a pretty rough idea of what it really is. 

It's a pretty basic portrait, but what I like about it is the full body portrait, which is something i've been conscious about lately. I'd gone through a lot of my work in the past, and a lot of portraits I always cut off their feet at the ankles, or thighs, which has always annoyed me. Either shoot tight, or shoot the full body, so now I like the full body look and i'll try this for a while and see how it turns out. 2 light set up, set off with the SU-800. 1x high up near his face and the other one was down low near his legs, to the right which filled in a bit of light. THe original shot was too dark down there, so the light really makes the image pop out, just that extra bit. Other technical jargon - under exposed the background -1EV to make it a bit more dramatic.

This story was about an elderly couple, pictured, who were about to lose their house in Gladstone, as they can no longer afford the rising rental prices in this town. I had another shot where you could see that this guy had his arm chopped off, we ended up running that, but the lady had he hand under her chin, which made her look silly. So I am personally a bit conflicted between the 2 and which I like. I like this only cos she doesn't look as weird, but the one where his arm is chopped off adds more to the story. If it wasn't for the paper, i'd photoshop the 2 together.. bu I can't do that... Lighting setup, again, another light off camera to the right (you can see the shadow behind them) in hindsight i'd rectify that to make it less obvious, but, too late. Only 1 light and under exposed the BG (background) -1EV as per usual.

Another sad story about some girl who's Dr or something shortage.. wasn't paying attention.. but lighting was clamped onto the stairs above them, wide beam to illuminate a large portion of them, and underexposed the BG to add a more dramatic feel to the image.

Now this is where I forget which comes first, so i'm just gonna throw them all up and briefly explain them all.

These 2 are probably my favourite portraits i've taken for a very long time. why? its nothing special? perhaps, but I really like the lighting and the environment he's in, Combine it all together and it makes a really nice photo. This guy didn't want his photo taken, which was the news I got told before I went out and had to convince him to get his photo taken. Turns out he was pretty cool, he didn't mind, but I made his life easier by having these photos done in 30 seconds. I shit you not. I got there a little early and had time to set up, The car park was in a perfect spot where you could see the refinery in the background, which adds interest to the shot, and most importantly, where he would be standing is in shade, no stray light interfering with the flash or anything. Told him to stand there, 'click click click click' "All done mate. See ya later." And that was that.

Speedlight was on a tripod on the boot of the car, right to his face. Nice rembrandt lighting . Simple.

Not into fashion photography. I dread it. The thought of it makes me uneasy. Not because I can't shoot it and not because I'm shit at it.. I kind of am, but only because I don't know how to pose the models. As a doco shooter, you capture things in motion, as it happens before your eyes. Editorial portraits/Environmental portraits are one thing, but fashion.. *shudder* just cannot. SO with this shoot I really kind of struggled in posing her, making it look.. fashion-like. We were in a clothes store in Gladstone and I had one of the flashes clamped onto one of the rails to the left, set at about 24mm to let off a wide beam of light. I wanted to be different and experimented with the 50mm lens. Shot it at 1.8 which normally isn't a good idea, but I really wanted to have the focus only on my subject. In a perfect world i'd pull out the 70-200 @200mm, but with the 50mm I was already backed up against the wall. So basically this is the shot we got. I like the shadow infront of her caused from the window behind her.

P.S they ran this image on the Weekend liftout, which In ever knew existed.. shows how much I know about my own paper.. oops.. Here's how it looked.

Similar set up with this shot, but shot it with the 28-70 @ 28mm. Again, I had no ideas on how to pose this model, the only thing I could think of was 'movement' so I asked them to find a 'flowy' dress. Ended up with this. Turned out better than I thought. I'm happy.

Brief: Try not to buy pets for Xmas as people dump them. This is true, and it pisses me off when people throw away animals cos they are no longer able to look after them. Such a shame. Having 3 dogs and Cats, this was somewhat personal for me. I wanted the image to be sad, somewhat. I really wanted to have a photo of a dog behind the cage looking sad, but that would make the RSPCA look bad, so I went for a happy medium. They wanted a shoot outside in the garden with the dogs running around. Wasn't going to happen. That was too happy a photo. We went inside the dog cage and shot it like this. I wanted people to see the bars, the sterile colours and the concrete. This would emphasise the point I wanted to make. 'These dogs will end up back in jail if you dump them.' 1x Speedlight, high to the left @between 35-50mm to get a beam not too wide, as the flash was about 2m from them.

Kids, read more books! this is my interpretation of that brief. On the job slip it asked for library workers to pose for me, they all bailed so we (I) found some kids to be willing volunteers. I really wanted the DOF and line of focus to run down the books and end up on the kids, however the aisles weren't long enough so that didn't happen. Shot with 70-200 @200mm, 2x Speedlights above high and adjacent to each child set at 70mm to get a nice beam and create that light on the ground under them. I'd like the BG to be a bit darker.. or have some interest in the background, but I didn't and there isn't, but the image still looks nice IMO.

Real simple photo showing off some artists painting, I don't know why I like it. I just do. I like the ambient WB which is Orange, and how it contrasts with the cold white flash.

Simple dance rehearsal photo. Nothing to it. No flash, 70mm 1/125? @2.8, some stupid ISO, probably 8000. Could be wrong.. can't be bothered looking at the EXIF data, if you want to, by all means do so.

Had to take photos of people out and about in Gladstone and I always saw these kids riding around at the skate park. So me being me, I wanted to shoot it. And I did. I had a really cool idea of doing portraits of kids while another one did tricks in the BG. This is how they turned out sorta. With our portrait model I had 2x Speedlights @ 70mm, as it was BRIGHT afternoon sun, and it would need a lot focused light to overcome the sun and get a nice blue in the image.

This is how it was meant to look, but stupid kid looked away. But it's still cool.

Just some photo I liked.

Finally, there was sport, always shoot sport. I was going to upload more softball pics but they all look the same. This ones different cos she gets hit by the ball. I laughed.

So that's the end of my blog. It was a long one, and i'm tired from writing it.. hope you enjoyed it as it's been awhile. Anyway until next time, probably next next week. I'll see you then!

PS I graduated.

I used the Observer paper cos I thought it'd be a good laugh. The girls at work found my graduation photos and posted them all over the office, and they ALL loved the Observer paper in my hands. haha.

Ciao.