Africa Konnect Sneak Peak and the Launch of Multicultural Enterprises Australia
November 24th, 2011 § 2 Comments
It has been some time since I last made a blog. I am starting it again with a renewed enthusiasm after working on my social media setup with Alex Hamilton a friend who has guided me through the process of linking and organising my digital communications so I can focus on creating the blog and working on the business and my photography.
I thought this would be the right topic to restart my blog as it has been time spent looking into video, studying its production, filming, looking into equipment and editing that has taken me away from writing and posting.
Last friday 18th November I attended the launch of Multicultural Enterprises Australia. It was a truly unique African cultural event starting with a fantastic smoking ceremony and welcome to country presented by aboriginal elder Steve Williams. The event included performances by African musicians, Evan Yako and Kell Taylor, Temmy and group, Vivienne, Effie’s group and Rodney Disciple. Senator Kate Lundy, the parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs came from Adelaide to launch the organisation and event and stayed until late in the night. I was really impressed with the MC. I loved the way she included Steve as one of the guests of honour throughout the evening.
One of MEA projects Africa Konnect had a sneak peek with a catwalk of local African models wearing the works of local African designers, local hair and makeup artists.
Te reason I got an invite is I created a video with fellow photographer-photojournalist David Dare Parker to help promote Africa Konnect.
Felicia, my wife works at Fairfield Migrant Resource centre with Ricci Bartels the manager of FMRC and one of the drivers behind MEA. Felicia introduced me to Suji Upasena the Social Enterprise and Employment Manager at Cabramatta Community Centre. Suji asked me if I wanted to get involved in creating a video for the new Multicultural Enterprises. She knew my interest in cutting my teeth in video production and that wanted to get some experience.
It is my first video and first time to follow through with editing it for the web. I have become interested in starting to work in video and multimedia production to supplement my photography.
So as to be relevant in this world of smart phones, ipads, social media and technological advancements I feel it necessary to include the moving image and sound recording in my work from now on. I am really exited by the idea of video for the web. It can work where time is made for stills and then some time for some complementary video.
In the week leading up to the day of the filming I had a lot of assignment work on so I did not spend very much time preparing. My simple idea was to interview the organisers of Africa Konnect and some of the designers involved. I would then shoot, models getting ready, hair and makeup, walking the catwalk, being interviewed by organisers, get some closeups and then wider shots. Eventually I would pull these images and interviews together in the editing with a soundtrack overlay.
A couple of days before the day of the filming I talked photographer David Parker into coming out to Cabramatta and helping me. He normally lives in Perth but was living in Sydney for a few months shooting stills on a new TV series.
I have accumulated some good gear for my digital still photography all of which is great equipment for filming, 2 Canon 5D Mark 2 camera bodies, some fast fixed lenses for low light filming, top of the line G 3 Sennheiser Lavalier Mics, an external sound recording device and a shoulder brace my father made for me. Considering video has funny enough helped my still photography, I am now using ND filters a lot with flash and working with different perspectives some of which I discovered studying filming video.
Creating this short video has been a great learning curve and a fun experience. Over six months now out from filming I have learned so much. Today I would create a better video technically at least.
In the spirit of new beginnings and the idea that we all need to start somewhere when tackling new challenges I thought I would share this first video of mine if for nothing other than the record and for those creating this great new initiative.
Many thanks to DJ Mots Groovy House Selection Vol 1 for the music and the two talented girls who sang this beautiful vocal for us I used in the latter half of the video. A special thanks to Christian Tancred for his advise and ideas in the editing.
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Here are few photographs from the night
Here are some words from the Africa Konnect team.
Africa Konnect is the concept and idea of three African women in the fashion-beauty industry, Sindy Dee, Gladys, and Wanyika Mshila.
Africa Konnect aims at Creating an African Australian Identity, through many ways which include:
- showcasing the Talents of African people.
- promoting African businesses in Australia.
- celebrating African cultures and bringing together all Africans from the 5 main regions of the Continent.
Africa Konnect will be holding annual hair, make up and fashion shows, bringing together designers, hairdressers, make up artists and models from north, east, west, south and central africa to showcase their talents to the australian community. contact Africa Konnect https://www.facebook.com/Africakonnect at africakonnect@yahoo.com.au
Blog Featuring John Leongard
March 8th, 2011 § 5 Comments
Some months ago early September 2010 actually I was sent a link to this great interview with John Leongard
made by Scott Kelby. I think photographers, picture editors and those that watch the creative process may get some thing from
John’s Blog.
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2010/archives/11324
Interview with John Leongard
When I was studying photography at Sydney Technical College and working at News Limited as a Cadet photographer in the early 1980s John was the picture editor of Life Magazine. Certainly the world of journalism photography has changed a lot since then although Johns advise rings just as true today as then. I found the article useful despite not being a picture editor myself.
The Forgotten by Jenny Evans
March 1st, 2011 § 1 Comment
I have watched photographer -photojournalist Jenny Evans evolve this work of hers on horse racing jockeys over some time now. Through her photography first and then this multimedia Jenny has been trying to bring awareness to the public of the life of some of these riders after a fall. This is the aim of all concerned photojournalism, to bring awareness and hopefully change through a photograph or a series of photographs accompanied by words for some context. The multimedia on the web has taken that work to another level now. I recommend this very emotionally powerful presentation. Multimedia address here at vimeo http://vimeo.com/17870377
Jenny states in her Vimeo introduction “more than 300 riders have lost their lives since Australian racing first began. While accident insurance has become an essential feature of racing, all too often there are cases where jockeys and or their families are plunged into financial and mental hardship.”
”Dedication and bravery are prerequisites of almost every sport, and these qualities are found in abundance in racing. Australian jockeys are elite athletes who quite literally place their lives on the line every time they compete in a race. Sadly, serious injuries are a frequent occurrence, and more than 300 riders have lost their lives since Australian racing first began. While accident insurance has become an essential feature of racing, all too often there are cases where jockeys and or their families are plunged into financial and mental hardship.” from Jenny’s multimedia introduction on vimeo.Checkout Jenny’s work at http://www.2evos.com/
Sydney Farewell to Penny Tweedie
February 22nd, 2011 § 2 Comments
Penny Tweedie 1940-2011. Photographer Penny Tweedie died on the 14th January 2011 on her family farm in Kent at the age of 70. Last Sunday 20-02-2011 on a very humid Sydney summer afternoon family, friends and admirers of Penny gathered at Balmain Town Hall for a tribute and then a wake in her memory. It was a wonderful gathering I felt. I just wish Penny could have been there to see how many people valued and cared about her.
The event celebrating Penny’s life started with the most emotionally moving Welcome to Country by Deborah Cheetham. Close friends of Penny, Steve Mark, Andrea Hull, and Juno Gemes spoke of their experiences with her before a comprehensive visual presentation of Penny’s career’s work. Penny’s son Ben read an extract from the book “Bearing Witness-the lives of war Correspondents and Photojournalists.” The reading described in detail a situation in India in 1971 where Penny was imprisoned while working for the Sunday Times covering the Bangladesh war of independence with Pakistan. In India she had been mistaken for a spy by the Indian army and was locked up for a considerable amount of time in a cell with atrocious conditions separated from her male journalist colleagues. We saw an extract from the ABC’s Australian story from 1997 which featured Penny working in Arnhem Land. Peter Oyston spoke as did Penny’s partner for 6 years and father to Ben, Clive Scollay who described in detail the projects and work they did together across Australia and in East Timor.
I remember seeing Penny’s photography from Arnhem Land published in National Geographic in the early 1980s as I was starting my passion to be a photographer and spending many hours in the school library looking through National Geographic and Life magazines. I had met Penny on a few occasions several years ago when she lived in Sydney and attended the celebration of her life yesterday out of respect for Penny and her photography.
Penny’s work can be viewed on her website http://pennytweedie.com/
The Australian published the Guardian article The Guardian Obituary. on and
the Sydney Morning Herald obituary written by Robert Mc Farlane was in the SMH 0n 19-20 February.
New Open Road Design
January 10th, 2011 § 2 Comments
OPEN ROAD January-February
The OPEN ROAD, the NRMA’s member magazine has just had a redesign. NRMA Publishing’s creative director Peter Sewell and his team have redesigned the masthead and there is new typography as well as other new editorial features. I was fortune enough to work with Peter on the cover story featuring NRMA president Wendy Machin. It was decided the portrait of Wendy should be made outside parliament house on Macquarie Street. The photographs needed to fulfill a strong brief so specifics were important and close collaboration with art direction necessary.
The pictures needed to point to the story to highlight the need for road funding commitments from NSW government.
I arrived early with assistant Gary Compton to work out where I could make a clean cover shot with parliament in the background as requested The photograph was quite a challenge with such busy backgrounds especially when shooting in bright sunlight.
I decided to shoot from two locations on the other side of the road from parliament and frame Wendy close and centre using neutral density filters to blow the background out as much as possible at f 2.2 or so. I would then pull back for the inside shot where background context would be helpful. I use my Canon flash fired wirelessly with a pocket wizard through my small Chimera softbox I have had for twelve years and as good today as when I bought it. We decided the background was not clean enough and we should try setting up on the same side of the road as parliment. The sandstone wall and the black iron gate would serve as clean background going out of focus nicely shooting at f2.2. I used the soft directional light just above the camera and padded down some specular highlights on Wendy with powder. We worked on as many subtile variations on body language and expression as possible in our time so the best image would reveal it’s self in editing.
Here are the published results the cover and inside feature page.
I am really happy with the way it ended up published Peter made the most of the selection I feel.
OPEN ROAD inside feature spread
Alan Davies and the NSW State Library Collection
December 14th, 2010 § 1 Comment
The ‘Iconic Australian Photography’ short story by the History Channel is now showing on Foxtel (channel 44) and via the NSW State Library’s website. Curator of photography at the NSW State Library Alan Davies discusses the collection in a five minute video production.
Alan discusses, a beautiful story, one that I had not heard before of two mates Max Dupain and Damien Parer. Alan also relays the story of discovering in a shoebox of negatives the photography of George Caddy and his photographs of Bondi Beach acrobatics from the 1930s and 40s.
Alan Davis NSW Sate Library Curator of Photography
It is a brief outline of the workings of the library and it’s collection with it’s million plus photographs. Two of my own photographs flash before the screen for less than a second during the presentation.
One a photograph I took of Australian Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman as she realised the expectations of a nation winning gold in the 400 metre final at the Sydney 2000 Olympics . The second photograph I made as a guest of a friends wedding as the groom swiped the top of a profiterole wedding cake with a Naval College World War I ceremonial sword.
Cathy Freeman winning 400m at Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The art director for TIME Pacific back in 2000 Susan Olle kindly hired me to photograph the two weeks of the Sydney Olympics. TIME pacific needed a specially accredited photographer of their own just in case at any time during the Olympics they needed a photographer to make a portrait, attend a demonstration, or photograph a particular person in an event. I was not really needed for the sports action, they had Joe McNally from the USA assigned and another photographer based in Russia. TIME had access to Allsport’s photographs (now Getty images). I photographed a different sport every day over the two weeks. I covered beach volleyball, rowing, swimming, the marathon, equestrian, kayaking and of course athletics.
I remember very clearly just how much Australian expectation there was for Cathy Freeman to win the 400m. Australians wanted, actually needed her to win. Standing high up in the stand I had a very ordinary position facing the finish line with my 600 mm lens on my main camera and a 80-200 mm lens on the second camera using 400 ISO colour negative film. I photographed it because I just wanted to be there to watch history being made. Up in the stand I was with hundreds of photographers all elbow to elbow. After photographing most of the event with the long lens I switched to the 80-200 zoom and once she got up from the ground after sitting down for what seemed ages it could have been between 5-7 minutes I made photographs of her walking and waving to the crowd. In a number of frames I included in the picture the time of her run, the final places on the board, I composed her very small in scale to the enormous crowd. I have had many positive comments from writers on this photograph none from photographers. It is not a photographers photograph, it is a historian’s photograph, it is all about time and place. TIME Pacific published it across two pages as the opener to the coverage that week and some seven or so years later Alan Davies purchased the photograph for the NSW State library archive in 2004, one of twenty or so I have with the library. This Cathy Freeman photograph was one of a number of images I selected for the final edit of the games. It was Susan who actually spotted the image and considered it as some thing special amongst perhaps twenty or so photographs of the Cathy Freeman race. Susan chose it for the magazines opener for that weeks coverage otherwise the photograph may have passed by any notice in the busyness and stress of the time.
Cathy Freeman winning the 2000 Olympics 400m
Felicity and Dat cut the cake
Felicity and Dat’s wedding in contrast was not work. I just took some photographs for a close friend’s wedding. When you are not commissioned you can do what you want. I actually like photographing weddings, especially when I can work in a documentary style. At some quiet time in the proceedings, usually after the ceremony I make some portraits of the couple and their family, an image to put in a frame where the couple are at their best and the photographs reflect a sense of place.
In this case I had the camera-lens combination I always used to loved when I was using film, a 28-70 mm Zoom on a Canon SLR and a 35 mm on my Leica rangefinder camera. It was time to cut the cake and as I waited to document the event Dat lifted the sword and just took a swipe at the top of the cake I instinctively lifted the camera and took the photograph. I must have pre focused without thinking about it as the photograph was nice and sharp, a little movement although that added to the energy of the image. It happened so quickly I had no time to think, I just did it. Alan purchased this photograph for the library and it along with the Cathy Freeman photograph. Some year latter they featured in the book on the collection the library published in 2004 called Eye for Photography.
The key for photographs presented to the library is, their information and their historical significance. It’s nice to have a few photographs in the archive at NSW State Library.
Beating the Odds -ABC News Investigative Unit
November 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
- Beating the Odds ABC Investigative Unit.
Beating the Odds- ABC News Investigative Unit
I am at the end of a run of blog posts, we have just come out of the Reportage weekend and I am just getting the hang of the process of blogging. If you have not already come across this web journalism Beating the Odds then you must see this. It one of the most exiting aspects of photojournalism I feel at the moment. The fact that I can with the press of a play button view a multi feature that can be expanded to fill our lap top screens and we can watch it any where in the world and when ever I wish is wonderful. The issue of course is broadband speeds so the sooner that good access is provided for rural areas and in the developing world the better for everyone. I met Ed Giles the photographer and co reporter of
on the weekend of the Reportage and found he and his work very impressive. Of course Beating the odds is made with a team of specialists Investigative Unit Editor Suzanne Smith and Reporter and multimedia producer Eleanor Bell and Executive Producer Matthew Liddy. It was suggested at the Social Media seminar on Saturday at Reportage that it is this hybrid of visual communications in the ipad, the iphone and similar devises that will be the future of your current newspapers and magazines.
Craig Golding’s Multimedia FAN
November 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Craig Golding’s Fan Multimedia on Vimeo was shown at the Reportage Festival.
The multimedia he has produced is the combination of thousands of still photographs shot over the last couple of years, hours of sound recordings and weeks of editing.
Craig now a freelance and worked as a staff photographer for twenty four years not a stranger to the moving image has always dabbled in video and video editing.
Craig Golding's Multimedia -FAN
Reportage Retrospective Reviews
November 15th, 2010 § 1 Comment
The Reportage couple of days of projections and seminars have come to an end.
ADAM FERGUSON won the Reportage Festival’s professional category for his photo essay on Afghanistan.
Liz Loh-Taylor won the student category for her project that looked at the background to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Here are two links to stories based on the Reportage 1999-2010 Retrospective Exhibition and a multimedia on the projections with interviews with Stephen Dupont and Adam Ferguson.
ABC Online....Review of Reportage Retrospective 1999-2010 Exhibition.
ABC Online Review of Reportage Retrospective 1999-2010 Exhibition.
Sydney Morning Herald Article by Linda Morris and Multimedia Review.
SMH Review of Reportage Retrospective 1999-2010
“Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009”
November 12th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Photographer and writer Robert McFarlane opened “Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009” at the National Art School Forbes & Burton Streets, East Sydney (Outdoor Exhibition) Thursday night. It runs from November 11 – 21, 2010 it presents an selection of some of the most memorable photographs from the past decade of the Reportage Festival curated by Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone, Billy Plummer and myself.
Director of the festival Jacqui Vicario and photographer Stephen Dupont have done a great job putting together the exhibition, and accompanying catalogue book created by Momento Books. It was wonderful to see the way the exhibition wrapped so well around the walls of the historical grounds of the National Art School. The exhibition installation designed by Susan Freeman and Beth Stevens and the team at Freeman Ryan Design did a great job as did Axel and his team putting it all up. Warren Macris made the crafted exhibition prints.
It is personally satisfying to watch Reportage evolve over the last ten years into a multi dimensional photo documentary event. Reportage has jumped leaps and bounds from it’s first raw beginnings in late 1999 when, Stephen, David Jack and myself wanted to rev up some interest in documentary photography in Australia and create a outlet for photojournalists and their work.
Photographer and writer Robert McFarlane opens the Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009 at the National Art School
Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009 at the National Art School
Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009 at the National Art School
Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009 at the National Art School
Reportage A Retrospective exhibition 1999-2009 at the National Art School
Festival Director Jacqui Vicario
