Photo of the month: November

This is a HDR image of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, I placed my camera on the floor on a small tripod and took 3 photographs -2, 0 and +2 stops. The images were loaded into Lightroom and a virtual copy was made of the under exposed image, the exposure was then dropped on this image a further 2 stops and the 4 images were loaded into Photomatix. They were then processed into one image and edited in Photoshop where I added the dark figure which was an image of my son dressed in a black hooded gown.

St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral

Photo of the month: October

I don’t consider myself to be a portrait photographer, but I find the easiest way to get a natural smile out of a subject is to try and distract their attention away from the camera and to you. This can take a bit of effort as the camera is normally between you and them. I had taken a number of shots of my son and it was not until I gave him his dog to hold that I could manage to catch his natural smile.

Natural Smile

Photo of the month: September

Running behind again. Just getting sorted out after the flood crises and hope to catch up on my photo of the month posts. The photo below is of a drop of milk falling into a glass of water and illuminated by gelled speed lights. The speed lights are set on very low power which has the effect of shortening the duration of the flash so it will freeze motion. The speed lights were triggered when the drop passed through a laser beam. I have a background in electronics and the laser trigger was a home made unit which connected to a timing unit. The photo is taken in a darkened room, I open the shutter on the camera, squeeze the milk drop out of an eyedropper, the drop breaks the laser beam which fires the speed lights after a preset delay, then the shutter is closed. Took quite a few shots to get it all to work, it was quite a pain as once the water was contaminated with a single drop of milk everything had to be cleaned and set up again as the single drop of milk in the water diffused the flash enough to spoil the whole effect.

High speed photography

Swan Hill still waiting for the flood peak


Swan Hill is still waiting for the flood waters to peak. There have been minor breaches in a number of levies with a major breach at Murrabit and Benjeroop.
Hold your mouse pointer over the image to read the caption. Please contact me for any editorial or commercial use of these images, all monies donated to flood relief.