Entries from June 2008 ↓

At the end of May I took some of my family to see Monsalvat.

Montsalvat consists of a series of unique and distinctive buildings in the European style set in over 12 acres of parkland and is a photographers dream location. Within the one property are fantastic buildings, superb landscape and the best loft in the world.

Anyway I digress … as we were looking in the great hall a young couple were sprung doing a dance and we picked them as a potential bride and groom checking out the venue. I quickly whipped out a business card and asked if they had aquired the services of a wedding photographer. Upon hearing that they hadn’t I immediately praised their choice of location, explaining how I had been involved in weddings here before and described several key locations within the grounds.

Tonight (more than three weeks later), they called. I’m meeting with them next week.

I’m glad I had the audacity to flash my card at them. Let’s hope it pays off.

I received my first two orders from my new online client image library (http://www.rxaphotoarchive.com) last night and today. I have yet to upload all my past shoots and may just use it moving forward, but when I got home at 2.30 am I had an email from PayPal saying they had recieved money for an order and here are the order details!

A very nice birthday present I can tell you. Yes today is my 37th birthday.

All future clients (and past clients who request the feature) will be able to see all their photos online and be able to order prints, mounted prints and canvases directly from the website. Each photo comes with pricing options and images can be easily added to the shopping cart. From there you can pay via Credit Card, PayPal account or email the order and receive my bank details via return email.

There are a few visual bugs that need to be sorted out but the online payment system works a treat. My client was very suprised to see me on her doorstep with the prints less than 24 hours after she ordered them but I thought she deserved a treat being the first to use the new system.

304/365 - Inspired by a message, originally uploaded by RXAphotos.

Although I have always been a proponent of natural light for all my portraits in the past, I have taken a liking to off-camera flash. I blame Shelton for this as he uses the technique so well at weddings.

I recently purchased a Canon ST-E2 and have already used it on the portrait shoot with Ashlee (see below).

Today I went into the garage and set up two flashes and tried a few self portraits. It was very interesting and educational watching the effect of moving the flashes around to various positions.

This photo was created by placing a flash on a tripod directly behind me pointing to the back of my head. I also pointed another flash into the white wall to my left (camera right) for the diffused bounce light.

I’m shooting a wedding on Sunday and look forward to playing with a bit of flash.

Yesterday I had a portrait session with Ashlee in the alleyways of Melbourne. The weather was rather chilly but Ash was a trooper and not once complained about the cold. We started at Hosiers Lane, famous for its grafitti and ended up behind St Pauls in Melbourne, a little alleyway i had visted with Shelton Muller on a wedding I helped him with.

Here are a few of my favourites…

I finally got around to calibrating my monitor yesterday. Wow. The difference in colours were amazing and I am going to go back and re-edit a few of my favourite shots to see if I can make them pop more.

The auto reminder tool has been set to two weeks to keep the screen fresh but I will calibrate everytime I start work on a clients images.

I’m using the Sypder2 system and I recommend it.