Lions, bats, hawks and dragons.

Unfortunately I didn't shoot any of those animals, a dragon would be cool, maybe even cooler than a unicorn, but we all know how hard they are to find and shoot.

Chinese new year just passed earlier this month and they sent me down to Crown street mall and the Nan Tien buddhist temple to shoot some lunar new year celebrations. Nan Tien is beautiful, it's the largest buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere I hear, architecturally very beautiful with fantastic gardens as well. Having spent the last couple of Chinese New Year's in Gladstone it was nice to come to a city where they had a lion running and jumping around. Obviously it's not Melbourne, Sydney or Asia but hey, it's better than nothing.

Sometimes in my job I have to go and photograph things that are pretty confronting, things that make me feel uneasy, usually i'm not too bothered by things, i've been to my fair share of fatals, sure they're bad, I don't enjoy seeing people die, but i'm usually pretty distant from it. I'm an observer just documenting what's happening in front of me, however this time it was different. 

I wasn't at a fatal shooting someone who had driven into a truck and killed themselves at 100km/h, or someone who had been murdered by their significant other, it was a bat, a grey fruit bat. We covered a story about people putting nets over their fruit trees because they didn't want birds or bats eating their fruit, sounds fair enough, when I was growing up my uncle would always put nets over his apple tree to deter the birds - and it worked - however I never thought about what would happen if they got trapped or if they ever injured themselves on the nets. 

The job description for this was pretty basic "meet such and such who is a carer of fruit bats." in my head I had the perfect shot, she would be smiling at me and her arm would be out with some bats hanging off her. Brilliant photo, lets go. 

I walked up and introduced myself and prepared for my shoot, I asked to see the bat we'd be shooting. She scurried off to the other room and pulled a bat out of a cage who'd been severely injured when caught in nets. 

It was not what I expected, he was dying, practically dead. She pulled him out slowly and he let out what seemed like his final breath, the smell of rotting fruit is what struck me. Here was this little creature about to die, dying right in front of my lens. 

I'm usually not bothered by these things but anything to do with animals hits me right to the core. We shot him for about 10 minutes and when we put him back, Sandra, the fruit bat volunteer told me. "He's gone." She slowly put him back in the cage and covered him with his blanket. 

Feeling pretty despondent I asked to see if she had any bats which were on the up, not so.. dead, to be blunt, luckily she had some.

Speaking of 'on the up' the Wollongong Hawks won their 4th game in a row last week against the New Zealand breakers. The hawks have been pretty up and down this year, unfortunately NBL is no where near as big here as it is in other countries, there are rumours of clubs shutting down due to lack of funding and low ticket sales, but the Hawks are one of, if not the only original club left since the inception of the NBL in the 70's. They're playing for their 5th win in a row tonight, fingers crossed they get there.

Last week I shot my first NRL game, I don't know anything about league but being in a stadium with thousands of fans cheering really gets the hairs on your neck to stand up. I've shot league before but never at a professional level. I don't know any of the players, hopefully I can learn them within the next few months so shooting them and identifying them will be a LOT easier. 

End of an era

When I drove into Wollongong for the first time nearly 6 months ago, the first thing I saw on the horizon was the Port Kembla stack. It's hard to not notice it, standing nearly 200m high it was the tallest thing in the Wollongong skyline.

Within my first few days of working at the Mercury, I was told that the stack was going to come down, it was going to be blown up. How could you not be excited about that?! I'd never seen anything get blown up or demolished before, so as you could guess, I was pretty excited.

However, the months passed and the stack was still standing, I grew to really like the stack. As a non Wollongong local, it was always reassuring to drive into Wollongong and see the stack standing so high in the skyline acting like a beacon to navigate your way back.

When the date was finally confirmed as to when the stack was going to come down we went in a frenzy shooting everything and anything stack related. As the weeks went by it seemed that we shot something stack related everyday, safe to say, we were all pretty relieved when it was all over and done with.

On the day of the stack demolition I made sure to wake up nice and early, 5am early, to get some sunrise shots of the stack for the last time. Unfortunately where I was situated I had a pretty average sunrise, the skies were pretty washed out and the light was in a less than ideal place to get nice colours in the sky. I set myself up with a 200mm lens with a 2x converter to get in tight enough to see the stack but not so tight as to cut out the lake and houses on the horizon.

And just like that, it was over and done with. 4 years to build, stood high in Wollongong for 50 years, felled in 20 seconds. 

Settling in

When I first came to the Mercury I had a pretty hard time adjusting to a new camera system, coming from Nikon my whole life, i'd probably only handled a Canon camera less than half a dozen times - really.  I was pretty annoyed when I was forced to use Canon cameras, a lot of it had to do with not knowing how to use the damn things. However, things have changed and i've gotten used to it pretty well - I must admit i've learned to like the damn wheel on the back of the camera...

I've always been a lover and user of using flash photography, in particular, off camera flash. When I came to the Merc there was no trigger for me to do my off camera flash firing. They gave me 3 flashes where I could master one of the flashes to slave the other 2, however, this only worked sometimes if lucky. It required a direct line of sight from the master flash to the slaves but wouldn't work if the slave was out in the sun, where the sun would confuse the flash so it wouldn't fire - worst.  Learning a new camera system and not being able to use off camera flash like I wanted to, I think, made the first few weeks the hardest for me as I wasn't able to get the shots that I had so clearly imagined in my head. In Gladstone I had my setup, sure it was crude and crummy but it worked, I was comfortable, here at the Merc, I had none of that. Long story short. I bought some wireless triggers for the flashes and damn! can I say it's made a world of difference, not just technically, but creatively as well.

Long story short - I went and bought some cheapo chinese radio triggers. I have nothing to say about them except, they just work. period. I might do a review about them next week - actually I will. But in the mean time here are some photos I took in the past 2 weeks using the triggers. Enjoy.

So NRL is a pretty big deal around here, this guy's meant to be alright. I wouldn't have a clue who he is. It's definitely going to be interesting in the future when I meet NRL stars and have no idea who they are. #victorianproblems #aflisbetterthanleague 

So last week i had the tough job of photographing surfing. I know, tough, but someone has to do it. I'd never done it before and I went out with the 600mm lens. That thing is stupid big and stupid heavy. I didn't take a monopod because i'm an idiot. Anyway it's pretty fun, but it makes it hard when you don't really know anything about surfing, but, not bad for my first try I reckon.

Okay, short and sweet, just the way I like it.

Until next time,

Ciao.

New paper!

I always say this but i'm horrible at blogs, i don't even know why I bother sometimes, I can't ever seem to be consistent and update frequently. Anyway, it's been a busy few months, left and old job and get a new job at a new paper in a new city, new state.

I said goodbye to Queensland at the end of September and started my new life in New South Wales, it's very different, that's for sure. So the new paper is nice, different, more professional but i'm still learning the ropes and trying to feel my way around. Unfortunately I don't shoot as much as I'd like to, it's just the way it is around here. The standard is definitely higher and i've learnt more in 6 weeks than I did in the two years I was in Gladstone.

I took this job looking for a new challenge and looking to improve my skills and learn more about the industry, i've certainly done that since moving to Wollongong. The Illawarra Mercury is a good paper with high standards in their photographic department. I'm the first NEW full time photographer in 20 years.. I know right! The photographers here have been here for years, 20+ years would be the average i'd say, and I don't blame them, good location, why would you ever want to leave?! 

Enough talk, here are a few photo's i've done in the past 6 weeks. Like I said, I don't take as many photos as I used to - or would like to to be completely honest - but it's a start. Coming from Nikon and being forced to shoot Canon was a bit tricky to start with but i'm slowly getting the hang of it..

So that's pretty much all i've done in 7 weeks.. Like I said, i don't shoot as much as I'd like to, but at a bigger paper like the Mercury there are days when you don't shoot as much as you'd really like - just the way i is. The standard here is ridiculously high and the photographers I work with are all phenomenally talented. I have a long way to go.. that's for sure..