The World's Biggest Lens* and I

When the opportunity arose to take Brendan's monster lens home over night I didn't have to be asked twice. The lens in question is the gargantuan Sigma 120-300 f/2.8L which I believe is the fastest zoom lens that extended to 300mm (for the fellow photography nerds out there!).

This is how is looked when attached to my Canon 5D2 (photo taken on iphone)

From Sigma Super Tele

To make it even more impressive I attached a 2x tele-converter which gave it an effective focal length of 240-600 with a fastest aperture of f/5.6. I attempted to attach a 1.4x extender as well but was devastated to discover this wasn't possible. Not to worry, as it was I had twice the length at my disposal than ever before, so with a certain amount of self consciousness I headed to the familiar surroundings of London's Southbank to try and see them in a different light, so to speak.

I've always loved a classic 3 card monty scam so I was thrilled to see one operating not 100m to the West of the Tate Modern. This was one of the poorer ones I'd encountered though as the dealer's mate posing as an unrelated bystander and winning money was so clearly the brother of the dealer it was almost comical. These two Bulgarians (I'm guessing) stood out like a couple of sore thumbs, and I'm pretty sure everyone else knew if too as they were still plying their trade in the same spot 30 minutes later, presumably still looking for their first mark. Anyway, I digress - as much as I wanted to take photos of the Bulgarians I used my better judgement and concluded it probably wasn't the best idea to photograph shady characters engaging in illicit activities with thousands of pounds of camera and lens around my neck (although I did have a brief fantasy about using my monopod as some sort of weapon if push came to shove.)

So, here's a list of things this lens is good for.

1) Shooting people on a bridge from down below
2) Shooting photos of people on a giant ferris wheel (take, the London Eye for instance) from down below
3) Shooting a bus going over a bridge from down below

Are you sensing a theme here?









I soon realised I'd have to provide a more diverse portfolio to keep the blog faithful happy so I decided to go for some people shots. It's the kind of lens that is perfect for getting candids of strangers, but you also run the risk of looking like a bit of a perv pointing it at groups of people. Fortunately I didn't care what people thought, I knew my heart was pure and my intentions were good, officer.







And to cap things off here's a few other randoms from the evening.





Which do you prefer of these last 2? I'm still undecided.






Tip Of The Week

Oooooohh yeah, that's right, the famous T.O.T.W is BACK! Although I'm thinking of renaming it to Tip Of The Arbitrary Period Of Time (T.O.T.A.P.O.T). So, I had a really great tip about memory card management all lined up, but have decided to wait until next week (or should I say next arbitrary period of time - which may actually be a week...) as I need to include a few photos of various things that I need to take and would involve me getting off the couch at this moment. So, the pretty lame tip this time round is to try shooting something you've never shot before, OR, try shooting something you've shot a lot of in a different way. I've taken literally thousands of shots of the Southbank over the years but with the help of some new equipment I was able to get some new angles and ideas. If you like shooting landscapes try taking the camera to the next sports game you go to, if you like shooting family events and flowers in your backyard try taking it to the streets for some gritty street photography, if you like using your 18-200 lens all the time try and get your hands on a 50mm prime and see how that floats your boat. If you've been shooting and editing a lot of weddings over the last month try and borrow the world's biggest lens* and take it round town for an afternoon.


*Okay, so it's not the world's biggest lens, but it's pretty big. This one would have to come close though.

It's like rain...... on your wedding day

Alanis Morissette would have considered it ironic. It's not consistent with my understanding of irony, but I guess they do things a little differently in Canada, eh? For me the rain was just something that needed to be worked around, and fortunately right after the ceremony when it needed to be dry, it was.

The wedding of April and Fabian had a bit of an Ashes feel to it, but instead of war it was love. April hails from Brisbane, Fabian from London, they married over here but will shortly be moving downunder to the land of milk and honey to build a life together. Despite the weather the day was loads of fun, an intimate service was followed by a reception at Fabian's folks' place (thanks Ray and Tamison!) complete with a bouncy castle for the kids and a wedding singer for the adults!

My favourite part of the day was when the reception began, April was off with the wedding shoes and on with the thongs (or flip flops if you will), you can the girl out of Brisbane but you can't take Brisbane out of the girl! I love it.

Wedding Slideshow

Recently picked up a new bit of software for online slideshows, quickly threw this one together from a wedding last month. I've spent the last few hours sorting it all out, uploading the files to my website via FTP and making sure the slideshow is linked properly (quite the achievement I thought!), as a result I've not only lost the will to blog, I've lost the will to live. Hope you enjoy the show, I know I'm going to enjoy BED, need to rest up before Saturday's wedding.

Vegetarian Shoes

The keen observers among you will have noticed the change in the lay out of this blog. Kudos to you. For those who are less observant, or are first time visitors (welcome, by the way, take a look around, make yourself at home...) I can report that with the help of Nate Dogg (who's not actually a gangster rapper) I managed to widen the width of the main section - ok, so I didn't articulate that very well but I think you can figure out what I mean. The upshot is I can now put BIGGER PHOTOS on my blog which is awesome, 400 pixels do not do my expensive lenses and 21 megapixel sensor any justice whatsoever, here's hoping that 640 (or even 800 if I'm feeling adventurous) will!! There are far too many photographer's blogs with either no photos, or small photos, make them BIG people!

To celebrate I've thrown up a few shots from the weekend. I spent Saturday in Brighton catching up with old friends and new babies, the sun made a very welcome appearance too, I consider her to be an old friend I've not seen enough of in recent years.

From 2009-07-05 Brighton

So, what do you think of the new format? Thumbs up or down?

A tale of 2 weddings: Nisha and Carl

With wine from France (red) and Argentina (white), an English band, Indian food and Australian photographers Nisha and Carl certainly know the meaning of multiculturalism. I was fortunate to spend Friday and Saturday taking a peek into their lives with my camera as my trusty companion as I covered their civil ceremony on the Friday and the Indian ceremony (and party!) on Saturday, and it's fair to say the days couldn't have been more different!

The civil ceremony was held at a registry office in a town hall with family and close friends in attendance. Carl wore a suit, Nisha a white dress, and the ceremony was finished in around 15 minutes before heading out the gardens on the ground for a few photos and some socialising. By contrast the Indian ceremony was a vastly more grandiose affair full of colour, fire, mandaps and bling (according to Nisha gangster rappers have nothing on her when it comes to bling - and I agree!). I tell you what, fire during a wedding ceremony is something Western weddings should really look into, there's something magical about the priest presiding over a fire and it opens up a world of photographic opportunities! Having never covered a Hindu wedding before (my previous Asian wedding was Muslim Bengali) I wasn't sure what to expect, or how long the ceremony went for, turns out it was close to 8 times longer than the civil ceremony at around 2 hours so my frenetic photography at the start slowed down to a more leisurely pace by the end!

One of the things I love about shooting weddings, especially here in the UK, is experiencing new things and tasting different flavours of life. I got to see the chaos of an Indian bride's house on the day of her wedding, meet the warm and generous family and friends of the couple and sample some delicacies that put Brick Lane to shame (including the hottest chicken tikka ever!).

Huge thanks go to the very talented Shane Lee who was second shooting with me while Danny lived it up in Italy and especially Nisha and Carl for being a great couple and running a tight ship which made my job much easier. Oh yeah, and thanks for dinner, a taste sensation.

Wedding: Anna and Ant (and an owl)

Anyone who's ever been to my folks' house will know that my mum collects owls. There's hundreds of them filing up several shelves in the living room, ceramic owls, wooden owls, an owl my brother made in pottery class in primary school (which doesn't really look exactly like an owl, but it's beautiful nonetheless) and even a stuffed owl perched upon a branch attached to the wall. Little did I know that they would cross my path again, years later, as a wedding photographer in London.

Yesterday Danny and I had the privilege of shooting the wedding of Anna and Antranik at the salubrious Montague on the Gardens hotel at Russell Square, London - a gorgeous venue with super helpful staff. The day was amazing, the weather perfect, venue ideal, speeches hilarious and bride glamorous, but the story of the day is the owls.

Anna loves owls, and Ant had tried fruitlessly to arrange for an owl to be there on their wedding day. Apparently there are trained owls which the ring bearer gives the ring to at the back of the room which actually fly to the alter to present the ring to the groom, how cool is that? Ant was unable to book this owl, and was unsuccessful at recruiting another owl after contacting various owl enthusiasts. Imagine his surprise then, when he walked through Russell Square on the morning of the wedding to discover some sort of owl awareness exhibition featuring, you guessed it, a whole bunch of owls!! Russell Square was less than 100m from the venue, and we'd planned to go there for photos anyway, this little touch of owl related magic was the absolute icing on the wedding cake (not literally).

Here are some of my favourite shots from the day, I've not been through everything thoroughly yet, and I know Danny's taken a bunch of amazing shots which I've not seen yet, but this is a bit of a taster. Can't wait to put the album together!























Big thanks go to Ant and especially Anna who was willing to stand in a fountain and run through flocks of pigeons in the name of getting great photos!!