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.

Bummer.

No fret, we just thought we’d take a drive and see what else we could find…we thought of turning back over five times but God must’ve been driving because I just followed the road until we got to a railway crossing. Across the road way up in the countryside was something yellow.

“It couldn’t be”, I thought…”Let’s check it out anyway!”. Steph also didn’t think that it could’ve been a sunflower field. We turned the car around and tried to find a way in that direction. We hit a couple of dead ends but eventually we were greeted with a huge sunflower field!

I’m talking BIG. It extends all the way to the horizon. Here’s a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

That not enough for you? hmm..OK, imagine this: You are now seeing the image above in reality. Now turn 90 degrees to your left and you’re looking down the field from an elevated position…and this is what you see:

Yup. Thats a heck of a lot of sunflowers. Just as I was getting my gear out of the car the owner of the field happened to walk by with his dog. I greeted him and he let me go crazy so I had myself a photo-frenzy. I didn’t have my camera out yet so I didn’t get a shot of him. Next time I’ll be sure to bring the polaroid so I can give him a little something for his generosity.

Oh, by the way, be prepared to have your screen blasted with all sorts of shades of yellow. I love composing shots by colour. However, something funny happened while I was taking pictures of the sunflowers. Check out the image below and tell me whether or not its edited…

Am I seeing things or does it look like an HDR image? (for the noobs out there who do not know HDR is High Dynamic Range. What is it? Google is your friend). It looked the same way on the camera screen which I thought was weird. This is actually straight from camera. No post processing, no photoshop, no nothing! Even looking at it now I can’t help but think how “edited” it looks…am I right?

Also, this wasn’t a one off thing. Check out the following six images which were all taken straight from camera with no post processing whatsoever. Only adjustments made (if any) are to crop and/or straighten the horizon.

Is that weird or what? Those of you who follow me know that I like to get the shot right in camera but even I’m amazed at this! In the interest of full disclosure I will share some of my settings with those who are interested. Camera on variable aperture/shutter speeds depending on the shot (Duh!). All shot on “more vivid” picture mode, cloudy WB, and with a 0.9 (3x) Graduated Neutral Density filter (cheapo Tian Ya brand but works great!). Obviously a wide angle was used – in this case a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 mostly at 10mm. Any explaination people?!

Moving on, we also brought along our little guinea pig, Shybrow who kind of got high from all that fresh vegetation.

Shybrow is no little piggie, shes a big fat piggie and shes still growing but at around six months old and almost too big to hold her comfortable in one hand, shes no match for the sheer monstrosity that is a sunflower. I mean that thing could literally eat her up!

Man, I could almost see this shot advertising for something…for example:

How’s that? haha…fortunately that not the extent of my graphic design abilities but thats all I could think of in two minutes. Ideally, the sky would be a gorgeous deep blue but I’ll have to go back again in the near future to get that shot. More about revisiting this place at the end of the post.

Heres a shot that was inspired by another photo I saw somewhere on the internet but I can’t remember where. If I find it I’ll credit it.

Sunflowers are one of the few “photogenic” flowers. I say so because of their beautiful texture. Not to say that other flowers aren’t great but a macro lens and a sunflower would really produce some amazing results. I didn’t bring one along as it was a cloudy day and I knew it would be too windy to take macro shots (maybe next time I can steal a flower and photograph it at home?) For now, the crappy Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 will have to do.

Heres a great little pano I shot:

Altogether we were there for over an hour. Brandon called me and said that it was raining in Toowoomba so we packed up and left. Looking up there was a flock of birds. I had my telephoto lens on so I took a couple of shots of them. Nothing impressive but I sort of like this picture:

Would have loved to stay til sunset…but that was hours away. Perhaps next time. For now I can only imagine…

As I previously mentioned, I will be going back there to get some shots with blue sky instead of a cloudy one. If you don’t already know, this area has been in a 6 year drought and having clouds is a rarity so I took the opportunity to make the most of it. I will be going back on a nice clear summer day to get some different perspectives. I’ll probably go down again in a week or so. Anyone interested in joining me? let me know in the comments!

Til next time, good bye and God bless!

Last Saturday…well, last LAST Saturday was the 2nd annual Worldwide Photo Walk. We didn’t know about the first one…Although I have a bunch of photos from Sydney, blue mountains, Hillsong and all that I’ll talk about this walk first simply because I’ve finished with photos…the only reason I’m finished with them is I had to make my submissions by Saturday midnight. Even so, I was actually late and submitted my entries on Sunday morning.

You know the great thing? ..because Australian time is so far ahead I could submit it late and still have it counted because the deadline is a US time zone…

If you don’t already know what a photowalk is let me explain:

All over the world people sign up and create little groups with a max capacity of 50 people. On Saturday, 18th July 2009, all those people met up at a designated time and place. Since I was in Toowoomba, one of the Toowoomba flickr group members started a toowoomba walk and so I decided to join! We’ve (some of the photographers in Toowoomba) been meaning to do this for some time but its difficult to take initiative if you know what I mean…especially since we didn’t know one another personally. This was a wonderful opportunity to meet up with local photographers and break the ice with them. In retrospect, I’m sure we’ll be able to organize regular “Toowoomba Photo walks” or something similiar…ask the creative team to come up with something catchy!

If you wanna know more about the worldwide photowalk, click HERE. Perhaps you can organize one for next year! Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets talk photography!

The main meetup was scheduled for 9.30am – 12 noon. However, our leader told us that there would be a dawn shoot for anyone interested. I WAS interested. Only problem is I’ve been sleeping very irregular patterns since I’ve finished uni…(OH YEAH, BTW, I’VE GRADUATED!!! I FINISHED UNI!!! NOW I’M…I’m…un…em..ployed…! D’oh!) Whoops, digressing there…where was I…ah, so I wasn’t sleepy at midnight…I wasn’t sleepy at 1.30am…heck I wasn’t even sleepy at 3.45am! …so, logically I just didn’t bother to sleep! Took a shower at 5.30am and rushed to meet the rest of ‘em.

Being in the land down under, it was a cold winter day and being so, it was still dark, gloomy, and cold. Unfortunately, what wasn’t there was any mist/fog which we were hoping to capture. We met up at Queens Park and there were four of us. I went to get my tripod and realised that I’d left my quick release plate at home! D’oh! Oh well, it didn’t matter though ‘coz there wasn’t anything nice to take. Luckily, Greg, our walk leader got a call from another shooter who was at a mountain cliff shooting first light. We scrambled back to the cars and headed for his spot.

Now there were 5 of us.

WOOT!

We got there and the others got to talking…I saw a beautiful sunrise and couldn’t NOT take it!

After that we stood there chatting around before we went onto explore the surroundings…

So off we went to shoot some other stuff…this is what I took:

Keep exercising

Go Green!

Then, we decided to hang around and chat some more…

We’re pretty good at that.

Now that we were done with that, the sun was out and we headed back to the park for some more photo opportunities. Now theres one thing that puzzles me…one thing that I cannot seem to able to capture. You know when you in a forest with trees all around? You face towards the sun and the light rays come streaming through the trees? I love it when that happens but I’ve never been able to actually capture it. I don’t know why? I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried…if you know how do teach! There was some light haze (probably something burning) and it was all around…smelt like crap though but pretty to behold. I tried and tried but couldn’t seem to capture anything! ARRGH!!!

So I did what all great photographers do: I quit.

I went to shoot stuff I DID know how to shoot…

A Winter Morning

Windmills

Running Water

Ok, it was now around 8.09:22am (taken from EXIF info) so we decided to warm up and have some breakfast…I tried for the first time an egg benedict with bacon. It was delicious! …nope I wasn’t gonna be Asian and whip out my camera to take a picture of it…although presentation was pretty decent.

9.20 ish in the AM and its time to head to the rendezvous point which was the war memorial next to Queens Park. We waited and finally decided to get a move on. By now we had 8 photographers! yeah!

One of the churches in Toowoomba

An interesting view of the Empire Theatre

Another interesting perspective of the Ticket counter at the Empire Theatre

Free Masons Masonic Hall

This is a list of all the soldiers from Toowoomba that gave their life in WWI. One of the photographers had a contact which let us go into the RSL (Retired Services League) building to tour the place.

After our visit to the RSL, we headed off the main road and buildings into some small back alleys…

Okay, this is a little weird? abstract art in a back alley?

Simple building, Simple geometry

Lonely alley

One of the last things we past during the walk was a walk that was full of graffiti. I took a couple of shots because I liked the colour but it was only when I came to the end of the wall was there a small car park and it took a couple of shots to get it how I wanted it to look.

After a little cropping the frame looks evenly split into thirds and it looks like the graffiti Indian is coming out of the car! haha!

…and thats about it for the day! We had a blast! No group pic…its with Greg in his medium format 120 fuji camera so I guess we’ll have to wait. You can view some of the other photogs pics at the Toowoomba Flickr Group. Alternatively, check out http://worldwidephotowalk.com/toowoomba-ql-au/ to see some of the entries from our walk.

My submissions for consideration were the first and 7th pic, “First Light” and “A Winters Morning“.

It was a fun day, there were many performances such as dances from very exotic parts of the world…

…to a solo by a Chinese Michael Jackson…

…all the way to a marching drummer from the USA!

Besides that, there an authentic chinese opera singer (our very own Robert) as well as some other group song presentations.

Performances aside, a big part of the night was the awesome demonstrations that were done on stage! There was a tea ceremony demo…

Our Chinese brother, Kevin, together with his wife, went up on stage to show the Aussies how chinese dumplings are made…

Their English isn’t that good so auntie sister Elena went up to translate…

Of course I can’t forget our very own pastor and host of the evening, Ps. Yew Meng:

He patiently announced the various country reps present…can you guess where they’re from? Nationalities under the pics…

Will from China.

Korea.

India.

Finland.

Phillipines.

Thailand.

Willy from Indonesia.

Denmark.

…and finally,last but not certainly not least…

Australia!

…and the team that made it all possible…none other than…

ANS! (All Nations Service)!

From left: Ps. Yew Meng, Jun, Will, Wilson, Yvonne, Min, Neo, Ben, Steph, Seng Yee, Jason, Andrix, Roger, and me(behind the lens).

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/06/16/tcc-cultural-night-2009-31st-may-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/05/27/easterfest-2009-day-3/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/05/27/easterfest-2009-day-3/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 22:09:36 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=480 by the third day I couldnt remember who  I was taking..I think I only managed to take a few performances…

First up here are some of the more “unique” Easterfest-goers…

The Power Rangers made an appearance with Spiderman…haha…

Here are some campers…recognize anyone?

Next we have the shots from the church service…there were two services but I’m just gonna combine them coz I can’t remember which is which (too lazy to check exif info eiher)

Evan Shelton, our church’s music director…wonderful singer as well!

Ps. Peter Pelicaan, he once prophecized over me…very gifted man of God. Also, he’s the chaplain of Christian Outreach College (COC), Toowoomba.

This is Isaac Moody, CEO of Easterfest. He’s been running it since it started. Nice guy! That’s his daughter during the service…

Next up were the games at the Red Frogs Colleseum. They had stuff from “So you think you can dance” and some games…the games were cool!

This is one I particularly liked. Basically, everyone holds hands in a huge circle…then, a chair is thrown in the middle. The objective is to get everyone else to touch the chair without touching it yourself. If you break the chain then the two people who let go their hands are out. If you touch the chair you’re out. As there’s less and less people more chairs are thrown in the middle. Last one wins!

one of the two hosts…

The Red Frogs Colleseum

There was also some more BMX stunts but I prefer the shots from the first day a lot more…anyway, here are 2 shots of the day that I like:

Ok next is simply a MUST-MENTION. I mean when I saw this guy I was amazed! If you look closely at his fingers you;d notice they’re sort of twisted and tangled…sort of like a disability…but his passion for Christ is unbelievable! respect!

Lead singer of Selaphonic

Next is the Paul Coleman Trio secret show that was at the Epicentre

…and last but not least, before the night was out, I shot Fatis Valor…they were an hour late and I was waiting for them to come on so I missed out on a lot of good shows…oh well…

…and that is the end of the Easterfestseries…at least for this year.

Right now I think I’m the only photographer who hasn’t already submitted their photos…and I’ve only just finished going through day 2!

…so without further ado, lets get on with it shall we:

1) New Empire

2) Austoville

3) Lucy Hannah

4) Into the Ocean

5) Naturally 7 (although only 6 of them were present)

6) Paul Coleman Trio

7) NewWorldSon

enjoy!

1) New Empire

2) Austoville

3) Lucy Hannah

4) Into the Ocean

5) Naturally 7 (although only 6 of them were present)

6) Paul Coleman Trio

7) NewWorldSon

Got church in 6hrs! See ya!

Friday – April 10, 2009.

There were many bands playing today. Many many bands. Many many many bands. I think you get the point. Anyway, I couldn’t do all of them but I did manage to catch the BMX & MOTO X event as well as some of the bands.

Here is a list of bands and events that I shot that day (in chronological order):

1)BMX & MOTO X

2) Opposite Lock

3) Compliments of Gus

4) Rubies and Rumours

5) Austoville

6) Simeon

7) Spacifix

NewWorldSon

9) Rebecca St. James

10) Audio Adrenaline

I didn’t upload any pictures of the first 2 bands, Opposite Lock and Compliments of Gus because they looked mediocre.

Anyway, here are some of the shots before I go to sleep.

Enjoy!

BMX & MOTO X @ Easterfest 09

Rubies and Rumours @ Easterfest 09

Az Hamilton

This is Az Hamilton, I can’t remember what hes famous for but all I know is that later on (Sunday April 12) if there are 500 donations to a certain charity he will be cutting off his dreadlocks – on stage! It’s a huge event that will go down tonight!

Austoville

Simeon @ Easterfest 09

Spacifix @ Easterfest 09

NewWorldSon @ Easterfest 09

I love New WorldSon, Aaron doesn’t. Their stage performance is even better than their recordings!

I met this guy on stage when I was taking pictures for the band before them. He shook my hand when I turned and said “hey, you’re from NewWorldSon, right?” …really nice guy, on Saturdays performance he waved at me from stage! AWESOME!

Rebecca St. James @ Easterfest 09

Audio Adrenaline @ Easterfest 09

There is something special about this band and the Paul Coleman Trio band which I took on Saturday and will be uploading a little later. This grammy award winning band split up in 2007. In Easterfest 2008, it was announced that they would be reuniting for one last gig at this years Easterfest.

Sure enough, a year later here they are!

This was not the last band of the night but Steph wanted to go home so I didn’t stay til the end…

Okay, for the next few days I will be updating rather frequently for the Easterfest 2009 event. The first thing I’ll start with is the Easterfest Superstore. Its sponsored by Koorong, and Australian retail chain dealing in Christian books, bibles, CDs, DVDs, etc.

I was given the honour of shooting the Superstore on Wednesday prior to the opening of Easterfest. The pictures will be displayed as a promo at the Easterfest Mainstage Venue. Here are some of the contents of the Superstore where you can get your Christian daily fix.

Overview of the Superstore

CDs for your audio needs

Newsboys Go

Fiction section

Books and Resources

Music

The Understatement

plenty of cool shirts

more clothes and shirts

Gift ideas

Leeland "Opposite Way"

Chris Tomlin "Live from Austin"

Everything will be just fine...

Veggie Tales

She Teen Magazine

Ps Joseph Prince "Destined to Reign

Joyce Meyer "The Confident Woman"

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/04/10/easterfest-2009-superstore/feed/ 2 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2008/12/05/i-am-my-fathers-son/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2008/12/05/i-am-my-fathers-son/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:35:20 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=41 Yes, I will be blogging about my fun time flying around Toowoomba which happened last Saturday…I think.

However, first things first – family priority requires that I respond to my sister’s blog post in which she posted this picture:

According to some absurd cult ritual in the Scottard part of uncivilized UK, November is the month of Movember where you wear a moustache for charity…(I think my dad should be their spokesperson)…anyway, the point is that they wanna see what we ALL look like with moustaches…so…after countless seconds…

VOILA!

@Linzhi, sorry your moustache looks retarded – who ask u not to pose properly…

having said that…lets move on to the next thing on the agenda – Flying.

Before I begin I hope you (whoever reads this) understands that this blog is more of a Plog (word created by yours truly – remember you saw it here first!). This means its a picture-log. What THAT means is that I don’t really care what I write and don’t expect you to read it…its just a way to fill in gaps in between pictures.

Pictures themselves come in two flavours:-

• watermarked
• unsigned

Watermarked ones are those that are worthy of flickr and I actually bothered to put them into photoshop even if I don’t do anything except for adding the watermark, saving a backup of the original and uploading reduced file size version.

Unsigned ones are crap shots/ happy snaps that people in them should enjoy but aren’t something that I’d put up on flickr (eg. group photos).

…glad we got that sorted out.

so where were we…ah! who attended:

• Jiaren
• Aaron
• Yew Meng
• Elena
• Wilson
• Sabrina

From closest to furthest: front row: Wilson, Yew Meng. back row: Sabrina, Elena

can see the guys heads getting distorted from the wide angle…heres a better shot:

heres one with less distortion...

Sabrina surprised this on Wilson as a belated birthday present…apparently his dream is to become a pilot…hes achieving that somehow by studying multimedia at USQ…ironic huh?

If you look closely you can see Aaron being a moron in the background

Aaron and I waited this one out…they went first and we went up for the next flight…

In the meantime we just chit chatted and took photos of random things, and various parts of the plane such as this:

Aaron told me but I cant remember what this is for...all I remember is that its something like a dipstick thingie and theres some liquid inside...

shutter speed: 1/1250 (plane wasn't on full throttle though)

of course we also took them about to take off...

...before returing to taking pictures of various components...behold - the Engine!

Lycoming - best aviation engine manufacturer?

no idea what this is...

instrument for calculating altitude, speed, etc...so don't forgetto take it off before flight!

nostrils?

Aaron.

This is a Piper. A piper is different from a Cessena in that its wing is under the body instead of on top.

When they landed it was our turn and because we were paying by the hour we couldn’t afford to waste time so I didn’t take any snaps during this transition…

up up and away!

Ps. Yew Meng; ex-Singapore air force - from cockpit to pulpit.

ooh...many buttons...must...resist...temptation...

view from the heavens!

You can see the runway in the above picture…wind was really strong that day and we barely used a quarter for both take off and landing!

click on the image to see where I live!

This was the second time I’ve been up here but the first time I had my dSLR with me…so a quick tip for wannabe aerial photogs with no experience:

1. First time enjoy the view. Forget the camera because you’ll get air sick and feel like vomitting. Looking through a viewfinder doesn’t make it better.
2. Second time up stick to the telephoto lens. In this case it was a clear day so aperture wasn’t a problem. I used a 70-300mm VR lens which is very flexible.
3. forget the lens hood. It’ll just make it harder to shoot.
4. Hold the lens at its furthest point with a finger extended against the glass to suppress vibration.
5. A monopod may come in handy but I didn’t have one.
6. At that distance everything is infinity. Use manual focus with shutter priority or manual. Most shots taken at 1/4000 so ISO had to be bumped up.
7. Take a picture. Check histogram levels. Adjust accordingly. then take another hundred or so pictures before checking again. DONT waste your time reviewing pictures on the plane. Plenty of time on the ground for that later on.
8. most importantly, HAVE FUN!

First try at doing a tilt-shift miniature fake

Being in an elavated position I figured it was an ideal time to try out some shots for making tilt-shift miniature fakes. Basically what this does is it makes large images appear smaller so that the images produced appear to be a model instead of a real life scene. What do you think? Any comments?

Here’s another one of my university:

University of Southern Queensland as a miniature model.

The university was probably too big to look good as a miniature but it looked better like this than a regular aerial photography shot so I left it as it is.

After we landed Uncle Yew Meng wanted some pictures and since the sky was so beautiful I took advantage of the wide angle lens:

...and my favourite one to finish it off...also printed one of these on A3 for them.

Done. Next I’ll be blogging about a recent mother son photoshoot I did…I’ll admit its not my best work but I was crap tired that day and it had been a while since my last portraiture session. Either way, they loved the pics and I got to brush up on my photoshoot techniques. Ultimately, it was huge fun both for them and myself – and thats whats important!

sneak preview:

Auntie Ivy and Gabriel.

till then…chao!