After our scout of Location #123, we finally got to shoot there! Another long road trip (along with a requisite stop for apple pie), but darn was it worth it! Since Kaiya and Su wanted to do a shoot there and needed some guidance on how to get there, Madara and Nadleeh decided to take the opportunity shoot there too – it’s too much of a drive to go there too...
Learn MoreFairly simple question, this: how much do you edit your photos? The answer, of course, is not quite as simple, and varies between photographers. My particular answer is contingent on a number of things: my personal philosophy on photography, the service I provide for cosplayers, and the amount of time, effort, and skill I have at my disposal. Philosophy I always edit my...
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Special blog post this time round! If you’ve been following my work, hopefully you are also following what Madara is up to as well, since we work together lots! Well, for this year’s photobook, Madara is doing a Card Captor Sakura cosplay book to be sold at SMASH!2012, and it promises to be a great book. Madara makes a great Sakura, and she’s putting a lot of effort...
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Development of Sydney continues apace, and while many locations remain protected by the webs of red-tape and indifference, a number have fallen: #29 Tram Sheds, #40 Warehouse, #42 Island Asylum, #176 Hospital etc, have fallen to the drive for redevelopment, profits and renewal. And we found out today that the long-standing #176 Winery is now in the midst of being...
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On 15 April, I did a shoot with Christie, Minami, Su, Sally, Kaiya and Sheree for their Utapri ROM/photobook which they will be selling at SMASH. It was a studio shoot somewhere in St Peters, a very nice studio located in an industrial area, so nice worn floorboards and such. I was responsible for setting up the lighting, borrowing a few flashes from fellow-photographer...
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It’s been some time since my last blog update. That said, I have been doing stuff, but some there are some shoots I am not at liberty to disclose at this point (things for cosplayer’s photobooks). Things have been fairly busy IRL as well, so some shoots have taken a bit of time to process. Needless to say, I am continuing to shoot at more or less the same rate as...
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I recently got myself a nice and cheap Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN E for use with my Sony NEX-5. The main reason for this was to use it as a replacement for the 16mm f/2.8 pancake prime, which, apart from not being particularly fast, is also so soft that I dread putting it on my camera. In any case, the Sigma 19mm, which was just released recently, is such a cheap lens at $209...
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This shoot with harmony for the horror manga (which has been turned into mulitple movies) took place at various places, including a hotel and a high school near my house. If you want to know the perfect storm of gore and horror that Tomie is about, you should go look it up but let’s just say that the reference pictures we used weren’t for the faint of heart. In...
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As I might have mentioned before, Kaiya and Su are currently in the process of prepping a cosplay photobook for Angel Sanctuary which I believe will be ready for SMASH! 2012. I was fortunate enough to be invited to another of their shoots following on the school-kids-alleyway-punks shoot we did earlier. This one is more hardcore as in they are doing angelic versions of...
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Instagram and Hipstamatic are two of the big names that have been rocking the smartphone world, with everyone having an iPhone taking pictures and putting that stuff online for all to see. Personally, I am not a big phone photographer, averaging maybe one shot on a phone every fortnight or so. It’s just something that I whip out when something really catches my eye or...
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Shouldn’t be too hard to guess this one! Numbered 123 on my location database, it’s fairly famous and has been photographed a lot. I nagged my partner over a number of weeks about going (since it’s quite far away from central Sydney) and at last we went! It was everything I imagined, but up close, it’s an experience on another level. It’s really fantastic to be...
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The Museum of Contemporary Art used to be a favourite destination of mine, but the gallery spaces were always kind of hard to access. Still, the shop, while rather dark and cramp, was a rather quirky place which had a lot of great books on art, as well as arty non-book items. Of course, the shop under the Opera House also has similar types of merchandise, but the MCA was...
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Well, where to start? My attendance of Animania Mini was never a given, because a lot of cosplayers I know weren’t going. But in the end, my sense of duty towards documentation won, and I decided to go check it out. It was an interesting experience, because I ended up shooting with a lot of people who I didn’t necessarily know that well. Let’s not mince our words:...
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Kaiya invited me to shoot Magi, but due to other arrangements during the morning, I arrived rather late to the shoot, meaning I did relatively little shooting. The Magi group was supposed to be bigger, but some people changed out of their costumes, while others left the shoot after the morning, so my coverage is by no means complete. That said, I did get a number of...
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An interesting shoot organised by kotani, involving Ai-chan, Kani, etc as members of AKB48 in Majisuka Gakuen. Obviously, we don’t have the full cast, but we have Nezumi (orig: Watanabe Mayu), Gekikara (orig: Rena Matsui), Center (orig: Jurina Matsui) and I believe Wota (orig: Sashihara Rino). We used the Graffiti Tunnel of USYD for the location, and this was a...
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Mad, Nad, Kaiya and Nata did a shoot for the basketball manga Kuroko as a celebration for Madara’s birthday. While we had immense difficulty finding a location for this (who knew it would be so hard to find an indoor basketball court?), we eventually settled on using the Olympic Park due to it being close to the city, and being kind of sports related. While we all love...
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