I arrived in Vancouver early on Friday morning after leaving Sydney on Friday around midday. The international dateline does strange things to the body when you’ve been in a plane for 14 hours and you arrive at your destination almost five hours before you left! My good friend Sara was kind enough to pick me up from the airport on a postcard Vancouver winter day (grey and raining), and on our way back to her house we drove past a group of Australians waving placards, flags and boxing kangaroos. My initial reaction was one of embarrassment, but either way it was a great photo opportunity. After being off the plane less than an hour (thanks to Vancouver airport’s express lanes for accredited Olympic media) I was taking my first shots of the Olympic assignment. I found out that the crowd of Aussies was protesting the International Olympic Committee’s order for the Aussie athletes to remove the boxing kangaroo flag from the athlete’s village. The story was making headlines both here and at home in Australia.
After checking in at the Main Press Centre and getting all my accreditation activated, as well as collecting a stack of handbooks, photo guides and other “stuff”, I took a quick walk around the city that even after a six year hiatus, still seemed so familiar it was like I was here only months ago.
On Friday night we headed up to Whistler, where I had lived between 1999 and 2003, for a couple of days snowboarding without the camera gear, before the craziness of the Games started. It was great to be back in Whistler, I have so many good memories of the place and it holds special significance as it was where I shot my first published snowboarding photos, and it sent me on a course that ten years later sees me realising a dream and shooting my first Olympic Games.
I start shooting training tomorrow. can’t wait to bang off a few frames.
Some photos of the first couple of days below the cut. Continue reading ‘First post from Vancouver’
Published on
February 3, 2010 in
Photography.
Tags: Big Day Out, Hilltop Hoods, Kasabian, Ladyhawke, Lily Allen, Live Music, Muse, Music, Music Festival, Peaches, Rise Against, The Mars Volta.
The Big Day Out music festival has just rolled through Australia and I was assigned to shoot it for Australian Associated Press (AAP) when it came to Sydney. The temperature reached a furnace like 41 degrees Celsius and festival goers were dropping like flies due to heat exhaustion. Something like 300 people were treated by ambulance staff on the Friday I was covering the festival, and it was the hottest recorded temperature in the festival’s 18 year history. Given just how hot it was out there, I’m surprised more people weren’t hospitalised! The international acts for this year included Muse, Lily Allen, Groove Armada, Peaches and Kasabian and the Aussie acts included Powderfinger, Jet, Bluejuice, Eskimo Joe and heaps of others. With so many bands playing at the same time it’s impossible to even cover half of the acts in one day.
Click below for a small selection of some of the pictures I filed over the long 13 hour day. Continue reading ‘Big Day Out Festival Sydney’
I have been pretty busy lately doing a lot more news photography. The past month or so has provided some pretty interesting news assignments for me, whilst working as a casual for Australian Associated Press. I have photographed the Prime Minister twice, the previous PM, and also the new leader of the federal opposition. I’ve shot the Australian and Pakistan cricket teams, and taken on some challenging assignments such as shooting the New Years Eve festivities in Sydney. I have been working toward shooting more news for a bit over a year now, trying to shift away from the tight niche of action sports. The Christmas/New year Break gave me a chance to prove myself as a lot of the full time shooters were away on holidays.
Below is a gallery of some of the selects of the many mixed assignments of the few weeks. (click on the images below for full size and captions) Continue reading ‘Recent news photography’
I have a few prints in a group exhibition which opens this coming Wednesday night in Surry Hills, Sydney. The exhibition is titled Tasty All Sorts and features a bunch of emerging artists, 16 to be exact. If you’re in Sydney on Wednesday and at a loose end, pop down to the Somedays Gallery 72b Fitzroy st. Surry Hills and say hi, have a few beers and check out some cool art. Continue reading ‘Group Exhibition’
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The Dicapac WP-S10 DSLR underwater housing with Nikon D200 and 20mm 2.8 lens
As I mentioned in my previous post I picked up a cheap $149 AUD underwater housing before I went on holiday to Fiji. I figured it would be cool to play around with some shots in the water and I knew that being a hell of a lot cheaper than a ‘proper’ DSLR underwater housing there would be limitations, and perhaps even disaster.
I wasn’t taking any chances, so I loaded up the Dicapac WP-S10 with my old Nikon D200, the bag clearly accommodates an assortment of DSLR types and sizes but I found a camera the size of the D200 with the battery grip taken off was about the biggest camera you’d get in the bag comfortably. You wouldn’t do it anyway, but the D3/D2x size bodies have too much bulk between the bottom of the camera and the lens, therefore not fitting into the lens port on the housing correctly. I would imagine that this bag would fit any of the Canon and Nikon bodies except for the “pro” bodies (1DmkII,III etc and D2x/D3 etc) Basically anything that doesn’t have a bulky battery grip will fit in this thing. I thought that it would be fun to use this for some snorkelling and also found it was great to use in times that I would never take a camera, such as sailing and even just playing around in the pool.
The usability was something I knew from the start would be tricky. The housing has a plastic finger sleeve on the right hand side Continue reading ‘Dicapac WP-S10 DSLR waterproof housing’
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The view from our room at the Intercontinental, Natadola, Fiji
Clare and I just got home from a very relaxing little holiday in Fiji. We went over to visit my sister and brother-in-law who live there in paradise now as he is an executive chef at one of the large resorts. We caught up with them for a few days and then headed down to the brand new Intercontinental resort and spa, on the ‘worlds best’ listed Natadola beach.
I picked up a cheap underwater housing from
here the day before I left to play around with and see if I could get some cool underwater shots. I wouldn’t have trusted the housing enough to put the D3 in it, but I had absolutely no problem putting my old D200 with 20mm 2.8 lens attached. Surprisingly it worked really well and stayed totally dry (even in rough seas), although it was a bit of a hassle to access a lot of the camera functions I use regularly like exposure compensation and ISO. Here’s a few snapshots from the trip, I will try to do a full review on the $149 AUD underwater ‘housing’ in the near future. More photos below the cut.
Continue reading ‘Snapshots from Fiji’
Last night I stumbled across an interview my long time friend Marc Baker did with Transfer Snowboard Magazine online. The interview, which can be seen here was the single most refreshing article I have read in any snow related media this year. Marc brings an honesty to the interview format that you just don’t see very often-if at all. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time with Marc, we’ve been on several editorial trips together and he would be one of the snowboarders I have shot the most, we even had a cover shot in “Snowsurf”, the French snowboard magazine! Marc has put up with a lot of crap over the years, mostly because he’s an individual in a sport full of sheep. He’s the odd one out, who isn’t afraid to be himself, and that is just one of the things I like about Marc. Reading the interview late last night inspired me to go through my archives and dig out some of my favourite photos I have shot of Marc. Just going through them brought back a lot of good memories of great times. I recommend heading over to check out what Marc has to say, it’s not often people in this industry have the balls to speak their mind so openly and honestly. Thanks Marc! Continue reading ‘Marc Baker: from the archives’
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Corey: From a series of portraits of Aussie rappers
Welcome to the new blog! There may still be a few minor tweaks needed, but I think it’s pretty close to the way I want it to work. The way I have wanted a blog to work for some time now, and the number one reason why my posts have been few and far between of late.
To start things off I am posting a collection of random work I have completed recently, starting with two portrait sessions. One with a group of emerging Australian hip hop artists and another with members of the Bulldogs Rugby League team and in particular with the retiring leading point scorer in the game, Hazem El Masri.
This will be the beginning of what I hope to be at the very least, weekly updates.
More shots after the jump. (click for bigger images) Continue reading ‘Some recent portrait work.’
The last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. Last week one of my photos (the one above) was voted by the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspaper’s websites as the snow image of the season. I was pretty surprised that the image was the most popular as I almost didn’t even submit it. You can view the original page and reader’s comments for the vote here The shot was taken at treble Cone in New Zealand during the Billabong Catalogue shoot I was on recently. I didn’t win anything (a lot of friends have asked what I won!), but it was definitely interesting to read through comments from people not necessarily associated with action sports or the snow industry.Stoked that my photo resonated with so many people!
I’ve been in New Zealand shooting the 2010 Billabong winter catalogue for the past two weeks. The weather hasn’t been very nice to us this year and I’m writing this while it is raining and super windy outside.
We’ve been staying in a great little house in the Cardrona valley complete with perfect mini ramp out front – unfortunately we’ve only been able to skate it twice, due to the rain!
The South Island of New Zealand is crawling with pro skiers and snowboarders at them moment. After dinner a couple of nights ago we went for a few drinks in town and inside the bar was literally a who’s who of international snowboarding stardom – yes, even the “Flying Tomato” was there!
At our house is the Euro and Aussie Billabong teams and the house has also been a drop in for other traveling pro shreds. Staying at our house are photographers Eric Bergeri, Vanessa Andrieux and myself, along with pro shreds Anne-Flore Marxer, Wolle Nyvelt, Sylvain Bourboison, Robbie Walker, Clint Allan and Erin Tanner. Rookies – Michaela Davis-Meehan, Nick Wood and Jesse kennedy and the gel that holds everything together, team managers David Pitschi and Woody Sedgman. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mad house!
The Billabong USA team is staying a bit closer to Wanaka.
Nightly tournaments of Fifa 09 on the Xbox 360 turn our house into a screaming den of French rage and cursing. These dudes take their football seriously – even if it is only a video game!
The riding is pretty serious too, and although I can’t show much until the catalogue is done I can say it is a pleasure to work with so many professionals on a daily basis!
Here are a few B-roll shots from the trip so far. Look out for a full editorial feature in Issue 1 of Australian Snowboarder Magazine next year.
I’ll do a more photo nerd specific update later.
Continue reading ‘Billabong 2010 Catalogue Shoot New Zealand’
