The much anticipated exhibition and judging of the photos from Shooting Raw 2008 was held on Wednesday night. Shooting Raw is a photographic competition I took part in, in which each photographer is given a half hour time slot to shoot 12 frames, with one nude model and an unseen location, (see my previous post for more info). It was great to see the work of all the other photographers and how they worked with what was quite a challenging environment.

To top off the night, I ended up winning the Photographers’ Award and the People’s Choice award for the same photo (above)! The shot won 2 out of the 3 awards presented! The prints will be available for purchase from the Shooting Raw website, with proceeds going to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. Thanks to Pat, Norm, The Joynt, sponsors and guests!

Take the time to check out these links!

Queensland Institute
of Medical Research

Event Photos

Web Nerd

I was a recent participating photographer in Shooting Raw 2008, a photographic competition in which each photographer has 12 shots to bring an unseen location and a nude model to life.

A bit about the exhibition:

“Shooting Raw is a model photography competition which throws out the traditional environment of the model photographer. We present them with a new environment, a model they’ve never met before with limited tools and very few chances to get the shot right. The emphasis is about thinking on your feet and taking advantage of the environment, being able to see the possibilities of what there is around you, without the ability to create exactly what you’d like. “

To bring a challenge to the competition, only 12 frames were allowed to be shot in a half hour period and the location was provided only just before the event. More rules here. This year, the shoot was held in Austinville on the Gold Coast.
Photos from the competition will be exhibited and judged at The JoYnt in South Brisbane on April 9th, 2008.

Please come check out the results!
RSVP to info@shootingraw.com.au

The JoYnt

Located @
48 Montague Road
South Brisbane

We’ve had Winston in the family for about 10 years. Adopted from the RSPCA, apparently with the name of ‘Josh’, he was always a happy and playful pup. Like many dogs, he had a crazy obsession with chasing any kind of throw toy and would often fall asleep still holding a frisbee or ball in his mouth.

Last Thursday, I noticed he wasn’t being himself. Choosing a cuddle over catching his frisbee was extremely uncharacteristic of him and I was starting to wonder if all this rain was depressing him. Later that night, his condition worsened with him just staring and sitting right in front his food in a zombie-like state. I drove him to the emergency animal hospital where they called in a medical specialist to conduct further tests. He was suffering from pericardial effusion, a condition of fluid gathering in a sac around the heart, preventing it from pumping properly. Luckily he was treated in time, fluids drained, and he was sent home the next day for rest. He spent the next week with me at home where his condition improved to a point where I noticed he was even more active and happy than I remember him being in quite a while.

On Monday night, without any sign of struggle, we found him motionless on his beanbag. It was such a shock to find him like this, when only a few hours earlier, he had seemed so happy and healthy. I desperately tried to wake him up shaking him and shouting his name, but it was too late. The vet’s conclusion was that there was another sudden release of fluid around his heart, but unable to detect it this time, it proved to be fatal. He seemed to have passed away peacefully on his beanbag.

Winston was my best friend and I’ll miss him dearly.

February 13th marked the official launch party of Australia’s dedicated music distributors, Musicadium. With live bands, a great atmosphere and held at one of Brisbane’s best live music venues, the launch party was a huge success.

Ranger

Frankie Band / (now Polaroid Fame)

The Westminsters

Were you there?

More of my shots from the night and social pics can be found on the Musicadium Flickr Page.

Playing live gigs , recording, and of course, getting their photo taken, Brisbane band Mr. Rascal have been a busy bunch. With a single launch coming up next week, I worked with the band on photos from a live shoot as well as on location, up in the hills of Brisbane. Much like shooting a band live, it’s always a thrill working outdoors in an uncontrolled environment. With the shoot scheduled for sunset, time of day and weather were the all important variables. We made the most of the overcast sky, and in the dying light, shot a range of different locations. You can see more photos from both shoots on the band’s profile on myspace. Also, be sure to check out their newly uploaded tracks.

The single launch will held at 8pm on the 13th of February at The Troubadour and to top off the night, make sure you make your way to The Zoo afterwards for the Musicadium Launch Party featuring more live music from Ranger, The Westminsters, and The Frankie Band!

The rural mining town of Gympie, located on the Fraser Coast recently held it’s second annual International Film Festival, drawing impressive crowds and film makers from around the globe. The Heart of Gold International Film Festival is a festival with a difference and an inspiring vision, and being asked to be the photographer for the event couldn’t have been more of an honour. The entire community pitched in to help bring an impressive showcase of short and feature length films to the four day festival. Seminars were held with some very inspiring speakers, including Margaret Pomeranz, Rick Stevenson, Cathy Henkel and Loic Valmy. With an impressive 130 films from 38 countries, I made the most of every spare moment to catch a glimpse of what the film festival was all about, “films that make us laugh, give us hope, inspire us and get us back to a focus on what is really important, each other”. The Heart of Gold Website can be found here, and if you are a film maker, get your entries in! Hopefully I’ll see you there in 2008!*

*NOTE - The date for the 2008 Heart of Gold International Film Festival has unforunately had to be postponed until March 25-29, 2009!

For the last few weeks Brisbane based duo ‘Dan and Dilmah’ have been topping Australian radio station, Triple J’s ‘unearthed’ charts, hitting the number one spot in both the ‘overall’ and ‘indie’ categories. I was recently approached by Dan to work on the photography for their press kit and was keen to get on board.

We started the day with a relatively blank slate, but with one intention, to capture the light hearted fun reflected in Dan and Dilmah’s music. With one concept inspiring the next, we went off with a range of different styles.  I’ve settled on uploading a shot of Dan body slamming Dilmah. The aftermath wasn’t pretty so I won’t post those… only kidding, a quick thinking Dilmah countered with an uppercut the the left shin and was fine.

You can check out Dan and Dilmah’s page on the unearthed site here. Have a listen to their track ‘awkard turtle’ and if you love it, pop them a comment or vote to keep them in the charts.

Well it’s finally live!!! I had hoped to get this up a lot earlier than this…(’Julyish’ I think I remember telling myself), but a series of lifechanging revelations with a sprinkle of spiritual enlightenment managed to get the better of me. Ok, excuses and moderately subtle sarcasm aside, I was just extremely indecisive for the first couple of months, yet strangely, the site doesn’t even seem to deviate much from the initial design that mimobase mocked up! So here it is, finally. Thanks for dropping by, it would have been awesome to throw a launch party and maybe hire out some sumo suits or something, but I’m thinking this blog entry will have to suffice. Hope you like my work!