Hair & Make-up:

Special items:

Getting ready:

Ceremony:

Reception:

Wedding portraiture:

but lets start from the beginning, shall we? Ok, I’ll tell it how it is.

This is NOT some heroic rescue story. This is simply how I saw it. My account of what happened.

A bit of background for those NOT living in Toowoomba/QLD/Australia. Toowoomba is a city perched on a hill, 700m above sea level and I was just telling my relatives not to worry about the Queensland floods because Toowoomba is *immune* to floods. Yesterday, I ate my words. Also, I live on the very top of a hill, close to being at one of the highest point in Toowoomba, on about a +-10% incline.

Went to work yesterday morning, it was drizzling. Not the most normal of mornings but judging from the weather this past couple of weeks, nothing out of the ordinary.

Went back for lunch around 12.45pm – heavy rain.

At 1.30pm, I left for Noodle Box in Westridge to buy some lunch for Leon. I noticed that my garden was already flooded and at that point in time I remember thinking that it was pretty funny. I took one look outside and was greeted with this site:

Remember this is pretty much close to one of the highest points in Toowoomba, about 3/4 way up on a steep incline. That opposite side has NEVER had water running down it, so to have it fly over the curb like a wave is crazy. As I reversed down the driveway, the water splashed over my bonnet for the first time.

Headed to Westridge and parked right on the corner closest to shelter. I had an umbrella in the passenger seat but figured I’d make the one meter without getting drenched. I was wrong. I remember stepping out and noticing that the water was about an inch high. Why did I take notice? -because I was wearing my new leather shoes

3 minutes later, I walked out with my order and it was like a beach. Water gushing out of the drainpipes and drains didn’t help. When I got to my car the water rushed into my shoes (almost four inches).

Time from office to home for lunch: 10mins. It took me 30 minutes + major detours to get back to the office as I figured some places would be worse off than others. I later found out that I was right as the road that I was suppose to take has a steep incline and at about the same time I decided to take “the scenic route” a similiar sized car to mine tried to climb it (opposite direction from where I was heading) and ended up bogging down on the spot with water rushing over the bonnet. *phew*. As I drove down West Street, I followed a 4×4 pickup going not more than 20kmh. Now, there are small side streets that run into West Street every 50 meters or so. Everytime I saw that pickup go past one you could see the water slam into its sides. I only prayed that he wouldn’t stop because I had a feeling the water was at around the height of the car exhaust and didn’t want to let go of the accelerator.  I followed the highest roads I knew and passed a number of cars that had simply bogged down in the middle of the road and finally made it back.

When the rain stopped, I took my camera and walked outside to have a look. As the fog cleared up I could see the worst of it in the distance. (see first photo). I strolled down to have a closer look. I was greeted with a torrent of a current running through the road effectively splitting the entire city into East and West (below picture taken facing dead East).

After a couple of morons tried to go through it failed, officials came to seal off the road and traffic got rerouted away. As I turned the corner I noticed Goggs Street in the distance…

Only later did I realize that the reason the current was so strong was because the place in the picture below acted as a Delta where all the water from the higher grounds in the South side merged and ravaged the CBD (Central Business District) tearing apart everything in it’s path.

Even with water all over the place the water level wasn’t at its highest. At this point it is at about the height of a car tire. A couple of minutes later and its up again. Now its about as high as the button you press for the green man on a pedestrian crossing.

Of course there were the usual a bunch of people taking photos and videos. I’m all for that but why walk into the water? Remember how I said that manholes across the city have pushed their covers out and are now overflowing? What? I didn’t? Well, they are and the bacteria from those drains are now all over the place. Very hygienic indeed.

See this bulge in the water? That’s coz of the two cars that got swept like a bulldozer picking up a person and slamming it into a wall.

If you’re local you’ll see them repeat the video of this happening…right next to Repco (you’ll see it in the background). Viewed from the other side of this shot:

Close up for your viewing pleasure (gotta love the 70-300mm VR lens):

After a little while I thought I’d  better head back to do some work. I turned around and noticed something I hadn’t before: Prescott Street. It’s a little street running parallel to the flood that had its worst not too long ago. Have a look:

I went in for a closer look:

This is the Yamaha shop. You can see all the bikes ruined in the background…

At this point I had had enough. I headed back to the office after taking one last shot. It looks like he’s at a beach. On the left you can see some tiles from a sidewalk that had been torn out.

THE AFTERMATH

For the rest of the afternoon I got updates from colleagues including facebook photos/e-mails/videos and other third party info. So, after work I made it a point to visit some of the more severely hit places to see if I could get some photos of the aftermath. Got scolded by a policeman in the process – not to mention this very sad way to inaugurate my new shoes – by walking through dirt and mud!

Car bumper with no car…

Check out this slab of asphalt simply ripped up from a road. It looks small bit its about a meter wide:

Towing companies taking advantage of the situation… AUD66/tow multiplied by… 1,2,…3000000!

See that blue Mitsubishi Magna on the right(top)? That’s Winder and Iris’s car…now flooded with water

Below is Russell Street, one of the worst hit streets which saw brand new thousand+ dollar sofas simply thrown into the streets. People had helped clean them up by now and lined them up along the sidewalk.

People volunteering to help clean up the streets as best they could:

These were brand new sofas and La-Z-Boys not more than 24 hours ago…

Dirt and mud littering the downtown city centre:

The Coffee Club on Margaret Street was one of the worst hit. Glass was broken and water pouring out of the cafe. I dare not go closer so this is all I have:

Sidewalks were all piled up by the side of the road probably to be put back when the situation calms down.

All in all it has been an insane day. I’ve been told not to come into work today so I figured I’d write this post. Everyone I know is fine and there were forecasts of rain today but so far so good. Let’s hope it stays this way.

…but first, an explanation for that previous post:

I have WordPress for my iPhone so I can update my blog anywhere (which ironically I never use). It logs in automatically to my account without asking for a password. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory. Aaron, in his not-so-infinite wisdom, decided it would be funny to post something while I left my phone on his table…bad move.

So, moving on, let’s start with a background on what “Serious Fun” is (taken from the City Women website).

Serious Fun is an exciting program designed to connect with women in our community. It evolved to meet a need that was shown through the Girls’ Getaway and Shine programs. Serious Fun give mums a similar experience of being touched by God’s love and being encouraged by members of City Women.

These two ladies have had a rough time these past couple of years (I won’t go into details) but Friday Online and City Women thought it would be nice to treat them to make them feel a little bit special. The real props go to Kady Berry from the Petite Parlour and Hayley Balingall from The Do hair salon located at 4 Russell Street, Toowoomba. They took the time out of their Monday (which is their closing day) to treat these ladies to a beautiful makeover for FREE!

Meet the ladies:

Jennie:

Leanne:

These are the shots after the makeover:

Yes, I do have some close-ups…

Jennie BEFORE:

Jennie AFTER:

Cut: Hayley
Blowdry: Hayley
Colour: Chloe
Makeup: Kady

_________________________________

Leanne BEFORE:

Leanne AFTER:

Cut: Reneé
Blowdry: Reneé
Colour: Reneé
Makeup: Kady

_________________________________

Kady and Hayley will be doing another makeover for two other ladies in November so stay tuned for that. What a great thing to do for a couple of strangers, eh? There is still hope for humanity, haha…

aaron.

that is all. peace.

These two are simply the cutest couple EVER! Immensely fun, relaxed, and beautifully photogenic. I’ve got 31 photos in this post because I couldn’t narrow them down. They were just so easy to shoot. I’ll introduce them then let my photos do the rest of the talking.

Meet Maggie. She’s originally from China but settled down in Australia a number of years ago.

This is Gavin. He’s from Australia and the family have lived most of their life in Toowoomba. The chose the University of Southern Queensland Japanese Gardens as the venue for their wedding as it reflects Toowoomba as a cultural mixing pot. It was a beautiful day for a wedding so even though it was the middle of winter, the weather was as best as we could have ever hoped for so we were very blessed from that point of view.

The day started early for the not-stressed-at-all-bride as she had her hair done early in the morning at StudioGlow in Medici with enough time to head back home for a rest before we met up with her again to get her make-up done.

After that, we headed over to the bride and grooms house taking photos of the gown, suits, as well as some other important accessories.

Fastforwarding >>> I got some beautiful portraits of the bride before I jumped off into my car and zoomed off to the venue. At this point we were already behind schedule…

Not late though.

Precisely fashionably late.

When I got to the venue I knew I wouldn’t have more than a couple of minutes before they were to arrive even though I instructed the driver to go SLOOOOOOW.

True enough, she arrived not long after I briefed Brandon on the situation. Brandon was my assistant for the day who wanted to get some experience in shooting weddings.He did a fantastic job!

Here’s Maggie being escorted by her father who flew in from China together with her mum. Her presence was like a breath of fresh air and you could see the Gavin light up as she prepared to walk down the aisle.

As you can see it really was a beautiful day. Small ceremony and surrounded by loved ones with the exception of the many visitors to the Gardens who sat down and quietly spectated the ceremony.

This is the wedding celebrant, Bronwen Rolfe. She had only recently received her license and this was her first wedding ceremony so she was pretty nervous/anxious too. She did a great job though and I’m sure the bride and groom were very appreciative of her efforts.

The exchange of vows were so beautifully heartwarming that it put a tear in almost everyone’s eyes. Gavin started it first and then it just spread like wildfire from there.

As the couple swapped rings the moment that everyone had been waiting for had finally arrived. The celebrant, Bronwen Rolfe, announced the couple husband and wife. You know the line:

As I was shooting the kiss, I couldn’t help but notice Gavin’s parents’ faces fill with emotions so I quickly recomposed my shot and snapped away. That’s how you tell a good photographer from a great photographer. A great photographer keeps both eyes open while shooting so he/she can scan the area around frame to watch out for distractions or better compositions (shameless self-praise, haha!)

Mum:

Dad:

Perhaps this is a good time to mention that Gavin is the first of their kids to tie the knot so I couldn’t imagine the emotions they were feeling at this point in time…and YES, these DO look good in B&W!

After the signing of the register, they poured champagne, mingled with the guests, threw the bouquet, and took the family portraits. I could go on and never end finish writing this post or I could FASTFORWARD>>> once again to the part I love most – the portrait session! This is where I really get in my zone and let my creativity run wild!

This is like my trademark shot. I love the reflection! Nobody else I know shoots this angle yet and I loooove the results!

Wow, I wasn’t kidding when I said “portrait” session, eh? I never noticed before…I’m sure I do have some shots in landscape orientation but I guess all my personal faves just happened to be in portrait. Anyway, next was the dinner reception. They came in from the back entrance and were greeted by the guests.

You can see Gavin’s super happy sister, Natalie, as they made their entrance into the room.

The dinner reception was held at Veraisons and it was very cozy. The top half of the room was painted black which my flashes did NOT like but I made do.

The food was great as well as the service. Rebecca, the owner’s wife looked after us Andrew himself had a skiing injury and was not able to serve us that night. Get well soon, Andrew!

There was a  touching speech by Gavin’s father to which everyone raised their glasses. I raised my glass too…my glass lens that is!

While everyone was mingling, I managed to steal the newlyweds for a couple of moments and get some fun impromptu shots so I thought I’d share:

Thats about it. I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed making them.

Special credit goes out to my good friend, Brandon, who agreed to be my second shooter. He assisted me in everything from covering shots that I couldn’t get, helping me out with holding my light stands, and shooting the couple’s genuine expressions while they were preoccupied with me directing and posing them. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to include his shots here but credit given where credit is due, I will definitely be putting up another blog post with the prequel to this wedding ceremony as well as to showcase some of his shots.

A big thank you again to Gavin and Maggie who put their trust in me to capture their most special day. They were very accommodating, very hospitable, and their entire family and friends were very easy to work with. It was an honour to be your weddding photographer and I do hope that you thoroughly enjoy the results.

God bless.

You know once in a while you do a photoshoot that you really really REALLY liked?

I mean like you go back to review the shots and even think to yourself, “Dang, I’m good!”

Something that made you proud to showcase not one, not two, but really almost every shot that you took…so much so that just weeding out which shots NOT to be included on the DVD was the hardest task?

This was one of those times.

Meet my subjects.

Lena, from Germany.

Nina, from  Germany.

Hao Chu, from Vietnam. AKA Heidi.

I was told that it was Lena and Nina’s birthday present for Heidi. I found out later that it was actually Nina AND Heidi’s birthday. I’m sure they enjoyed their present. These photos are all over their facebook profiles now. I’ve even got compliments from friends just walking around the uni. Anyway, if they’re happy – I’m happy.

The theme of the photoshoot was “Fairytale”. I did a bit of research of how cartoonists draw fairytale pictures like Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. Okay, actually it was a single picture with all of the above in it with some other “princesses” of which I cannot remember the names. Here is my rendition:

Too posed? I like it.

I should find the cartoon that I was looking at and insert it here…in retrospect I should’ve moved this shot to someplace else. I took the shot here because I liked the backlight on the trees. See that golden, greenish colour….I liked that and was trying to get it blurred enough to become some really nice rounded bokeh. After going through the troubles of posing the shot it would’ve been too troublesome to shift everything to somewhere else. Also, we were loosing light so we had to move.

This next shot was probably one of my faves…not this one exactly, but all the ones taken here I really liked.

“Who wants to be that tree?!”

By the way, it was around this time and the individual shots (the ones where I introduced the subjects) that my Speedlight fell down again. Yup. AGAIN! “Friggin, stupid *#!@#$!!!” Everytime I do a shoot a Speedlight falls. It doesn’t matter how secure I make it it’ll still drop! I even put my SB-600 (the more expensive of the two) on the tripod which is heavier = sturdier. I was taking a shot of one of the girls and was backing up slowly. I backed into the tripod and it slammed into the ground – diffuser first. (I also dropped my SB-600 when I was taking Rick and Michelle’s Wedding) Last time I broke my umbrella, this time I broke the shot shoe feet on the plastic wireless flash receiver – Thanks goodness! I’ve yet to glue it back but I’ll do it before Wednesday (26th May 2010) because I have another photoshoot then.

This next series is AWESOME. Kudos to Steph for thinking of this shot. We literally stopped them as they were walking away to the next spot and got these shots. I got them to swing their heads as I was counting down the shot and got some great hair action!

These were all taken in the Japanese Gardens at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba QLD, but theres not much to show for it, huh? So, I’m gonna throw in this shot just so I compliments the title:

By now everyone was getting tired as it was cold, and sunset had just passed. We set up our last shots for the day and went home. We wanted a shot of them dipping their feet in the water but there just wasn’t enough time.

Total duration of Photoshoot: 120 minutes.

**shameless referral to me: www.facebook.com/jiarenlau. Add me if you know me. I don’t add people I don’t know…and I don’t know enough people who don’t know me who want to know me to start a page for my photography. (O.o)

The reason being was that it was such a lovely ceremony. Beautiful venue, gorgeous couple, and weather to die for. I’d plan to write a long narrative for this story but alas things get pretty busy pretty quick.

…and now I’m being pestered to upload a bunch of other events that have taken place in the not so distant past (but not recent past either…)

Maybe if I have the time I’ll come back t this one but in the meantime you can watch the slideshow video which I’m very proud of. The song was their wedding song for the customary first dance so I didn’t need to go through the usual thousand songs to figure out which one I wanted.

I’ll be uploading another post tomorrow so watch out for that.

Also, Ian kindly made a blog post about this for me as well from a “behind-the-scenes” perspective. You can see it by visiting his website at http://www.iansalang.com/?p=1202

Oh yes. 9 stops!

“Whats that mean?”

It means that it has an attenuation factor of 400!

…

nothing?

…it means it only lets 0.5% of light through it!!!

…

still nothing?!?!?!

…it means that a picture that you normally take at a shutter speed of 1/400 now needs 1 second to expose correctly!!!

***hears birds squaking noises***

…it means that you can take a 15 second shot in the middle of the day! Thats about as practical as I can explain it. I guess its good that this is a photoblog because a picture says a 1000 words, right?

Ok, right off the top I’m going to admit that that first pic isn’t Queen Mary Falls. Its actually Brown Falls but I have a very good explanation for that. Also, if you’ve been following my blog for some time then you’ll know that this isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I blogged about it and you can read all about it by clicking HERE.

This time however was a little different. Instead of a measly eight this time we had over 30 people join!!! Thats 6 vehicles  full! I was supposed to be leading everyone (because I was the most familiar with the location) but I was so  eager to try out the filter that soon wound up right at the end of the line. No worries.

First stop: Queen Mary Falls.

A quick hike from the picnic spot opposite the Caravan Park and we were at the viewing platform. We’ve had heavy rain for the past 3 weeks or so so the fall was intense. Here’s the kicker. The best view is from below. Unfortunately, a boulder had fallen and it had been deemed too risky to allow people to go down so I wasn’t able to get a picture from there. After a good amount of picture taking we headed back to the picnic spot via an alternate route which had a collection of streams which were too beautiful not to photograph.

This stream might look peaceful but that horizon where the water stops is the Queen Mary Falls drop! In the picture of Queen Mary Falls, this stream leads to the edge of the section closest to the camera!

Turn a good 180 degrees and you’re greeted with this:

OK, heres the problem with the ND400 filter. Technically, its the same as having really dark sunglasses. REALLY  dark sunglasses. REALLY REALLY DARK SUNGLASSES. (sorry, caps lock turrets acting up gain) So dark that its almost impossible to see through…this is where the limitations kick in. In order to utilise the filter successfully you’re supposed to

1) compose you photo

2) put the filter on

3) take the shot

4) remove filter

5) repeat step 1.

Being myself I got tired of this after about the first shot… so I just left it on and made an educated guess as to the best probable angle. Granted these won’t be the best shots…in all honesty, I’m quite dissapointed with the overall results…but when I want to go on a proper photo  outing, I’ll be going in a small group so I can take my time to compose and adjust.

Here are some of the people that came along.

After we got back to the picnic spot we had lunch before heading off to see the birds. My friend, Min, in all his wisdom bought enough bird seeds to feed a small country to pass out rather than letting us buy them from the shop for $1/bag.

The birds will land on your hand/shoulders/head for you to feed them. Its great fun and everyone enjoyed it. I’ve posted some of the shots from the past visit which you can view by clicking HERE. I’ve been assigned to post the ones from this trip on the ANS Facebook page so I’m not going to bother having duplicates here.

After the novelty wore off we headed up to Carrs Lookout, a nice little spot with a gorgeous view. Here is where the filter really shone! You can blur water with a small aperture. You can blur water in broad daylight with a Cokin P filter. But only with something like an 9-stop ND400 filter can you actually blur clouds!

This following picture was taken with the ND400 filter + Tiffen 0.6 soft Graduated ND + Sigma 10-20mm at the wide end. Exposure time: 30 seconds in the middle of the day. Screw all the photoshop vignettes out there this is what real vignetting looks like:

Beautiful day, nice breeze, green grass and a heard of cows lazing under a tree in the distance.

After this we headed off to an unofficial border between Queensland and New South Wales before heading down to Brown Falls. We skipped Daggs falls because we were behind schedule.

This is Brown Falls:

This next shot literally caused me hours of grief. You see I wanted to get close into the rocks and shoot the fall from below. The wind blew all this water vapour into the lens. I had to clean the filter, put it back on the lens, take the shot, and get out of there with the filter all dirty again. I didn’t know this before but Hoya HMC filters are a pain to clean! I mean I spent hours trying to get all the crap off but there are still streak marks on it. I feel like sending it back and getting the non-coated B+W version.

…all for this lousy pic so I’m obligated to post it.

You can still see the vapour screwing up the top part of the picture. All in all a good day. Still need a dedicated day just for shooting but was fun none-the-less. Some guys had a dip in the fall, most didn’t. We headed back to the Toowoomba after an exhausting day and most of them didn’t go to church the next day.

Oops.

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Here is a photo of the entire group that joined.

I you came here looking for the photos of people that joined, follow this link to the gallery: Facebook Gallery

This is the first time I’m uploading my shots taken with film online…I use a beautiful Nikon FM2n + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI lens that is the best camera I’ve ever shot with and a tank of a camera at that. Built to take the abuse and is rock solid. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of my camera…but someone else does.

I hope Jody doesn’t mind me stealing her picture (Shoutout to Jody Siong)

You can read her blog by clicking HERE.

I shoot film exclusively for B&W…Today, my friend Shane taught me how to develop film. You can check out his work by clicking HERE. He taught me by helping me develop my first roll of B&W film, a roll of Ilford Delta 3200. After I get a job I’m definitely gonna develop my own film. Its being dried at the moment so he’ll help me scan in into digital files and I’ll go see ‘em tomorrow. THATS WHY I’M EXCITED!!! Looking at the developed roll though there seems to be a streak that runs across the entire roll which will probably be quite obvious in the photos. Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing the finished result and if they’re good I’ll make a post about it. I took the film about half a year ago and then realised that traditional B&W film NEEDS to be hand developed…so I stuffed it in my drawer as I couldn’t do anything about it…until today.

In the meantime, I’m shooting with Kodak BW400CN which is a C-41 process film (which means I can bring it into any photography shop and they can develop it for me. I just recently developed 2 rolls of this film at the shop. I wasn’t planning on digitizing them in any way but Shane was kind enough to do me the favour. (Shoutout to Kao Wen Sheng)

These rolls were taken around last September to November but I didn’t have enough money to waste on developing them so I resisted as long as I could. The pictures you are about to see are from November ’09 when my sister, Linzhi, came to Australia to visit.

Most of you know her as this:

or this:

The happy, weird, smiley, smartie pants with selective hearing. However, don’t be fooled. I’ve known this one for 23 years and it wears many…many faces. You can be sure because:

1. Film doesn’t lie
2. All these pictures are taken from 2 rolls of film so you know they were taken over a short period of time.
3. You’re reading it here. Your one source of definite, undisputable truth.

If you know the both of us and know us well, you’ll notice she’ll regularly look at me with this face:

It means that I’ve either done something wrong, am about to something wrong, or am thinking of doing something wrong. When you’re as in tune with her as I am you see her in a different light.

Where others see this:

I see this:

Where others see this:

I see this:

Where others see this:

I see this:

Then, if you’re observant enough you’ll notice that she has her own little mood swings where she does random things at random times.

“Yeah right, Jiaren. You’re SO making this stuff up!”

“No way, this is your one source of definite, undisputable truth!”

“Prove it then!”

“Fine. I will.” Presenting…

…Weird random self-happy mode:

…Weird random self-sad mode:

…Weird random self-standoff “first-one-blinks-loses” mode?:

I think I’m made my case.

Can’t live with her, can’t live without her!

All in all I love her and miss her already… She’s great fun to photograph and fun to hang around with. She’s also single and available. If you’re reading this and still find yourself liking her give me a shout and I’ll hook you up.

Cheers and God bless!

In the true spirit of “Macro Madness” there won’t be any pictures of the park itself…not because I don’t want to…but because I only brought the macro lens that day…and not a measly 55mm macro but a 180mm one…which is pretty much a dedicated macro lens and nothing else.   Now I can also go back to take some macros of the sunflower field! 

Of course the Brow needed to stretch her lil leggies so she came along for an impromptu portrait session.

By the way those are her legs…shes so furry her hands (as in front legs) tuck into it and dissapear when she sits like that. Her hands looks like this:

If you leave her on the ground long enough she’ll start planning her escape route…

…so we put her somewhere where she can’t run

Just kidding, haha…shes awesome…doesn’t run away unless shes at home where shes familiar with the floor…ask Linzhi, every few minutes we give a a good tickle under the chin…

Oh, right…Macro Madness Day!

Sorry…

Sorry…

I tend to digress when I ramble…

In all honesty the park was pretty down in the dumps. It wasn’t dirty or anything it just wasn’t maintained very well. However, the flowers were absolutely perfect and down at a macro level its easy to ignore the rest of the place.

Isn’t that just beautiful rose? Hows this next one for a good contrast?

Same flower, different colour…but it just says something different…the red one has that classy, elegant feel where as this one sort of brings words like “natural” and “pure” to mind…or am I crazy?

Don’t know what flower this is…any tips? I reckon I should’ve shot this closer though.

I didn’t really care for this one…but its a little weird. It looks like they are four smaller flowers inside the large outside petals…theres actually a picture that I shot dead on center which shows it in focus but composition wise this one looks better so deal with it.

Need to go shower now. Have to sleep early, tomorrows my driving test! *Eek!* Wish me luck!