French climber Alain Robert appears in court

Today while doing news photography I was covering the French climber Alain Robert's appearance at the Downing Centre courts in Sydney. Robert who calls himself "the real Spiderman", yesterday climbed the 41 storey Royal Bank of Scotland building in Sydney's central business district without any ropes or assistance. He faced a charge of risking the safety of another, and was fined $750 by the magistrate. Robert has climbed over 80 structures around the world and was last in the headlines in Australia when he climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2003.
What I found most impressive about Robert, aside from his incredible climbing ability, was the outfit which he wore to his court appearance. He turned up in a bright red leather jacket and black leather trousers which both had "Mellencamp" emblazoned on them! I'm assuming that's John Cougar? He looked more like a rock star about to go onstage. Priceless!
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My photos featured on Nikon Professional Services Member portfolio slideshow

This week I was super stoked to find out that four of my images have been included in a slideshow put together by Nikon Professional Services Australia, to showcase the work of their members.
I'm excited to be included in a portfolio which includes many amazing Australian photographers including Mark Watson, Christian Blanchard, Paul Miller, Delly Carr and Simon Carter to name just a few.
For best results click the high def button. The original appears on Nikon Australia's site here

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Day of the Undead

Today I went down to a Zombie Lurch in Sydney. Basically a bunch of people who love the undead and dressing in full costume, get together once or twice a year and lurch (march, shamble or shuffle) through the city to a pub or other venue where they then party zombie style!
This year's event took place in Newtown, Sydney, and was pretty awesome! The zombies gathered in Sydney Park, St. Peters and limped, dragged and lurched up King St. making for a pretty cool spectacle. The looks on driver's faces as they were stopped in their tracks by a mob of zombies covered in fake blood and special effects make up was priceless!
My favourite zombies were the bride dragging a severed leg, and the prom queen with a knife through her head. Also worth a mention was the guy with the meat cleaver hanging from his belt and the shark attack victim.
The undead really know how to have fun!
Lots of photos after the cut.

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"Recruits" series promo shoot

I was recently commissioned to do a shoot for Network Ten's new reality drama "Recruits", for advertising and promotion of the new show on billboards, bus shelter light boxes and print ads. The shoot took place in a lane way just outside the Sydney Central Local Area Command's Police station. The series follows a group of police recruits from training through to their first days on the beat and beyond. It is the first time that level of access has been given to a t.v. crew in Australia, and looks to be pretty promising in terms of "reality" programming as it is a lot more real than say putting 15 people in house full of cameras!
The brief was for the shots to be as gritty and real as possible and to try and show the personality/vulnerability of the recruits. I had under one hour to do the shoot as two of the probationary officers were actually on duty and could have been called away at any minute, so much so that one had to have his radio at his ear during all of the shoot. The shoot was challenging in the sense that the time with the three recruits was limited and the number of shots and variety of compositions was such that I knew an hour would not be enough. I used a little fill from a single Elinchrom Ranger head shot through a 40 inch shoot through umbrella to fill the shadows from the police hats and slightly drop the ambient light on the alley in background to create a bit more of a dark gritty alley feel. In post the saturation was dropped a little and the blacks pumped up a bit for the final print version, but overall very minimal re-touching.
Click below for the original shot from the camera as well as some examples of the shot on bus shelter light boxes in Sydney's central business district. The show starts this Monday at 8 pm on Ten.

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Wild Sydney Weather

Yesterday the weather turned quite nasty here in Sydney and I noticed the swell was pretty big and that dangerous surf warnings had been issued.
I grabbed my cameras and headed down to my two local beaches, Coogee and Bronte. Coogee is usually a pretty mellow beach and doesn't often get big waves but it was like a giant washing machine, windy and super messy. Bronte was much the same except that there was a bunch of young groms hanging on to the rope on the edge of the ocean pool and getting themselves smashed by the double and sometimes triple overhead sets that were coming through.
All in all, great entertainment for a Sunday arvo!
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Behind the scenes of a product shoot

About a week ago I did a product shoot for Australian & New Zealand Snowboarding magazine here in Sydney. The shoot was for a buyers guide style product page and was shot on location at a bar in Sydney called the Minus 5 bar It should be called the minus 14.7 bar as that was the real temperature inside the walk-in freezer/bar. When the owners first gave the go ahead to do the shoot there, they told us we could not shoot for more than 45 minutes at a time inside the bar as apparently "the human body cannot withstand exposure to that temperature". Being the seasoned snow climate people that we are we laughed this off and replied that we often spend whole days out shooting and riding in temperatures much colder than -5 C or even -14.7 C, however that kind of backfired on us when we turned up on a balmy autumn Sydney morning dressed more for a semi cool night than say 3-4 hours in a commercial freezer the size of a small house!
Australian snowboard legend and all round top bloke Nick Gregory came along to assist me and to get some experience outside the snowboard bubble (well kind of outside the bubble!) Nick also didn't really think about the prolonged freezer experience when dressing as he wore classic Aussie tennis shoes without socks!
Nick was kind enough to roam around with my second camera body and snap off some shots when he wasn't helping me move frozen flash equipment around the bar.
The finished shot will be seen in the first issue of Australian & New Zealand Snowboarding, which will hit the news stands in May.
Click below for more of Nick's shots.

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Nikon D3 and 200-400mm f4 VR for a weekend

A couple of weekends ago Nikon Professional Services were kind enough to lend me a Nikon D3 and the 200-400mm f4 VR zoom lens to play around with.
It was a last minute thing and so I quickly tried to arrange to shoot as much as possible in the two days I had this amazing set up.
In the one weekend I shot a game of Rugby league, Tony Hawk demoing at Monster skatepark, a NSW Premier League Soccer match that evening and the following day I shot a handfull of overs in the final match of the Women's World Cup Cricket, and then another Soccer game that night. I definitely put the camera to the test, especially the high ISO capabilities. Most small club fields in Sydney have terrible lighting and I was shooting at ISO 6400 at f4, and shocked at how well the camera not only handled the noise at that ISO but also how well the camera was able to focus the long lens in such crappy light and keep up. On my D2x when shooting sports like soccer, the keeper rate is probably about 2-3 sharp shots in a burst of 10. The D3 was 9-10 tack sharp in a burst of 10! Seriously worth every cent.The other thing worth noting is how sharp this lens is for a zoom! You would think the images came from a prime 2.8.
It has been pretty hard to go back to the old cameras after using the D3.
Time to sell everything I own!!
lot's more shots after the cut.
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