In a year where Brisbane has faced some of it’s most challenging of times, working on a positive campaign promoting the city and encouraging people to make it a better place was a great experience.  I shot a range of images from all around Brisbane for the Together Brisbane project, which can now be seen around the city on Billboards, buses, bus stops and the Together Brisbane website among other places. Now, with the Brisbane Festival coming up, user submitted images are being rolled out throughout the city. I can’t be more excited about the use of photography to tell the stories of the people of Brisbane, something I’ve been focused on through my own project, The BNE Project. Many thanks to the great team from Big Fish who I worked with on the campaign and to David Byrne who photographed the above image.

Here are a few images of the work I’ve shot for the campaign:

Please excuse quality of the iphone shots… “The best camera is the one on you.” right?

And the accompanying TVC in which I was working along side on the project:

Early this month, Brisbane hosted it’s very own community run TED event or “TEDx“.   It was one of the most inspiring local events I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of.  Modeled after the Long beach based annual TED conferences, the day included talks from a diverse range of prolific thinkers and doers.  Co-hosted and organised by Paul Fairweather and Carl Lindgren, with the help of a number of sponsors and volunteers, the day was buzzing with inspired conversation and the ‘spirit’ of TED.  As a photographic sponsor, I had the honour of shooting some inspiring speakers and captured some great moments in the lead up to the event.  A massive thanks and congrats to the organisers and everyone involved.  Here are some of my favourite shots from TEDxBrisbane.  More images can be found on the TEDxBrisbane flickr page .

And finally, I’d like to share the first TED talk that introduced me to these “ideas worth spreading”, soon after they started releasing the TED talks online.  It was Jeff Han’s presentation on multi-touch technology.  From touch pads on laptops to the Apple iPad, it’s crazy how within 5 years of this talk, it has become so common place.  As Jeff says, this technology will “Change the way we interact with machines from this point on”, and it has.

The day was eye opening, challenging and exceptional, with just 5 photographers and 3 starlight volunteers, we set up in 2 spaces at the hospital and also visited those unable to come to us.  There were a few issues with printing, but we still achieved our main goal, which was to give the kids and their families beautiful portraits and a fun experience through photography.  The children were thrilled to be a part of a photo shoot and the grateful looks on the faces of their parents told a story in itself.

I’d like to thank the photographers, family, friends, and everyone who helped and showed support, whether it was through donations or just spreading the word through twitter, you made the day amazing for some very needy children and their families. With our fund raising efforts, we ended up raising over $900 to cover costs and the remainder was donated directly to the Starlight Foundation.

I’d also like to mention the great efforts of another group of fine photographers who made another Help Portrait happen for Vital Connection.  With all the interest shown through the Brisbane Help Portrait page and emails received, I have no doubt Help Portrait in Brisbane will only be getting bigger and more frequent.  We’d be interested in getting the ball rolling on the next help portrait, so if you have any ideas for future events, as well as potential suppliers, please let me know.  I’d really like to see a lot of small groups of photographers getting out there, giving portraits, and doing their thing!

Thanks again!

Time lapse video from one of the Help Portrait locations:

Earlier in the year, as part of my BNE Project, I did a shoot with Joshua Levi (Brisbane photographer, gallery owner, entrepreneur), while he was working on the construction of a second new gallery.  I had always intended on doing the second portrait for the series back in the same space once it had been finished, but also really wanted to somehow incorporate more of Josh as well as his trademark bathtub at his main gallery.  Residing mainly at Joshua Levi Galleries in Woolloongabba, the vintage clawfoot tub had been used in helping to promote his past shows as well as in his latest combined photographic exhibition “Coke Can Spirituality” where it even found itself on the back of a ute in front of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s electoral office.

Like most of my shoots, we threw around a couple of ideas and tried out a few different approaches before deciding how we wanted in the shot to look and everything to work.  After rehanging and rearranging all of Josh’s own “bathtub” photography a few times and having to refill the tub (and clean up) after a few explosive splashes, we finally ended up with what we wanted.

As I did with the previous shoot, I also shot a time lapse video:

The first portrait and timelapse of Josh from the BNE project series photo shoots:

Last month I had a photo shoot with Gold Coast band Hobo Obituaries.  I was told they had a space where they did all their recording and spent most of their time hanging out, and although I hadn’t seen it until the day, was pretty sure it would make for some interesting photos.  I approached the shoot with a few fairly loose ideas, but with the main intention of just capturing the brothers being themselves in their own environment.  From Jack Russells to low rider bicycles we had a lot of fun incorporating as much of their lives into the shoot.  It really reinforced my view of working with people to achieve something fun and real, rather than just directing them.

Video from the shoot:

Pecha Kucha Night – Volume 10 was held as part of the Brisbane Ideas Festival on the 27th of March. I had the opportunity to present at the event and speak about some of my work and projects.

Pecha Kucha is an event where any designer, artist, architect, interactive media or alike, are given the soapbox to present their designs, thoughts and ideas. Each presenter gets 20 seconds to showcase and talk about 20 slides of their work.

This is a video of my presentation. Lots of “umms”, I know, but with a packed crowd of 300 in the room, 200 on the 2nd floor balcony, and another few hundred on the ground floor watching the live feed, I was pretty nervous!

As part of the “second degree” of the BNE project, a photographic project looking at people’s inspirations, chosen by the subjects of the photos themselves, I did a shoot for Matt Rabbidge from 9 Lives. Matt was chosen as the inspiration of Nick Crocker, one of the first portraits of the series as his inspiration for the project.  Trying to capture someone you don’t really know well in a portrait can be quite a challenge, but I suppose that’s what makes the project fun to shoot.  One of the inspiring stories behind Matt is the collaborative effort with his friends to get the 9 lives gallery off the ground.  With this in mind, we chose the gallery as the perfect location, and invited everyone along for the shoot.  We started off with a few solo portraits at the front of the gallery and set up a second camera to record a time lapse of the shoot.  I later found that my favourite shot was one off of the second camera.  The shot that really captured Matt was one of him sitting, looking into the main room of the gallery, as I set up for the shoot.  I couldn’t have hoped to capture a better moment without even holding the camera!  Check out the resulting shots from he shoot as well as the time lapse video:

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a number of photo shoots for my ongoing photographic project entitled BNE.  As part of the project I take a look at the inspiring people that surround me and tell their story through two images.  I recently photographed Josh Collings, from Joshua Levi Galleries, at his new space at the Bell Brother’s building in the Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.  After seeing what Josh recently did with an old antique shop, transforming it into a unique space for artists and musicians, it seemed fitting that I shoot his portrait at his new gallery whilst still under construction.  The second image of the series is scheduled to be shot after his opening in a few weeks time.  As part of the project, I ask each of my inspirations to select the next inspiration in the series, playing on the idea of six degrees of separation.  You can read more about the project here:

Mark Lobo Photography – The BNE Project

I also took the opportunity to shoot a timelapse video of what was an extremely energetic and fun shoot:

On a Mobile Device? Try this link for the video: BNE Project – Josh Collings Photoshoot for Mobile