Would you believe that one in four teenagers suffer from some mental illness and depression?

The statistics around depression in teenagers is mind blowing and frightening, it takes the lives of our children and debilitates many others. Fighting the scourge is one, we as a community need to band together and tackle the social issues as segregation become more complex every day.

Fighting depression, especially in our children, is something I feel very passionate about and why I donated my time to photograph the inaugural Arbonne Foundation Charity night here in Canberra.

It was an evening of fine dining, lots of laughs and more importantly raising money to help our children. The night raised $7500 and will go a long way to supporting our children through grants and other means.

If you’d like more information over to their website at http://www.arbonnefoundation.org/

Anyone up for some fun?

Behind-the-scenes

Me with my game face on. lol

Looking through my window down across the valley and onto the hills of the Brindabella mountains, I see the soft clouds as they roll down the hills weaving their way through the valleys, trees, and closer houses. The soft overcast day brings with it very soft light that almost removes all shadows from between the houses and hills.

This for me is the perfect photographing weather as it removes all shadows and harsh light to give even contrast across the entire image. The only problem with this is that without shadows you have no depth and you have no dimension but it does give me the ability to create my own. This my friends are why I have battery-powered studio lights that I can take on location. It allows me to shoot almost anywhere and create the images and shadows to bring it look that I’m after.

Let me give you an example, look at this image below, and ask yourself.

• Would this image have the same impact if it was without shadows?
• Do the shadows add to the feeling of the image and why?

Soft Vale

For this image, I used a 100cm x 100cm Elinchrom softbox that had two defusers, giving me a soft light that wraps around the subject bringing highlighting the soft texture of the skin while allowing the light to penetrate through the Vale and not over exposing it.

Can anybody ever have enough storage? I don’t think so!

I know I have been putting off buying extra storage for some time now but unfortunately it has come to a point I cannot avoid it any further so I have lashed out and bought a new NAS (network access storage) that hopefully with its 48 TB of data should give me enough to keep me going for the coming years.

I must say it did take me some time to select the device as there are many out there, however, I feel the one I got is at the top of the game in the NAS arena. It is not only storage device but also serves as a server for many different applications and will allow me to stream videos and photos directly while also integrating with IP security cameras to allow real-time monitoring and alarm systems. All in all it’s a very clever little device but most of all it will allow me to ensure your photos are kept in a secure fashion where they can be retrieved and archived for longer periods of time to give you the confidence that any photos we take will not be lost.

One of the other cool things about this device is it has built-in backup to the cloud so everything that it stores locally is replicated and backed up in the cloud in a secure Google vault that is encrypted so no one can get access to it except myself in the event of a complete hard drive failure in my office. Not that this really becomes an issue anymore as I have multiple hard drives that use RAID 6 to store data which allows for up to 2 hard drives to fail at any given time while keeping the integrity of the data intact.

The only time I would need access the cloud data is in a major incident with the building burns down or someone breaks in and steals the computer hardware but that is relatively unlikely however I am prepared. 🙂

Synology Diskstation DS1815+ with 8 x 6TB hard drives

Synology Diskstation DS1815+

If you want to know more about these crazy little devices shoot me a message and I am more than happy to share my experiences as I know buying this type of hardware is not only expensive they can be hard to manage.

When you own a Ferrari, it’s not about how hot the car is, the deep rumble from the exhaust as your accelerate away, nor the way the people stop and stare as your drive past….  It is all about the badge…  🙂

It is interesting when you photograph things like Ferrari’s, BMW’s, jewelry, watches, etc, things that have been photographed thousands of times before.

• How do you make it look special?
• How do you bring the feeling and passion to what is just an object?
• How to you stir the feelings that are deep down inside of people looking that something they already know and understand?
• How do you take a photo of something that has gazillion photos of it already and make it look new???

For me, the answer is in the lighting, composition, and just going outside of the box. 🙂

Ferrari Badge

The lines and shape of things can say a lot. Capture them.

When shooting things you have to make sure you get a variety of shots. I start with the basics to ensure I get the shot and then move onto other ideas once I know I have the images in the bag.

The Love And The Passion That is Ferrari

Using a bit of darkness can put a bit of mystery into a shot and make the viewer’s mind work a bit harder keeping them drawn into the image longer.

Darkness can be your friend

In the next two images, I changed my camera settings so that the subjects in the background were our of focus while the subject in the front was in focus.  This brings the attention to the subject. I could have focused on the person at the rear to blur the person at the front to give the same result.

Shallow depth of field brings the attention to different subjects.

Shallow depth of field brings the attention to different subjects.

Product photography, when mixed with portraits, can be a very effective way to get your products out there.   If you want to know more drop me a message.  My details can be found on my contact page.

After a few weeks of on and off, rain and the days getting cooler it is great to have a day where the sun in shining and the air as still the sun is bright.

What are you waiting for????  Get out there!!!!!!  Let the sun touch your skin and breath deep to take in the world around you…..  Oh and don’t forget to take photos. 🙂

Breath Deep And Take in The Fresh Air