Thinking

After continuous research through many photographers websites i am beginning to push away from my lifestyle shots and turing more towards the environmental portrait side to this series.

I have been flicking through so many sports photographers websites and i am finding almost NO lifestyle shots at all. I believe lifestyle shots are not something i will put into my portfolio and the main reason i am doing the 3rd year degree is to build a very solid portfolio.

So for my lifestyle shots i am going to shoot environmental portraits of various extreme sports athletes. These will be done is quite a different way to the studio portraits where i am going for the quirky personalities of thees athletes. For the environmental portraits i want to capture them in their own environments such as their room or at the dirt jumps etc.

I will shoot all of these portraits with a 8mm fisheye lens. I want to portray their lives as distorted as i believe they live a completely different life to the normal everyday 9-5 person. I will try to capture this in my imagery. I also want to shoot my documentary series with the fisheye to portray this distorted lifestyle. The documentary series will be a expanded series on the environmental portraits on one athlete.

Sam De Smeth Portrait

This shot was really fun i got to throw stinky mud all over sam hahahahahah

He loved that haha

My inspiration for this shot was highly influenced by Dan Vojtech. I was almost tring to mimic his exact shot but with my own style. I knew i wanted a texture because i am starting to get bored with plain backgrounds. It was really hard to light as the helmet would black so much light coming in and would give get harsh shadows. I am really loving my backlighting at the moment if you cant tell.

I have HDRed this shot here but only sam to get even MORE detail in the mud and give it a bit of a muddy mood it the photo. I also shot these on the hasselblad so when i hdred it the detail was amazing.

Dan Vojtech - My Influence for this shoot.

Luke Wainman

Luke is a BMX rider sponsored by Fit Bikes and Bake bone BMX. Luke is a really really funny guy, he is a bit of a class clown which i have tried to capture here. The whole shoot we were laughing so hard and it was really hard to do any serious shots.

The bars he is holding is the handle bars that gave him the broken collar bone and dislocated shoulder. I really wanted to tell a bit of a story with this portrait and i believe i have done it, im not sure about the black and white thou. I also added in the pin stripes in the background to tell more of the story of his personalty as it give you a sort of circus feel as he is an amazing rider and a bit of a clown.

Sam Action Shot

This shot was done at the tuggeranong pine forest with Rider Sam De Smeth.

I shot this one with the 10-22mm lens and then hdred it to get the details in the dirt. I love the composition because your eye really follows the track and then the motion really portrays the speed he was hitting the trail. I also added a warmer tone to make the dirt look more like dirt because i shot this in almost pitch black. The trail looks really mellow and not to crazy but the trail actually is on a over 45 degree angle and can sort of see because the trees are a bit slopped.

My inspiration for this shot was from this one by Dan Barham.

This weeks shot list

Just a reminder for me on what I'm shooting in the next week.

Sam de Smeth - trails - Thursday Arvo - with lifestyle shoots

Seain ward and ben small - Sunday - motocross shots - and lifestyle shots

Friday - bmx shots with Jacob Taylor - maybe?????

Monday or tuesday - Luke wayman - Studio portrait

Wednsday night - studio portrait of sam de smeth

New concept

I have decided to try something new for the 7 photo series of my free choice. I am still going to shoot the lifestyle shoots as I said I would but I am also going to do a more conceptual approach of environmental portraits of the gear. E.g surfboard on beach, skateboard at skatepark, bmx at dirt jumps etc. I may not use them but everytime I do a shoot I will also shoot one of these and see how it progreses it may turn out really good or it may crumble and look terrible. It's just another idea I'm trowin out there

Week 2

This is my 2nd week shooting and it has been going terrible. To start with the wether has been horrible it has rained for the last few days and of course it was on every day that I was planning on shooting. I still has a few more days before checkpoint one. Also my nitro virus media pass got denied and Luke Leckerby unicyclist is sick and become very hard to get in contact with. Now I have to change my checkpoint 1 submissions.

War Memorial Mission

This shot was about a 30 second shoot before getting booted by security we parked near Reid CIT and walked over by the time mat had his skates on security was already on their way out we had one chance at this shot and we got it but i think i could get it a bit better, i think that calls for a second mission. If you look closely u can see security on their way down, when mat landed we quickly rolled back to the car i tried shooting the security but with a 10mm lens it was near impossible from a distance.

Editing inspired by Ansel Adams.

Bike Shoot

The Other night i went out on a shoot with a few mountain bike riders. They went street in fyshwick and found this bank it wasnt to good to shoot untill sam put his dodgy VN commodore against the bank and did a few crazy tricks on the bonnet. He didnt care at all about dinting it or anything, at one point the bumper bar and grill fell off the car hahahah.

This was one of the hardest shoots so far as it was pitch black and hard to get a perfect composition. It was really hard to find a position you could see sams face as it was really hard to predict which way he was going to spin as he didnt really know either haha.

My favourite shot is the first one only because it is the closest to the shot i was tring to mimic by hayden Golder. Although Golders one owns mine it was still a decent attempt, i used a wide angle 10mm and tryed it get the sky almost the same as golders.

www.haydengolder.com

At the end of the shoot i live view over heated my LCD and have not been able to shoot for a few days but my camera now work again wooooo.

I am still trying to get the shoots needed for the first check point but im not having much luck with the people.

1st week

Before

After

This shot of mat was very spontaneous i was borrowing some a flash and lens from dave and we figured we might do a quick studio shot as it was empty.

about 10 mins after the studio shot

Unedited - i think the trees make the photo a bit messy, i may try shop them out

Tristan Did this crazy Stall on this almost impossible wall so many times so i could get the light on his face just right.

This has been my first week of shooting for my folio, i have shot a fair few different rollerblading shoots. I have been using speedlites to shot some action shots and they seem to be working fairly well. I have been having a bit of trouble with the power of the speedlites in full sunlight, even on full dumps the flashes are still not strong enough. My next shoot i will try using two flashes on one tripod and hopefully this will give me enough power to shoot the fast action shots.

On my report i have listed that at the first checkpoint that i will submit 2 unicycle shots and a FMX sequence shot. This is becoming out of reach as i my request for a media pass with nitro circus was denied and luke leckerby the uniclist is really sick at the moment. I am hopeing to shoot luke next week when he is better but the timeline is drawing thin. i have organised to shoot some motocross on the long weekend in place of the nitro circus shot i was hopeing to get. I may still be able to do a FMX sequence shot but it will be no where near the quality of trick as it would have been to shoot nitro circus.