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. 

2013 in review

I'm a week late in writing this, but as I always say, better late than never right?

So what happened to me in 2013? I always say this and i'm sure everyone says it too, but 2013 sure went fast. For me it was a whirlwind year, one minute I was celebrating new years eve at my girlfriends house with her family and our friends getting drunk and eating too much food and then suddenly I was covering floods during Australia day, bush fires in winter, fatalities, murders, birthdays, grand openings and everything else you can think of.

I was enjoying myself in Gladstone, I had completed my cadetship, I had made some fantastic friends, was doing a large chunk of the photography at the paper and doing what I loved, taking photos everyday.

However, despite all this, a part of me wanted to leave and find a new challenge. Towards the middle/end of 2013 I had nothing more to learn, I had peaked, learning wise and was starting to plateau, starting to get bored and feeling unchallenged with what the Observer had to offer me. I wanted more responsibility, but I wasn't allowed, so for me, I knew it was time to leave.

Unfortunately for us photographers, jobs do not grow on trees and a good job comes once every few months (if that even) and you need to grab them as soon as you can. The market is over saturated with photographers and companies constantly under valuing photographers by advertising volunteer, part time, casual photography jobs hoping and knowing some sucker will apply and do it just to get their name out there in the market. I'll admit, when I first started I thought having my name out there would kick start my career as a famous photojournalist. I was wrong.

I lost track of how many jobs I applied for and I was getting disheartened in the hope of ever finding a new job. My biggest fear was to be stuck in central Queensland forever, never being able to find a job. 2013 was full of frustration and anger. I wasn't getting the jobs I wanted, constantly falling short of the finish line. Sure, I could've worked at any old photographic joint and made some decent coin, but i'm fussy, I needed to work for a paper, it was either that or nothing at all. Luckily I landed a gig in Wollongong. How I got it, I really don't know, however, this life is full of luck and sometimes things just go you way.

 So looking back on the year that was, I thought the best way to sum up 2013 was to go back and find my 12 favourite photos of the year, not necessarily my best photos but my most memorable ones. So without further adieu...

 - January - 

When I think of January 2013 I think of the Australia day floods. To say it rained in central Queensland is an understatement. It rained like I had never seen before. It was my first time cover floods and not gonna lie, I had a blast going out there seeing flood affected areas.

- February - 

We continued our coverage of flood affected areas in February. What I remember most was going to the Boyne Valley region, completed isolated and cut off from everyone during the floods, the town was left to fend for itself with limited food and water. One of the main sources of income for the locals was dairy production/farming and when the floods hit, many people lost a lot of cattle and farm animals. The town was littered with remains of dead cows. Many cows had become displaced and were left wandering the road.

- March - 

It was still wet and raining in Gladstone in March, but we had a little break from all the wet weather stuff and I went to my first dog show. Had a blast! I love dogs and animals in general and I thoroughly enjoyed walking around taking photos of all the different types of dogs. It's true, some dogs really look like their owners..

- April - 

We did a story about this guy who opened up his own tattoo parlour working from home. Bazaar, he worked from his garage which, as you can see, was very colourfully decorated. 

- May -  

How a car flips upside down I have no idea, yet these guys managed to do it after hitting a pole in a 60km/h zone.

- June - 

We went to the Ubobo fair, where they opened up time capsules buried 25 years ago. There was a series of them buried, all to be opened at 25 year intervals. I don't remember why this guy was there, but he was..

- July - 

Gladstone had a big concert/play organised with the Queensland theatre of arts - or something along those lines - and we had to photograph the different characters in the upcoming play. This shoot was with a bunch of stepford wives dressed up in cool 1950's clothing. I had never done anything like it before and was really happy with the results. 

- August- 

It was quiet for me in August as I nicked off on holidays for a month, so it was pretty slim pickings for August.

- September - 

This was my last photo for the Observer and it could not have ended on a more perfect note than it did. At the Observer we covered a lot of cooky crazy stories and this one was definitely up there. Old mate wasn't happy that he couldn't spend less than $5 on eftpos at a tool shop so he came to the Observer and filed a complaint. He wanted 2 or 3 screws but was denied when he was told that there was a card limit when purchasing goods. Apparently this was news worthy and that my friends, is how I ended my career at the Observer.

One of my first photos at the Mercury. Iron Jay is a wrestler who goes to events and stuff and runs a wrestling for kids kind of activity fun day. Turned out better than I thought.

- October - 

This was the first time I had photographed a dolphin. It just happened to be a dead one. 

- November - 

Like Gladstone, Wollongong is situated on the ocean, however, surfing is a lot bigger here than it is in Gladstone. This was the first time I had photographed surfing and I was pretty happy with the results. I have no idea what makes a good surfing photo  - in terms of surfing technique and such but aesthetically, I just like this photo. 

- December - 

Wollongong has opened a whole new world of opportunity for me in terms of learning as well as photographing new things that I had never done before. I had shot basketball in the past in Gladstone, but never had a shot a sport that was on a national level. Wollongong is home to the Wollongong hawks - my newly adopted favourite basketball team - and shooting a proper NBL game is pretty damn exciting and super fun. This wasn't the first NBL game I shot in Wollongong but this was one of, if not, my first photo to be published on the SMH site. chuffed. 

Ok, well, that's it. I've rambled more that I wanted to, but that was my year in review, I hope you enjoyed, i'm sure 2014 will be bigger and better than the last!

Chris.

Port Kembla + Bulli

The last few days have been busy for me, not with work but shooting landscapes everyday after work. Why? i'm not sure, I just had an urge to get back out there and shoot some landscapes. Wollongong is lucky enough to be on the east coast, surrounded by beautiful and picturesque coastlines which make for wonderful photo opportunities.

The usual set up was used for these photos, trusty nex 5n with the pretty average SEL16 which unfortunately is not very sharp, especially in the corners where it starts to smudge and get pretty average. However, stopping down to about f8 makes it relatively acceptable. I'm not a pixel peeper so to me, they're ok. Not sure how they'd look blow up to large size prints, but certainly online they're fine.

Anyway, short and sweet. enjoy the photos.

Bulli pool. 

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..