Colour & Light Photoblog

Most of my photos that I like, are ones that have come from well abroad – Europe, Rarotonga, Fiji, Japan. Is it because these places are more photogenic than my backyard?

I don’t think so.

The reason I see, is that I am so accustomed to the local stuff that I no longer see it in a photographic way. When I’m abroad I have a purpose about my photography, I’ll plan around the golden hour, I’ll have my gear with me, and I’ll be seeking out photogenic locations. At home I don’t. At home I plan around work and the elements of daily life. But, when I do occasionally break that routine and focus on photography, I can start to see the beginings of where the good local pictures are waiting – just 5 minutes down the road. All these photos are taken within 100 m and 1 hour of each other at the Whakatane Heads.

I don’t do a lot of paid photographic work. Photography is primarily a hobby for me, but, I am ever conscious of not undercutting those who need to make a living from photography. The photo I give away for free could have been part of someone’s mortgage payment. In this cut throat world where everyone has an eleventy terapixel camera, if it’s not one photographer canibalising another, it’s the clients themselves trying to get something for nothing. Here’s a post from Aaron Lindberg:

One of the toughest things for a photographer to do is to say “no” to new business, even if it’s a bad deal. Especially in today’s environment, your prospective clients have an arsenal of pick-up lines — ranging from sweet talk to coy bluffs — to make bad deals sound like good ones.

Here are some examples of client sweet talk:

via Photographers, Don’t Fall for These Client Pick-Up Lines.

And since this is a photoblog, here’s one photo I did get some payment for, and oldie, but a goodie:

Flood waters have completely receded from our area, and those who need to have been getting stuck into the clean up. Great to have a typical Whakatane day (i.e. sunny!) immediately following the flood.

During

After

And a few more during pics ’cause they’re more interesting:

So I’m getting flooded right now, so I thought I’d update my blog. Yeah, that seems stupid. Anywho, quick one:

Ok, back to battening down the hatches, or whatever you do when the water is rising…

Little point and shoot camera on top of the big SLR. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while, but haven’t been able to find an adapter that would mount on my camera hotshoe at one end and the tripod screw on the bottom of another camera. Well, while in Japan I found one on the shelf:

Looks a little entertaining, but it saves me the dilemma of trying to decide if I want to video or shoot each time a car comes hurtling down the road. I can focus on getting the still shots and then let the little cam grab some (shonkey) video while I’m at it.

Available in HD 720 if you want to click through into youtube to view it:

And the Old Coach Road stills photo gallery is here.

Two days in Tokyo, flying home at the end of the second. Main aim for day one was to check out Electronics Mecca – Akihabara Electric Town. Because of the inside of shops thing I don’t have a lot of photos, but here’s what we saw. Flying petrol dispensers were a novelty:

Elevator mirrors were also a novelty:

Cherry blossoms coating the river:

Teeny widdle car:

And one little corner of one of bazillions of massive electronic stores:

And it wasn’t as much fun for this gadget geek as you might expect – there’s just too many options, it’s overwhelming.

So we had to sit down and enjoy some Wagyū (the family of beef that includes Kobe, Mishima, Ōmi, Sanda etc):

Ah, but that’s right, I’m saving the food photos for later. So here’s some more city scenes:

Cyclist:

Ferris wheel:

And what was this chicken thinking?

Discovered Mochi Cream Icecream, hard to explain, don’t photograph well, but VERY tasty:

And a plane to symbolise flying back home and the trip is over:

Couple more posts to come on some of the specifically photogenic stuff as well as the foooood mmmm

Creating a story or capturing the essence of a whole area, in a single frame, is something I still struggle with. The great photographers do it well, I still have a long way to go.

The photoblog approach is a nice crutch in this respect – it allows me to throw a collection of photographs in a pile and put some words in to tie them together. The ideal (from my point of view anyway) is to distill the whole story or idea down to a single frame.

Take a moment to watch this clip (available in HD if you click through). It’s a video of the area from which the photos in this post come. The footage was recorded on the same camera (Canon EOS 7D) that the rest of the photos came from, and taken at roughly the same time. Please excuse my rough panning skills…

I don’t know about you, but that short clip conveys so much more of the mood than my snaps:

Anyway, I’ll keep trying…

Some interior shots of the car:

Ugh, I can’t believe I used that as a title. Anywho, lousy title, great car – 2004 Audi S4

The reserved styling is what appeals to me, it’s staunch without being vulgar and blingy like Evos and WRXs can be. Reserved maybe, but the twin exhausts do hint at something more:

And this is what they’re hinting at, the 4.2 L V8

So what’s the S4 bit mean?

Well the A4 is Audi’s compact sports sedan. The S4 is the sports version of the sports sedan (and as an aside, the RS4 is the sports version of the sports version of the sports sedan, and it’s waaay beyond my means to acquire one of those!). For this year (2004 B6 platform), the primary differences between the A4 and S4 are the 4.2L V8 (3.0 L V6 is the highest spec option available in an A4), uprated brakes, firmer suspension, quattro four wheel drive as standard.

Ok, back later, I’m going for another drive…

Another year, more candles.