Gavin Blue

4/42012

Gavin Blue is a successful commercial photographer based in Melbourne and has almost 20 years experience in the industry. He was an exceptionally enthusiastic guest speaker and certainly showed his wealth of experience through his professional presentation.


I had been made aware of Gavin 1 year ago whilst living in Brisbane, and became quite interested in him and his work. Just wasn't sure i'd ever meet the man.. until today that is :)


WEBSITES:

• gavinblue.com
• truckphotographer.com
• executiveportraits.com.au

Some important points from today's presentation:

• Allow yourself to be adaptable to a number of photography styles.

• Speedlights are extremely practical and are what Gavin uses on 95% of his jobs.

• Worked with Andrew Craig, Stuart Crossett and Rod Schaffer.

• Keep photography interesting, don't contain yourself to the studio.

• Stay organised - use a calendar and/or diary and keep it well maintained and updated.

• PMA - look into it further.

• Research light SPEED-LIGHT modifiers and other useful accessories.

• Powerex batteries and charger - from PROTOG

• Try to be as light-weight as possible with your camera equipment - it helps you in the long run in a number of ways.

• Make yourself known - personally and electronically.

• Give TIME-LAPSE photography a go.

• Are you and your gear able to handle the elements/mother nature?

• Are you handling, processing, naming, storing and backing-up your electronic files correctly and efficiently?

Valuable online resources/reference

• www.honlphoto.com
• www.strobist.com
• www.dpreview.com
• www.ep-designs.com
• www.acmp.com

Gavin is a very successful photographer, because he knows his client, how to market himself and then how to do his job in ways that gain him repeated work and some extra exposure to potential clients - just the kind of thing i aim for.

Steve Corey

21/3/2012

Stephen is a 2011 CIT graduate with a strong skill set in portrait photography.


WEBSITE - http://www.creakingdoor.com.au/


Steven shoots with Nikon and likes to stay portable with his camera equipment, preferring to use speed lights and relative lighting modifiers (instead of studio lighting) to illuminate his subject/s. Steven also sticks to what techniques he knows and has had work for him time and time again, but also likes to research and experiment with new lighting techniques that he sources from websites like strobist.com / lighten up and shoot.com / ken rockwell and YouTube to name a few.


Steven expressed his love of cinematography and like to note the dramatic lighting styles from motion-films of a vast variety. Japanese art-house being a stand out for him.


Another of his techniques that is common throughout his work is the use of ND FILTERS. They help to darken the background by a few extra stops, which then helps to make the main subject appear more prominent. Helpful in bright sun light as well as twilight.


He likes to have his lighting nice and close to the subject (just out of frame) and often like to just take an initial frame or two and then adjust his ratios accordingly instead of taking light-meter readings first.


It also isn't unusual to see added flash-gels in his lighting affect. These are a simple way of adding emotion (through colour) to a scene and/or subject.


Steven likes to add to an existing light source - for example he will often position his speed light and soft box combination outside a window and fire light in through the window to boost an already natural affect.


Now and then, Steven will also take multiple exposures and blend them together in photoshop, this way Steven can achieve a combined result without adjusting his lighting much - if at all. A visual example of this was shown to us by way of a young man frozen mid-jump high in the air of a back-alley setting.


Steven seemed to display a keen interest for classical paintings of the medieval / renaissance period and displayed good representation of this in his photographs.


The Chiaroscuro lighting technique was also mentioned and seemed to inspire his work.




This was an enjoyable presentation.




D.