When I come to you for a cup of coffee and you charge me $4.30, I don't want half of the tiny glass to be foam... I want it to be no more than a centimeter, ever... It needs to be hot but not too hot, fresh, strong... You prove to me often that you shouldn't be allowed to serve coffee and certainly not for $4.30... Here is what I like. Print it out and stick it on your wall.
I've not been able to get out of the house to really give the new baby a run... Seb, the older baby, asked if we could head to the park today - a boys day out - so of course, I was "that dad" the one with the 120-300mm f/2.8 lens... at the park... I'm not going to blabber on... All images shot with the Canon 5D MKIII at ISO640 or above. One or two of the photographs of my little man made me really smile.. that, to me, is the sign of a great lens that I'd be very happy to own full time. Ha. Bias dad? Maybe...
Moments later, Seb dropped onto his head. He was OK and asked "did you get that"
This is called #Fail - By me. Focus point spotting, anyone?
That's better... Little bit of dust kicking up action with the Tonka!
Inbound!
Babies be cryin' I be driftin'...
Dad... this way! Into the spooky forest! #thatswhathesaid
Melbourne on sun down...
Seb in his element.. Tonka, Milkshake, Swishy stick...
And in Black and White.... I love this photograph of my little man.
His Milkshake brings all the mud to the yard.. damn right.. 
See... here's the mud! 
Damn right... its better than yours.. he could teach you etc etc blah
Just one more run through, dad! 
I may have splashed mud on my squishy face!
And my socks are also squishy!
Do you like what the mud does for my eyes... (300mm @ f/2.8)
Yeah... so that's what a kid, his dad and a sweetly ace Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG OS APO HSM (Err, Sigma.. less letters? ...or more! Go for the whole alphabet!) do on a cold Tuesday...
Sime
Anyone using Vine? Twitter owned, short video sharing app for iPhone. Plus: More going on than that of a single image, fun and easy to express something that takes more than just 140 characters / one word.
Minus: Damn slow to load via your regular 3G iPhone connection whatever.. even via Wifi.. Speed it up, buffer the other videos in the stream, I don't know.. it's almost enough to make me use it less. Almost.
I've posted a couple of videos on Vine recently, nothing life changing. But there are some fun ones up there.
That's my friend Jill, when I say friend, I mean I've never met her, she's a writer from the other side of the world.. I've watched her photographs on Flickr for years, now she posts crazy vids the oft make me chuckle, thanks Jill.
That's a new take on dinner via Vine. Asian Sea Bass... I'm certain my friend Alice would have LOVED the fish head.
You can get Vine on the app store.
Think of the many things you can do with this... A crazy stop motion type thing.... maybe...
...and, um, she doesn't really want to do it in this voice!
I was thinking I might produce a podcast tonight - then I had a nice cup of coffee and decided that this would have been simply daft. Instead, whilst watching the first 20 minutes of the Bombers getting thrashed, I decided that, these days, we need to be more versatile... Like photographers wasting their time complaining about convergence rather than learning how to shoot a bit of video, like film photographers saying that they're not switching to digital... Or am I confusing stubborn with versatile there, anyways, doesn't matter - I'm rambling!
What I think I mean is this... If we're not willing to try different things then we may become stagnant... I was only into photographing live music until a couple of years ago, the music was what I was after, those moments... I didn't want to really try anything else, I mixed in a little bit of boxing, a little bit of corporate portraiture, some of this, some of that..., but nothing "serious" I was happy with music...
Meanwhile, I was firmly in the "I'm never photographing a wedding!" camp - that was tooo much like hardcore pressure! Seriously! One shot at getting someone's photographs right?! no thank you very much....
I penned that I am constantly surrounded by inspiration, and that this is both a good and a bad thing - sometimes.. Well, that inspiration is also responsible for me wanting to try new photographic things. Recently I signed on as a second to Elise Garner to photograph an Ironman event, it was lots of fun and a great learning curve all at the same time...
And, amidst all of this I was pushed to be a second photographer on a wedding or two, too, and I'm really glad Katie persisted! I've had a lot of fun with weddings and I'm off to shoot another in just over a week - I don't do a zillion... Recently I did my little brother and his lovely bride's wedding - special.
A lot of people specialise, me, I've sorta gotta mix it up to keep it interesting. Life is too short to be bored, right?
-- Sime
I posted about a *list* I'm making last night on Facebook. It's of a certain type of photographer, or, rather, a certain type of camera user... Before you get all camera supremacist on my eButt... If you know me, you'll know I couldn't care less if you used an old rock with a bit of broken beer bottle as a lens / camera combo... Do what you like... But I wanted to sort a list of 'smaller camera' users for my own evil* plans...
I don't mind if you use an iPhone or some other phone thing...
Anyways... I was thinking about this list and collecting a few names in my head when I posted that I was making a list on my Facebook page... We were a few comments in when I mentioned being surrounded by inspiration... [here, read for yourselves]
Which leads me to what the hell I'm on about... 'Inspiration overload'
Like, watching my Facebook wall and seeing my favourite photo journalists, Nick Ut post photographs from his current trip.. He's in Ha Noi for another week, so I guess another week of seeing his images, each of which has a great story attached, won't kill me... But then you take Nick and times him by 1000000 with all of the content coming through each minute... So much! Today I saw the new video from Vincent LaForet with the.... here, watch it yourself...
Stuff from about 40 other photographers caught my eye today too, and I guess that is all part of my job... Identifying photographers that are doing amazing work and seeing if one of the companies I work for can be a part of their life in some way... But I'm an emotional sort and I find it very easy to be distracted by good work... That's fine...
BUT THEN....
There's another element to it, too... I'm one of a zillion try hard photographers. I love technology, I love using it to create images, I love photography and that feeling that looking at some people's images gives me... I love the photography community - for the most part.
I get depressed by rock stars (the photographic sort) and photographers that think they're better than everyone else. I also slip into a frame of mind that comes with a little voice in my head that says "why don't you just quit and leave this to the big girls and boys?" - Sometimes that inspiration can leave you feeling quite uninspired. Random huh...
Then there's music, food, people's experiences, tech, nostalgia, news... Its all swinging by at a million miles an hour - right there in front of our eyes.
CLICK...
Then, I get to play with cool stuff and mess about - so I can turn off the inspiration tube and go play with this Westcott Rapid Box... Tiny, cute and like a little tiny beauty dish... still, didn't make me into a beauty!
* not actually evil.