Mmmm Cars.

They were sooooooooo beautiful it was hard to get a crappy shot. i found the use of afternoon lighting quite strange to deal with as the best images came out of the late late afternoon.
It was great being on location with two different shapes, light bounced differently, reflections differed, drool marks everywhere! I think we had a better chance at grasping the concept with these cars as we were able to work with something the mega professionals use.

Ah the washing machine!

I loved this shoot, apart from the icy water and mud, it was just what i wanted for this washing machine.

Initially i had the washing machine over in the mud gathering water but it had no leading lines and lacked something. So we stood it up and this was born.

Newest Addition to the burnt furniture family.

This shoot has been hanging out in the back of my mind for a little while now and the rain today worked perfectly. I wanted gloomy and flat lighting so the flames would rise up and not be blown out by lovely sunshine. This is the first shot of the six I’ve attempted and am rather happy with. 

Furniture Workshop

Photo Credits to Jordan Sell

Before this workshop a chair was just a chair and not a highly scrutinized subject who seemed lifeless at times. As a photographer we are constantly thinking about what looks best in that kind of lighting with that paper background; whereas the designer of that chair is thinking about how they want it shown and what parts of that chair to highlight and what parts to disregard.

God help us if the designer ever turns up on set.

I’m currently doing furniture on location in a completely different light so this was a great insight as to how studio furniture actually works. 

Food Workshop

Food was an interesting experience, it was made out to be easy, almost an instinctual thing. Putting it into practice was a completely different ball game. What you thought looked appetizing looked busy to another and vice versa, in the end simplicity always won. I enjoyed the lack of models and fuss, it was just you and a plate of patient food who didn’t mind being pushed around and prodded from time to time.

Exterior Images

Here are the images from the National Convention Centre. 

Geoff Comfort Images

Glassware

As you know my portfolio is all about the Australia my generation will never know so i collected the strangest miss matched glassware possible. Some of it is Vereco, the glass you can throw at the ground and watch it bounce around but not break? These glasses have the most beautiful cool refreshing tones and honest shapes.
I tired a light field image and a dark field image simply looking to highlight the different perspectives brought on by the use of a lot of light verses bending the light around the objects. i love both but the light field image is my favourite currently, it's two worlds mixed together. the clean slick white background you'd expect for a modern shoot and the odd uniformless glasses.

Week Eight, Hire me?

Every new advertising campaign needs a new idea set and pair of fresh eyes ready to do battle. This client would greatly benefit from having me on their team as I have a unique style but can see how we could merge their current style with fresh ideas and thoughts to create a totally new image style for 2012. By hiring me the client would gain new insights and good solid ethics which then benefit the NMA even further as in this day and age, good ethics are hard to come by.  With a broad knowledge of art design and principals, the new campaign would reflect a more solid design and composition aspect as I use the design and art principals highly in my work. 

Week Seven - Requirements for Capture, Studio

To me the NMA is a treasure trove of the Australia that my generation will never know and that makes it so special. Everything we were and everything we are now is wrapped up in its walls waiting for curious eyes. 
These shots will reflect the era our grandmamas and grandads were in their youth and having the time of their lives, the fifties. 
These are the initial shot ideas.

• a birds eye view of a classic looking table setting. Red checker table cloth, one round plate with knife, fork, spoon either side. even lighting from both sides with camera movements present.
• For the glassware image i'm going to use Vereco glasses, the ones that come in purple, green, amber and blue. I'll stack them up against a soft box maybe fill some with water, some without but really all i want is the great retro colour that flows through them. 
• I'm leaning towards a silver picture frame for the shiny image. I'd love to stack up old photos, books, maybe a small suit case and other time appropriate pieces but have the light on them muted and the spot light heavily on the picture frame.
• The close up image will be based around a small silver earring neatly placed in a pouch, not just floating white. I'll probably use the Hassleblad and extensions for this one, i really want that sharp crisp focus. 

Week Six - Requirements for Capture, Location

The location images always heavily rely on timing in regards to lighting, there are only so many things you can fake in Photoshop. 
There are so many different colours, shapes, surfaces and textures that make up the museum so I'd like to incorporate as many of those elements as possible into the exterior shots. I'm planning on having a shot of the building from the Commonwealth Bridge and then a smaller potion of the building, a close crop of an exceptionally interesting patch of the NMA.
I'd like to get into one of the conservation rooms for the industrial photo, try balancing the lighting if there happens to be natural light pouring in. 
The Interior shots i'd love to stitch simply because that ceiling in the foyer is just asking for it. It has these beautiful angles purely made up by rolling wave type curves and that stitched together could be a pretty cool experiment. 
Angling away from the NMA, I'd love to time lapse the peak hour traffic from both Mt Ainslie and Parliament House to show the bustling little town that the NMA is home to. It feels wrong to do a big sweeping plain of farm land for this single shot. The structure of the building doesn't throw off that feeling, the reds, yellows and greens thrown across it never cease to remind me of traffic so I'm going to go that way and turn it into a Cityscape instead. 


I'll need the usual stuff to make these images work, sturdy tripod, long lens as well as a wide angle, post edit software, building release forms and a whole lot of time. 

Week Five - Equipment

As the NMA can be shot from the Commonwealth Bridge i'll explore that option and see what i can muster at dawn, i'll need a long lens and a sturdy tripod so my camera doesn't go for a swim. I don't want the exterior shot to be like the thousand that already exist so i'm going to explore the use of the Tilt Shift. The interior shots will need a lovely wide lens but i do plan to incorporate some kind of stitching into those simply to change it up again, i may need to bounce a speedlite flash somehow for the industrial shoot. The studio shots are going to be a cohesive series themselves as i just want a single thought running through the series instead of five different elements, just something that ties together clean and neat. I'll be using the usual stuff in the studio, computers, tethering, gels, reflectors and the odd prop here and there. I'm excited to start the first process of shoot and elimination, finally have ideas down on paper instead of keeping me awake at night.

Week Four - Target Audience

The museum caters for every audience which is probably why it's brimming with people every weekend and throughout the school holiday period. This place has everything, an interactive place for the little ones, plenty of activities for the young adults and a permanent collection of the Australia that many of us have never seen but Grandma can remember vividly. That's what makes it so wildly attractive, literally everything is under the same gigantic roof which makes it so accessible and hassle free.
The exterior of the building also helps to draw visitors in as it's a very intriguing and beautiful structure, seen from the lake, busy roads and tourist walks.
I'd love to base my studio images around the early Australia that spoke of warm pastels and home made jam and the exteriors around the vivid colours that awe on the way home over the bridge.

http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/highlights/faith-bandlers-gloves

Week three - Past and Present

The museum doesn't throw their ad campaigns around nearly as much as they could but they do have a heap of supporters in their corner when it comes to general advertising and the release of new exhibitions. Design studios, the National Library, Prime, a few cafes and Tourism Australia. Collectively they touch each age audience.
NMA showcase small snippets of their exhibitions similar to what the NGA and NPG do with their paintings. They never over do it with HUGE text or a lot of it, it's really simple with the name of the exhibition and the dates running. You regularly see a small piece of the exhibition tattooed to the side of the tourism building on Northbourne, i feel that it's pretty effective as that road becomes a car park during peak hour and you're forced to look around at something else but the clock telling you you're going to be late. Parents driving to work see it and then take their kids on the weekend, people with interstate visitors have another sight to show off and the poor students have a free place to hang out and pass time. They haven't been around long enough to have a really extensive brand of advertising or a book full of advert blunders but you can see how they're progressing past cut and pasted snippets of their collections to just one representing image. Quite refreshing and greatly needed for a lot of places.

https://evolvingcomplexityii.wordpress.com

http://www.nma.gov.au/online_features/

Week Two - Background Info

The National Museum of Australia is where a collective heart beat thumps away quietly but undisputedly there. These guys opened in 2001 after the old Canberra Hospital was imploded, the building is designed around a jigsaw puzzle to represent the many stories that this land holds. The rights to design the structure were awarded to Ashton Raggatt McDougall and Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan after they won the International Design Competition held in 1997.  It's an iconic landmark that boast beautiful post modernist themes and has firmly planted it's place in the Nations Capital. 
A really radical part of having these guys as a subject is the awesome angles of the building, it's intricacies, colour, texture and gorgeous reflections off the water surrounding.   


 

John Gollings


George Serras