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.

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

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!

I dropped off Aaron at home (which is just outside the race track) and heard such a racket that we just had to be a busybody. So, off we were straight from church with Steph still in her high heels walking down a gravel road to see what all the commotion was about.

We were greeted by this sign:

I guess having a race is an exception then?

You can see Steph struggling in her high heels (notice the appropriate footwear in the picture above?)

I guess you can’t really tell after all…by the way, Coca Cola and 100 Plus is not endorsing us, lol. Moving on, the road to the track is quite a steep drop which gives quite a nice vantage point for photogs. Me being my lazy self when not being paid couldn’t be bothered to change lenses so you can only see the starting line and a bit of the track.

One of the first shots I got was my personal favourite. Its the one thats in the slideshow at the top of the page (if you have the patience to wait long enough because its the last picture before it loops again.

The one thing I didn’t like was the guy that happened to be standing there right behind the bike as I took the picture. “Don’t worry, you’re not blind…you can’t see him there coz I did what any good photographer would do – photoshop”. Sometimes I amaze even myself. If you know me and have followed my work you’ll know I like to get the shot right in camera. Having said that, if an object in the frame doesn’t add to the composition, its taking away from it. Heres the original before my half hour of photoshop magic:

Yes, I know – applaud my genius.

After taking some shots where the crowd was I went scouting for a better angle. I found a place right at the edge of the fence where I was up close and personal with the riders. There was even a conveniently places hole in the fence for me to stick my lens through. It was a tight corner as the came zooming up a slight incline before taking this sharp left turn where the proceeded downhill.

Check out all the dirt being kicked up!

I’ll bet theres a motivational quote somewhere in there. This next one are of two riders fighting for the championship:

I was happy with the shots from that sharp right and decided I needed to practice some panning action. I didn’t do so well. As a matter of fact, this is the only one I dare show you. The rest are garbage.

When one race finishes, another begins. Thats great as you get to see the jump in a group.

BIG AIR!

By this time the annoying pestering of both a best friend and a girlfriend to ditch this joint had pushed me to my limit so I gave in and went home…but not before taking one last jump!

Side note: Aaron (the dude in the picture), just arrived back in Australia after visiting the UK for holidays. While he was there, he and his family visited the TATE musuem where you can record a short video clip and send it to a friend. Little did he know he was going to share it with the world!

ITS FREEZING! ITS FREEZING! hahaha…enjoy!

So anyway, this story began a long time ago…but that not important. Whats important is that it ended just a little while ago. Last Monday to be exact. Thats the day Jun left to go back to Malaysia. The day before that, Jun asked if I would be able to photograph our group at our university’s own Japanese Garden.

Of course I could!

We arranged to meet at the gardens at 4.30pm so obviously I made it a point to be  there by 5.30pm…

which I did…

…barely.

Good news is we all got there eventually and almost everyone obeyed the “all black” dress code.

We started off at the far side of the garden where there was a couple nice sheltered benches which would be suitable for a large group portrait. We tried a couple of shots but the sun was way too glaring so we swapped around and shot into the Sun. I set up two lights on both sides of the camera to makes sure everyone was evenly lit while I pull down the background exposure. Here are the results:

I took over a hundred shots but I’ve weeded them to these few to keep from boring you, my dearest readers. After 20 minutes of positioning the lights, posing everybody, and getting the shot right without people blinking, we got some really good shots before moving onto the big red door. I like this door.By the way, have you guessed which one is Jun yet?

See the smartie pants that didn’t conform to the dress code? *Ahem* *ahem* Will and Jun (Not the Jun thats leaving, we have two Juns in our group). Let me introduce you to the group.

From Left to Right: Will, Ted, Sabrina, Wilson, Stephanie, Neo, Jun, Ben, Edna, Shin Yong, Jun.

Next up is our group of lovely ladies in black.

I like the above shot except for the cross shadows which make the girls look flashed straight on and defeats the purpose of strobing. (Phototip: The lights are meant to “look” natural and inconspicuous).

Now with two flashguns shooting camera left at full zoom we can bring the background down to exposure without loosing the foreground. Remember shadows are our friends and almost this entire series was shot with the flash on full power or close to it.

Next we did some creative shots and laughed the whole way through.

This next shot is the “Eww, Yuck, its Jun” shot:

This next one is the “PHeeewWWWIIiTTtTTT, Hubba hubba, it’s gorgeous Jun!!!”:

This next one is just…well…I like the composition.So have you guessed which one is Jun yet? Now we come to our hero, “Neo, the ladies man”:

…or would you prefer, “Neo, you disgust me!” look?:

Okay, enough of that…lets move on to more group shots ya?! Moving not more than 30 meters away is the Zen garden. The little pebbles on the ground were beautifully carved when we got there. It looked like crap when we were done, haha!

In retrospect these pics remind me of the Friends series opening sequence…

Don’t you love how it looks in black and white…when everybody conforms to the dress code? Will and Jun had already left by this time because they had other stuff to do.

Every good Japanese garden has a red bridge so it wouldn’t feel complete if we didn’t take a shot there:

Theres actually four bridges at our Japanese garden. This is one of the smaller ones. In the middle of the garden is a small island which I’ve found to be a great spot for photographs! By now we were quickly loosing light and were about to wrap up so we quickly had to get it over with. Once the lights were set up I was ready to go. Check out the reflections!

Sort of has a “The Bold and the Beautiful” theme going on, hey? Heres another:

You can see the flash in the picture which I felt would pass as a lamp post or something. I tried to clone it out but preferred it like this. At this point we were exhausted and ready to pack up. Jun had other plans. She wanted one last shot with Ben, Edna, and Neo so with plenty of people around I used them as assistants to finally get some use out of the umbrellas which I’d been lugging around all day without using for fear of them being blown by the wind. Its happened once and broke the flash that way. I had just got it too!

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! If you enjoyed what you saw please leave me a comment! Send me feedback, what I should or should not be doing! critic! We all learn from our mistakes. Let me leave by saying I appreciate criticism a lot more than flattery so don’t hesitate if there was something bothering you that you thought would look better only if…(I’ll leave the rest to you)

Take care and God bless,

Jiaren

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/12/03/jun-loos-farewell-photoshoot/feed/ 8 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/12/02/australia-zoo-sunshine-coast-queensland/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/12/02/australia-zoo-sunshine-coast-queensland/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:52:58 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=787 Lets have a bit of animal portraits for a change. Here are some of the friendly faces you may encounter at the Australia Zoo. Its located at Steve Irwin Way, Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

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Its a beautiful place that started as family owned wildlife reserve that led to the birth of arguably the greatest Australian that ever lived – the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. Today, his legacy lives on in his wife and daughter, Terry and Bindi Irwin respectively. If you do get a chance, visit the place! Today I’ll be posting some animal portraits I took at the zoo. I promised I’d blog this otherwise I’m pretty psyched about another strobist photoshoot I did last Sunday. Actually, I did two shoots but the first one was for church and I wasn’t given much creative control. The latter I’m psyched about because I absolutely love shooting this style and am getting very comfortable with it. Also, I rarely get to shoot like this because I don’t have any models willing to pose for me …but that all changed last Sunday when we had Jun’s farewell photoshoot. There were about +-8 people so I really had fun shooting some group photos which I rarely get to do. I’ve finished editing and the results are amazing! You have to see it! Stay tuned and let me get this out of the way first!

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If you’ve been to my flickr page at any time recently these images will be nothing new. I already put them up quite a while ago I just haven’t gotten around to blogging about it…until now.

First, we ventured into the reptile pit where you can see and read about various types of Australian snakes, lizards, etc. This guy was in such a beautiful pose I couldn’t have posed it any better myself!

Ooh, ooh! This next guy is my favourite! WOMBATS! I absolutely love love love wombats!!! They’re soooooooo cute! …and they look so funny when they do stuff…one of them was rubbings its butt against a tree trunk to scratch it I guess…another was trying to climb a tree and failed miserably. Anyway, Wombats are awesome!

As most of these places do, they have performances and shows where they showcase the animals abilities. The difference is that this zoo doesn’t force their animals to do anything. Everything is done “hands-on” style which means the animal doesn’t do anything it doesn’t want to do. While the performances are rather boring compared to a lot of other places it really does show how much they care for the well-being and treatment of the animals at the zoo. For example, even this elephant which used to be a circus elephant has grown quite “manja” (malay word for suck up). In the end I went for a tight portrait of the behemoth.

Of course theres the regular array of other widelife, some you can touch and others you can’t. Heres one you can:

Heres one you can’t:

One cool thing you’ll notice is how the animals themselves love the place. They get daily walks and runs outside their cages in huge habitats so they stay fit and healthy and capable of surviving in the wild should they be released. Some of the birds aren’t even caged and are allowed to wonder around. Why? Because they ALWAYS come back.

One more thing is you’ll find is these little lizard things crawling all over the place. They’re harmless but look a little intimidating nonetheless.

You’ll notice I forgot the most important element of the Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter – the crocodiles. The reason being is that during the show I was too far away and couldn’t crop tight enough. Okay I just went into my hard disk and pulled out a picture with a croc in it. Now we can end the post…happy?

PS. I realize the pic is slightly out of focus but it the best action shot I could find!

If you enjoyed the post please please please leave a comment! I thrive on them! …and it really makes my day when you do! Cheers and God bless!