uk workshops announced !
August 25, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Since touring Australia, I’ve been hearing from you asking about workshops on tips for off-camera lighting with the orbis™ ring flash via our Facebook group and Twitter. With that in mind, thanks to the help of our UK distributors Snapperstuff, I’m going to be holding three workshops in the UK next month !
We start in Leeds on the 14th September then move onto Birmingham on the 15th September before finishing up in London on the 17th September. Click on the cities for to find out more and register.
See you there ! I might even have a couple of frios™ in my pocket to show off….
“from prep to page” – an orbis™ documentary
August 12, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Before the most intense creative rush to my head fades, I’d like to show you my latest project, “from Prep to Page”. It’s the first orbis™ documentary, featuring adventure photographer Graeme Murray working on a real magazine assignment in the middle of nowhere.
Watch Graeme going through his thoughts before a big job, prepping, working and shooting, talking about how he works with adventure and extreme athletes. Then for a bit of fun, I shot Carena West, orbis™ muse and FHM’s “Girl Next Door 2010″. Look closely and you’ll spot the photos that you’ll see Graeme shoot. Before heading over to Carena’s to film her, the shop where I was buying a video tripod head excitedly showed me some new stock of Voigtlander lenses. I needed no prompting to ask cheekily if I could borrow one, a 58mm f1.4 II and that’s how I got the delicious shallow depth of field and general look in the closing scenes.
Wierdly enough, pro photographers are often the most reluctant to pick up a camera for fun. When you do something for a living, it almost always loses its appeal. I never took fewer photos than when I was working as a full-time photographer. I got so focussed on the operational side I forgot what it was like to shoot for the love of it.
Shooting and editting this latest and greatest orbis™ ring flash video has totally brought back the love of image-making to me. The love of photography and a newfound love of video. Graeme also reminded me about the love of photography… he seems to have never lost it at all. Maybe because his background was as a TV cameraman, who has relatively recently switched over to stills, and who now gets as many video assignments as photo.
To get inside his head and watch him work, check it out.
a cool orbis™ portrait in three steps… anywhere, every time
One of the things I love about the orbis™ is the way you can get insanely cool photos with it, wherever you are. We coined the phrase “anywhere, every time”. I’m going to explain how true it is… and along the way I’ll feature a little “before and after” fun.
Tradeshow demo; model, black popup backdrop and an orbis™ in the middle of a packed tradeshow floor.
Picture the scene, I’m in the basement Read more
the orbis™ meets a friend
July 21, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
As international mega celebrity and Hollywood royalty David Schwimmer shook my hand, I couldn’t help reminding myself it was all thanks to a photography idea I hatched in my garage in 2005.
When in Rome....
Rewinding a few months, I had been demonstrating the orbis™ ringflash on the Snapperstuff stand in the UK when a well-dressed older gentleman had gently told me that he would be my distributor in Italy and that I was immediately to dispatch him several shipping cartons of orbis™ ring flashes. When I told him I would have my office send him some distribution papers to sign, he smiled and with a far-away look said in his excellent, slightly accented English, “You don’t-a need-a the contract. I shake-a your hand, I keep-a my word.” And strangely, that is by and large how things have progressed.
A few weeks later I began to receive insistent Read more
photographic pranks at PMA digital life expo
July 7, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Melbourne Australia’s PMA Digital Life Expo this year was an absolute blast. If you’ve never been to Australia, it’s definitely worth the trip, particularly if you can make it around PMA time. We spent the weekend demoing the orbis™ ringflash to hundreds and hundreds of keen photographers. At one point a fight nearly broke out the crowd got so huge… It was a blast and merits a blog post of its very own at a later date. But first, we ran a hilarious competition…
A big shout goes out to Christoph Ziegenhardt for winning AU$300 worth of Kayell Australia camera gear in the orbis™ Stealth Sticker prize draw! What the heck is a “Stealth Sticker” competition I hear you ask ?
Visitors to our orbis™ stand at the PMA Digital Life Expo took an orbisflash.com sticker, stuck it in a cunning,humorous or artful location (or all three) and shot it with any camera they had to hand. We were blown away by the creativity and enthusiasm of the photographers that submitted. Here are a few of our favourite pictures. To see all the entries head over to our facebook page.
Christoph Ziegenhardt's winning photo, © Christoph Ziegenhardt 2010
Stealth Sticker entry from Jason Lau, Highly Commended, ©Jason Lau 2010
We loved Jason Lau’s picture so much that Read more
inside an orbis™ workshop
June 14, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
PHEW ! PMA Melbourne was an absolute BLAST. Now I’ve been home long enough to get my thoughts together, I’ll be throwing together a roundup here on the blog later this week.
In the meantime, I just thought I’d post some more photos from the recent series of orbis™ workshops in Australia I ran last month. Y’know, to kinda remind myself how pleasantly sunny it was in lovely Australia (as I write this it is chilly and pouring with rain outside my window). First up though, I was stoked to find photographer Aaron Fong appear at one of the workshops in his limited edition orbis™ T shirt. Aaron recently came runner-up in one of our competitions so it was great to finally meet him. And two T shirts in one room deserved a photo…
Back to the glorious sunshine, great photos, new friends and beautiful.. Read more
in melbourne this weekend? $300 could be yours!
June 2, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
I’m off to PMA in Melbourne in a couple of days time for a non-stop series of orbis™ demos working with the stunning Tracey Lee Beswick from Giant Models on the Kayell Australia stand. To make it even more fun, my crew and I have come up with a fun competition we’ve dubbed the “Stealth Sticker” contest. It’s as easy as 1-2-3 and AU$300 of Kayell Australia vouchers could be yours…. See you in Melbourne !
Prizes will definitely NOT be awarded for posting orbis™ stickers on the outside of tall buildings, or right next to the Canon, Nikon or any other big camera company logos around the show. Or wait… perhaps they will…….
Hop on over to the orbis™ ring flash Facebook Page for details and to watch the competition unfold.
face of the orbis™ wins it large with FHM !
May 28, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
You just can’t take a bad photo of the girl. I recently heard that gorgeous model Carena West, AKA the face of the orbis™ ringflash, won the highly coveted “Girl Next Door” competition in FHM magazine in April. Much deserved, I knew when I first met Carena she is leagues ahead of almost every other editorial model I’ve ever photographed and hung out with. She’s a blast to work with too. On that note, it’s about time I made up an idea for an orbis™ shoot and had her clear her diary for me….
See a full gallery of the stunning Carena West here and find out what she had to say to FHM. JM
orbis™ + a tiny flash = MORE great light
May 25, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
A while back someone asked me if you can get the great shadowless orbis™ ring flash look with the tiny Canon 270EX. I wasn’t immediately sure, so headed down to my friendly local camera store to find out. Turns out it fits ! And here are the photos to prove it….
As you can see, you need to hold it differently to a normal SLR flash, but it’s no problem at all. But I really wanted to see if it could shoot properly with the orbis™ too, as small flashes like this and the Nikon SB400 aren’t very powerful. So I grabbed my favourite camera Read more
australia roundup… pics, tips and more
May 4, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
The distributors of the orbis™ ringflash in Australia, Kayell, recently invited me over to Australia to run a series of lighting seminars, meet some of the stores selling the orbis™ and generally hang out with my orbis™ in tow. Tough break you might think, but it turned out it was five non stop days of full-on touring, on my feet from 7am until sometimes as late as 2am before crashing briefly then getting my ring flash on the next morning. OK, so there were some fun times too, like a spectacular dinner at Melbourne’s Brisc restaurant.
And one magic moment when a silly idea turns into a photo you really really like. The final orbis™ lighting workshop was held at Glow Studios in Melbourne. For the shooting section, where everyone got to borrow some gear from Canon and Nikon who had kindly come along, we headed out behind the studio into a gritty, almost pitch-dark alleyway.
Having spent a few years working as a newspaper photographer, finding great background to use to find a photo quickly, almost anywhere, is a skill I had to learn fast. I’d been teaching all evening how to Read more
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