Today's image is a funny one - and a little different to most of the others. It's one I'm fond of nonetheless, which is why it made the list of course!
What looks like a random collection of glowing orbs is the out of focus blur of a number of coloured lights, suspended under the awning of the Museum of Contemporary Art during Vivid here in Sydney, in 2014...
Read MoreJust a quick note that the latest series of essays from all of us at the Kage Collective are up now - and this month is a little different, in that we're relying entirely on the images. No words to our essays this time - apart from a quick introduction from Patrick LaRoque, we're all about silent contemplation this time.
Read MoreThe new edition of Kage Collective essays is out today, with new work from just about all of us. It's summer over in the Northern Hemisphere, so a lot of us have been on the move or on holiday recently - including myself - so our stories this month reflect that.
Here's a bonus image that didn't find its way into the story this month - I don't often do double exposures in-camera, but thought I'd take another look at it this month...
Read MoreIt's the middle of the month, so once again the Kage Collective has put together a collection of essays from our various points on the globe, including a new essay from me, captured at Sydney's Vivid Festival of light recently.
This month we decided to limit ourselves as a group to a single lens - the equivalent of the old standard 50mm, so 35mm on our Fuji cameras - and only photograph at night, which turned out to be much easier here in winter than it was for some of my friends at the higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere summer...
Read MoreI mentioned in my last post that there was something new coming from the Kage Collective I'm a member of - and today's the day!
But it's especially exciting this month, because not only do we have a range of stories & images from my friends in the group, but no less than five of us have been testing Fuji's hot new camera, the X-Pro 2, which is being unveiled in Tokyo as I post this.
Read MoreIt's a funny feeling being able to take a picture of a train, FROM the train itself; but sometimes, it happens.
Last summer I was aboard the Rocky Mountaineer, travelling from Vancouver to Calgary on some of the original tracks laid by the founders of the Canadian National Railway, and took this image out the side of our car of the front of the train heading off into the distance, and dragging us along with it...
Read MoreAs a photographer, my images are important to me; not just when I take them, but for years afterwards, whether it seems that they have any future use or not. I can't count the number of times I've had a call, years after an image was taken, to see if I still have the file anywhere - often because one of the people in it has passed on, but mentioned that this was their favourite photo of themselves at some point.
Or, as has happened, when someone I photographed has won a major award - say, the Man Booker Prize - and suddenly, the world's media needs an image I took. And, of course, sometimes it's just a matter of wanting to find something for historical purposes: that time someone performed here before everyone knew who they were, and so on...
Read MoreThis week's Lost & Found is a perfect example of why I started posting these - images I was very happy with, but that only I have seen. And even saying that, I saved them to my hard drive that week, and never looked at them again until now!
The 18th Sydney Biennale was held in July 2012, before I moved here from New Zealand; but while here on a visit I took a ferry to Cockatoo Island to see both the site and the installed works. It was a thoroughly impressive collection - and a beautiful sunny day, right in the middle of winter, which Sydney does very well I must say.
Read MoreToday's Lost & Found is a quick exercise in contrasting weather - the same scene in New Zealand's South Island just outside Queenstown, taken with the same camera & lens combination, just three days apart over the Christmas holidays last year.
Read MoreAfter the 'storm of the century' in Sydney earlier this week, I was slightly dreading the weather for the Opera Australia production of Aida we had tickets for - but it could hardly have been better last night...!
Read MoreJust wanted to mention I've posted a new essay at the Kage Collective blog, Chronicle; I elaborate a little on a post I did here a couple of years back about the Hasselblad X-Pan (still one of my favourite cameras!), and the potential I could see in the Fuji X-Pro series expanding to include a super-wide panorama camera - this time though, I'm looking at a few different shapes & formats I've used over the years, and the benefits of trying different frames! Have a read - hope you enjoy it!
Read MoreThe Skipper. The Mysterious Lady. The Tiger. A...unicorn? A concert by Melbourne band The Bombay Royale is always an interesting event, so when I heard they were going to open for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings recently, of course I booked right away!
Read MoreThis weekend saw thousands of Australians take to the streets of cities across the country to protest the Tony Abbott / Liberal coalition government's cuts to Federal spending in areas like education, health, the public sector, science and the environment, as well as their stance on immigration. Sydney was no exception - and the march, starting and finishing at Hyde Park, featured a brief concert by local band The Jezabels at the conclusion of the event...
Read MoreThis one's pretty self-explanatory - just a frosted window in the Opera House before the show the other night. Not exactly a prime example of how sharp this lens is, but an interesting shot I wanted to grab, anyway!
Read MoreAll right, I finally bit the bullet and got the Fujinon 56mm f/1.2 lens I'd been thinking about for six months or so, to replace my 60mm f/2.4 Macro. That's still a great lens (and I have one spare, if anyone's looking!), I just prefer something with a little more speed & easy focusability in low light for the kinds of things I tend to use it for. I also just really like shallow depth of field - or at very least, I like having the option if I want it...
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