Bees Revisited

A quiet weekend photographically. And when its like that, I know that sooner or later, I'm going to go into the garden and photograph the bees. They are not the most cooperative of subjects, but they are always around. Last time, I used a D3, handheld with a SB800 flash in one hand. This time I have downgraded to a D300, much lighter, and the SB800 is in an Orbis ringflash attachment. The subjects are randomly visiting a lavender bush in the front garden. Its a hot sunny day 35 degrees, and light winds are moving the lavender blossoms several centimeters. The bees don't stay on a blossom for more than a few seconds generally, though occasionally one will stay for up to 30 seconds. They seem oblivious to the camera, the lens only millimeters away from them as they forage.
Since I am using a flash, the camera is set on 250th sec, 800ISO, but the aperture is still large and depth of field an issue. Changing the shutter speed to 125th sec is challenging my ability to hand hold the camera in one hand, the flash in the other. After some 60 shots I'm done.
Results are better than expected. There is some nice backlighting in some of the shots.

Wim van Weenen Powerlifting Legend

Recent coverage of the International Masters Games in Sydney has reminded me that I photographed some of the events at the 2009 Australian Masters Games at Geelong for Sports Photographics Australia. One of the events I was  priviliged to be present at was the Powerlifiting. And the star of that event as far as I was concerned was Wim van Weenen.

Wim van Weenen is a former Dutch man who emigrated to Australia in 1954. At the age of 77 or 78, not sure which, he set new records for his age group in the competition at Geelong.

But look at his age, and look at the stack of weights he's lifting here:

Before that, of course, he had help dressing:

and some encouragement:

And afterward, he was pleased:

 

Festival Centre gets a little Grunge

After losing a month to illness of various kinds, I had a shoot at the Festival Centre/Riverside Precinct with Ursula. I was tempted to do a little Photoshoppery:

Nostalgia revisited, or is that deja vu again?

Many years ago I taught Mathematics somewhere around  Northcote  in Melbourne, Victoria, and if anyone outside Aus reads this, supposing anyone actually reads this, that's in Australia.
Why bring this up now?
Well I just received an email from an old colleague from those days, forwarded from another colleague I have not thought about for over 30 years.
David Kratz also taught the boys at Northcote. Now you wouln't have called David a particularly exciting man, with slicked down hair (Brylcreem comes to mind, if anyone can remember that stuff, though it could have been Vitalis) and if I'm not mistaken, he was given to wearing cardigans. Brown cardigans. Well David has been a man of surprises. The kind of surprises that make one wish....well that one could do that surprising stuff too. Maybe things look more spectacular over a lifetime viewpoint.  One day a new teacher arrived at the school, young, female, and some would say attractive. Well we mostly thought she was attractive, given that most female teachers were more like Mrs Doubtfire than Elle MacPherson, but David was smitten almost immediately. (Now I'm not criticising Eva's appearance. She was no Mrs Doubtfire). His personality changed, he was almost reborn.
The latest surprise to me now is that in 1993 he took early retirement from teaching in Melbourne and settled about as far away from Australia as you can get, in Tain, in the Scottish Highlands.
And there he has devoted his time to recording on his website the beauty of the Scottish Highlands. Find his work here:

1993 incidentally was about the time that I started my family and shortly afterwards changed to a career in IT. Whose to know. If that makes sense. Much more has happened in David's life,  but thats not my business. Take a look at his site if you want to know what just about any place in Northern Scotland (above the Loch Ness valley) looks like. Any place. Literally.

A season of Women's Football

I've shot a lot of soccer (sorry football), over the past season. Because the women's games are played on Sunday, I have mostly covered the women's game - I do other things on Saturday. Now you might just infer that I would prefer to shoot the mens game. And perhaps, the men's game is just a tad more exciting. Take a look at these two shots -

You might think you could shoot the women's game all season and not get shots like these. But you'd be wrong.

One day I sat on the sidelines and left the camera in the car and watched the game for a change. The precision passing of the Fulham Premiers girls was a joy to behold. And take a look at this for pure balls:

Isn't there a rule about dangerous tackling? Hard to tell which player was in the most danger.
Mind you that was not premier league. First division I think.
Now this is the Premier League. Can we really believe what the camera is telling us in this shot? 

Just a gentle push in the back...

 Good to see the always immaculately turned out No 6 get down and dirty...

You will believe a woman can fly......

The camera is such a liar......

Symmetry, almost dance....

Perfectly in step....

Symmetry again... hmmmm..

Then, the women players can look so graceful..

You'll never see that in the mens game....or will you?

Anyway. I have several thousand shots in my library from this season, and thats after deleting at least 70% of shots taken. I've culled these down to 60 or so for the season, the rest will shortly disappear to make space for next years endeavours. Take a look at the top 60 here, before they too disappear.......

Photographer loses model, shoots himself with own gun

So what do you do when you just have to shoot and you have no model? Well shooting yourself is an act of desperation, even if the gun of choice is an SB800.

Ambush Marketing - the Band

Who doesn't love being bailed up by one of those personable  (I'll draw the line at  that - wouldn't want to be sexist - or a liar - by saying attractive) young people trying to sign you up for Greenpeace/Oxfam/Rann's Twitter or whatever deserving cause  ...... anyway, this post is not about that. Its about the new band headed by the talented Matthew Hill, Ambush Marketing. Members are Matthew on everything except drums, Ben Campbell on guitar and other stuff, and Greg Hill on drums. After one failed attempt when the venue made an attempt at self destruction, they made their CD debut appearance at Live on Light on 31st July to a packed house. Well, maybe it wasn't quite packed, but it should have been. They were accompanied by a mysterious dude drawing chalk dinosaurs in the background, somehow synchronising with the music.
Now it was seriously dark in the venue  - perhaps the owners were hoping to avoid another electrical meltdown - so my photographs are not my usual quality.

Serious kudos by the way to Live on Light for making it possible for emerging talent to strut their stuff.

Do yourself a favour and listen to Matthew Hill when he performs around the town.
And when the guitarist, Ben Campbell comes back from his adventure in the badlands of California, come along for the next appearance of the full band.

Visit their myspace page.