Super busy
I've been super busy as of late. I'm working on the cover story for our company's flagship magazine and I've had a few very important dates to keep.
In brief I...
- passed my bike on to get sold to generate a bit of money to hopefully buy an upgrade.
- started to write a report on Animania, but am now unsure whether to continue given my previous history
- have been editing a heap of Animania photos. There's a little less than 400 from Saturday alone after cutting out dupes and ones that don't make the cut.
- celebrated my significant other's birthday
I'll be back into the full swing of things soon. In the meantime, you can always follow my updates on Twitter.
How to upgrade your lens to an “L”
I finally discovered tonight that all lenses can actually be upgraded to L-series lenses!
I was really working on something else when I accidentally found out.
You're going to need a few tools, but it can be done on just about any lens. Here's how you get started:
On the job: Professionalism
In the interim between writing up my report on Animania last weekend and now, I thought I'd bring up a little on-the-job topic on the matter of professionalism.
I wouldn't call myself a full-blown professional, but here's what I've experienced in the field:
Main Animania Sydney 2010 Sunday – A sneak preview
Well, having done a sneak preview of Saturday, it's only fair to do one for Sunday, right?
Didn't take as many photos today, but here are some of my faves.
Backstage coordinator extraordinaire, Marina Arrebola has her hair done in the early hours by Jenny Ngo.
Mathias Barrera jams it on his (guitar hero) guitar.
Rika Matsumoto, the voice of Satoshi / Ash Ketchum, delivers a rock out performance.
Another result from the light box at the ABJD display.
Karaoke winner Tuong Vi Nguyen pauses during an interlude to rock out air-guitar style.
There's a couple more in the gallery below!
Main Animania Sydney 2010 Saturday – A sneak preview
I am pretty exhausted after running around for the whole of today. There's no way I can get all of my photos up for tonight, so for now here's a sneak preview of a few of my favourite shots from today.
If you're still deciding whether to go tomorrow, I hope this helps make up your mind!
Bernie, one of the sound, stage, light and AV guys checks the microphones are in working order.
Back of house in the maid cafe kitchen, delicious dishes are made.
Giant wall of merchandise is giant. Pinin makes its final stop for the year. Stock up while you can!
I heard that one of the stores (most likely this one) were selling replica Sephiroth swords. I think they completely sold out.
Remember Geelong Ung that I mentioned in an earlier report on SMASH!? He's working hard at Animania also!
There's a pseudo-light box at the Asian Ball Jointed Doll table. With a little patience, you can get a studio-esque effect with dolls! Photographers take note!
Luke Hill drops the Vash the Stampede outfit and picks up a new gun as a Team Fortress 2 Sniper (and also a cosplay judge).
And backstage, Widya Santoso kicks back and relaxes with facilities set up just for cosplayers and WCS finalists and judges.
There's a couple more in the gallery below. If you're attending tomorrow and you spot me, say hi! I'll try and take your photo!
Putting your camera down
I was moved by a piece written by Kevin O'Faircheallaigh on his views on how, coupled with the availability of cameras, the population divides themselves into a two-tiered hierarchy.
While I disagree with his opinion on whether photographs add or detract from memories (I regretfully never used to take or keep photos as a child and have a very poor memory), I do strongly agree with the sentiment that the act of taking photos detracts from the experience you're trying to capture.
He writes:
I have seen on more than one occasion someone make their way through a gallery or a museum, photographing a piece, then photographing the didactic, then moving onto the next one, never actually taking the camera from their eye to engage with what it is they’re photographing. And video cameras make it worse. I saw a man walk through the Louvre without once taking his video camera from his face. People don’t go on holidays anymore, they document them.
I recommend reading it in its entirety, although it may anger some photographers.
Sometimes, it's nicer just to put the camera down for the moment and live the experience.
How many times have you seen someone glued to their phone or camera any missing out on what is real?
Behind the scenes: Animania Sydney 2010 Setup
I was out at Australian Technology Park today visiting an expo for work when I remembered that Animania Sydney is this weekend.
I remembered because I started to notice all the signage that was up. Then I realised that setup for the event starts two days in advance and that they were probably setting up! So I ducked over on my lunch break and took a few shots.
I think a lot of people take for granted the effort that goes in to setting up an event. There's a science to setting up an event in terms of logistics and scheduling. Things need to happen in parallel in order to make the most of the venue time - the in-house crews can't set up the lighting while the stage contractors build the stage.
The scheduling is pretty simple on paper, but if anyone gets it wrong, the consequence ripples and grows through the day.
The guys on the ground meanwhile are getting all the wiring gathered to connect everything together. Everything is labelled, tracked, connected, secured and then flown on the rigging.
This can take the entire day and typically the crew won't know if they've got it completely according to plan until the next day when they do a dry run and program the lighting board.
There's about 50 lights! All it takes is for one to be connected or labelled incorrectly and it can take ages to figure out what went wrong.
For most of the lights, gels are placed in front of them. Each one is cut by hand and placed in front of the appropriate lamp. They make pretty colours!
... and for sticking around, here's what the 2011 Animania Cosplay Calendar looks like!
Can't wait to see you all this weekend!
An evening in Brisbane
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Brisbane this last week for work.
The only time I could find to take some of my own snaps was on the evening of one of the less active days, hence all the evening shots.
I think long exposures like this one (3.2s) really highlight the flaws in my 10-20mm. To be honest, I'm finding I'm liking it less and less as time goes on.
I tried to pack light for the trip and as I'm not a big fan of lugging tripods around, I didn't pack one. So in keeping with the usual "use what you can find" strategy, a long, heavy lens works pretty well propped up against a bridge railing.
In this shot, the ferris wheel stopped for long enough to get a shot, but it had to be timed between buses that were travelling across the bridge at the same time as they would introduce enough shake to throw my shot out. I wanted to get a relatively noise-free shot, a bit of shimmer in the water, but not have the wheel completely blurred. Needless to say, I ended up shooting a lot of frames.
Up close, I didn't stick around to wait for the wheel to stop again. There wasn't much to prop my camera against in this location, so I'm relatively happy with the .25s exposure hand-held.
Shooting back towards the city from Southbank, this was a 6s exposure from my 10-20mm. The camera was on a ledge with my strap propping it up to get the horizon relatively lower. If you're ever taking a shot like this, I wouldn't worry too much about getting everything level. Get your camera really steady, use a remote shutter release or timer and sort out the rotation and cropping in post. Just remember to leave enough on the sides and not to include whatever you're using to balance your camera.
Shooting from under the bridge on a cycle-way. I sure know how to pick 'em - this bridge kept wobbling when people walked past! I must've stood there for about 15 minutes taking shots in between people walking past. In retrospect, I wish I had a slightly longer exposure. This is on my 50mm at f/8.
A last shot at one of Brisbane's other bridges. I'm actually not very happy with this shot due to the bridge getting lost in the background and a poor choice of aperture. I think by this stage I was calling it quits.
One of the things I've realised about shooting alone is that I'm initially really uncomfortable with having the camera out and looking like the tourist. After a while though, it's not too bad. Perhaps it's Brisbane, but there are a lot of photographers around. That certainly puts me at ease when having a camera out and wandering about. There's probably no better way to get over it than to just get out there and get shooting.
Calendar
Twitter (mukimu)
- Wheels down in Sydney an hour late. Thanks Jetstar. =P 1 day ago
- Looks like that Pebble Watch Kickstarter project has finally, err, kicked off. 1 day ago
- http://t.co/igPB3PbS @Stilgherrian thought we needed more snakes on a plane. 1 day ago
- Just witnessed @stilgherrian shoot a shouty impromptu video here at the airport. That's what happens when you strand journos. 1 day ago
- Flight delayed. Stuck at OOL. Could be worse, I guess 1 day ago
