Thursday, September 1, 2011

Back up for air!




Apologies for the scarcity of blog posts recently. Things have been very busy for me with assignments, stock sales and just coming to the end of my second Photographer's Intensive course. On top of that throw in weekly baseball games (and practice!) for my two little boys, school parades and regular skate park outings and - where has August gone?

Anyway I will try and be a bit more regular around here so that there's something regular to see and you don't all wander away to the dpreview site for your gear fix. :)

A kind of a theme for me this past month has been passion and practice. I've been exploring multiple flash work with both TTL and radio triggers to light interiors and I'm loving it. I find if I'm not constantly practicing both new and tried techniques I quickly get stale and settle into the known without pushing my own boundaries.

I had a couple of editorial portrait assignments where I got to push my off-camera flash beyond my usual style as well as pushing myself through the challenge of finding something new and interesting to appeal to my students every Monday and Tuesday for four weeks.

So it's been crazy busy but in a really good sort of way. I hope you've all been out practicing and honing your photography and feeding your own passions in life and all is well with the world. Stay tuned for a return to regular programming!

5 comments:

nathanoj said...

Off cam flash for interiors rocks Paul. TTL can be fooled by bright windows which I guess one can override +- with practise. I'm happy with manual. Would be neat to be able to tweak remote flashes from the camera though.

Unknown said...

Hey Nathan,

I can't believe the flexibility the little buggers have. I've been using them for years in my portraiture work but had never really considered them for interior work until I discovered Scott Hargis (through Strobist). Which then led me to Photography for Real Estate and then your fabulous work.

By the way my grandparents used to live in Coolum back when that McDonalds on the corner used to be the old cinema. Double films, deck chairs and a hose on the roof when things got too hot. They were both keen members of the local theatre crowd. I have many fond memories of summers in Coolum.

Unknown said...

PS I got a set of Phottix Strato radio triggers which have the TTL pass-through so that I can use both my TTL flashes and my manual flashes all at the same time. The perfect solution!

nathanoj said...

I forgot my 'sig' was 'nathanoj' which I intended to be my name 'Jonathan' backwards :-D

I'm still using the el-cheapo Cactus V2 trigger/receiver set I bought 3 years ago! People have mixed success with them but mine have outlived them all. A more recently purchased Chinese set, MK-RC7, have been a dead loss despite good reviews by other Aussie PFRE's. Even the replacement set gave variable operation and quite often locked up the camera necessitating switching the cam off then on again. Too iffy for me.

Unknown said...

Haha, and here I was thinking Nathan must be your nickname and just a shortened form of Johnathan.
I thought about the Cactus triggers but in the end went for the Phottixes because I really like the ability to combine TTL with manual for those flashes I can't get in line-of-sight.