Free Comic Book Day 2013

I love free comic book day... it's the one day of the year where the two blooks between Kinokuniya Books and Kings Comics in the Sydney CBD fill up with costumed super heroes and heroines.

Group shot outside Kinokuniya

You can check out more photos from the day here on my Google+ page.

Photographing a House

A friend asked me to photograph his house for a real estate brochure/website - he's planning to rent it out over the summer months. The house is located in Clareville (about 10 minutes drive south of Palm Beach).

The only time I could get over to Clareville was a Sunday morning, so this shot was taken at about 8:15am after I had shot all of the house interiors. With the benefit of hindsight I should have shot the outside first, because as you can see the trees in the back and to the right of the house are starting to be lit up by the morning sun.

House for rent

School for Life's Black Tie and Barefoot Ball 2013 fundraising dinner

I've been lucky enough to photograph at the last two dinners in aid of the school for life foundation. Here's a pic from last year's event:

School for Life founders Annabelle Chauncy (left) and David Everett (right) with 2012 MC Julia MorrisI'll be photographing at this year's event - it's going to be at the Sydney Hilton this year on the 25th May 2013. You can still buy tickets  at the School for Life Foundation shop. If you're going and you want a sweet photo of yourself as a keepsake of the night, don't be shy! Come up and introduce yourself!

A little Photoshop Before and After

I was homebound for most of the Christmas/New Year holidays, which presented me with time and opportunity to play with Photoshop (as well as Illustrator). One of the photos I decided to play with was a photo I took at a wedding (where I was a guest) in mid November. Here's the original below:

 BEFORE: The original, unadjusted image

And here's the image after some post in Photoshop:

AFTER: The final image

The steps I undertook in Photoshop:

1.  Cropped to just the bride and groom.
2. Made white balance and exposure adjustments to the image layer.
3. I duplicated the image layer; and named the topmost layer "Bride & Groom" and the underlying layer "Background".
4. I selected the "Background" layer and underexposed it to taste.
5. I selected the "Bride and Groom" and applied a layer mask to just the couple. This step was by far the most manually intensive.
6. Finally, I applied a slight blur to the "Background" layer.

The Chipolatas at Hoopla 2012

Final number at their final show at Hoopla 2012The Chipolatas are an amazing act. This is at least their second go at Hoopla - they were previously here in 2009, and I think they get better with age. They were performing their act twice a day over the four day easter long weekend at Darling Harbour. I was happy to go along for three of those performances and they were packed out every time.

The highlight of the show for me was when Sam pulled out a volunteer from the audience to perform a "high-wire" act of sorts while Tristan and Jasper play a beautiful song in the background. Fantastic stuff! The photo below is from one of their performances on Good Friday. It's my favourite photo from the whole festival.

One of the show's many highlights