Day Thirty Two - Coopers

This weekend has really dragged. It's been colder than it has been in a long time and i'm not enjoying it at all. Yesterday was okay but today consisted of work from 5am till 2pm. Then it was more coffee and video editing followed by Beef Osso Bocco at the pub. Sunday night happy hour. I was the only patron there. Rohan, Jed and I. I like that. I love the Brisbane.
I also love Coopers. Keep that in mind if you're ever going to buy me a beer.

Day Thirty One - The Red Key

This morning Tys and I filmed a bunch of footage for our entry in the UTAS ad competition.
After about 4 hours sleep I awoke to Tys calling my phone. Getting up before 8am is always a chore and it doesn't help when it's below 10 degrees. We headed to the eastern shore to pick up his friend Tahlia who was our actor for the project. I had a good idea where I wanted to film. Initially we thought it'd be troublesome to get a cafe or restaurant to agree to us filming there without paying them a considerable amount of money. especially when we rocked up with takeaway coffees bought from different cafe. However, Chrome Cafe in North Hobart loved it. The dude even offered to move things out of the way for us. I love people like that. Gives me a little more confidence that society isn't completely fucked.
We were all done and back home by 10:30am. Quite happy with that. It all came out pretty nicely and i'll edit it out with Tys next week.

Before midday me and a bunch of BMX mates headed out to the DEC to shoot a photo of Daniel and film a final clip for the video before I send it off for replication on Monday *knock on wood*. The clip was a 360 down the 15 stair set out the front of the Derwent Entertainment Centre. You can see the stairset in the photo below. Pretty fucking nuts. Second attempt blew out his back wheel completely, as displayed also in the photo. This was a bit of a downer on things but luckily Uber Ben (who's name is actually Ben Lee, and who also bares a striking resemblance to the singer/songwriter), was willing to lend Daniel his bike. Luckily for him, Daniel slammed the three out nicely on the third attempt. Ben Lee also had swine flu a few weeks ago. He told everyone not to catch his disease. Fuck i'm hilarious.

Anyway because Daniel had three attempts at the three it also gave me a chance to shoot a photo at 10.5mm fisheye and also with the 50mm. Both came out really nicely. Hopefully you'll see one of the shots soon in a mag of some description!
That's all for today!

Peace out.
Sam.

Day Thirty - Cafe Conversations

These last thirty days have really cruised by. It'd definately not a bad thing. I need the next month to go fast. Then Katie will be home! =) Melbourne from the 23rd till the 28th of July for the premiere of our new BMX DVD. Click on to that If you haven't seen the promo yet...

Not heaps to say about today's photo. Just a shot of some cafe yuppies while i was doing the same after a trek up the mountain to shoot some footage for a friend's project.
Below's a shot from the 15 minute walk through mt wellington's icy paths to one of the lookouts.

Both with the Nikon D200 and 50mm f1.8. Worth a full view on both photos. Clicky on them and head over to flickr full resolution. There's a little magnifying glass above the photo on flickr for full size. I can't be bothered linking to it.

Day Twenty Nine - Oh Hey Doggy

First thing that comes to mind when I look at this photo is the song Gordon used to sing on Seasame St all those years ago.

"One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which of these is not like the other by the time I finish my song."

And of course by the time he's finished singing "song", the song is in fact over. Pretty unfair really.
I should also mention that Max actually pointed out these dogs to me as we were walking through Salamanca today. They were so cute. As you can see.

Three middle aged women sitting around a table just to my left made all sorts of remarks about kodak moments and beautiful photos and something about how i should win a prize. People are funny. So are dogs.

On that note you should watch The Room. It will give today's title a little more meaning. Really.

Nikon D200
50mm f1.8 at f2

Here's another photo from today. Bokeh. Whatever.

Day Twenty Eight - Studio

It wasn't the most productive day today at all. Dull and depressing weather never gives me much of a motivation to do anything. Not getting paid enough and fucking up your plans for the week can also put a damper on things.

I bought two bits of mdf today and made a makeshift desk for all my recording and computer gear. Better than it all living on the floor beside my bed.

Another self loathing, self portrait. Enjoy. Hate. Love. Rainbow.

Day Twenty Seven - Condiments

It's almost 1am thursday. I haven't uploaded anything in two days. I guess I don't really have a decent excuse aside from work and bad weather. But they're both pretty poor excuses.

Anyway this morning I went to a cafe that had the above engraved into their pepper grinder. I'm not really sure why. I can't see anyone feeling the urge to run off with a ratty old grinder from a small cafe. Furthermore, I can't imagine how a $5 item being stolen would prompt them to lift their prices. People are idiots. But they intrigue me so much at the same time.
This shot below was taken about half an hour later from inside the car looking out.
Mail boxes.

Beau Vine Filming

Yesterday was quite productive, filming wise. I thought i'd better take the time to write about today's scenes as it was originally the reason I started this blog. But since it's turned into more of an outlet for my photography and creative mind in general rather than just the filming side of things. Max and I have had this skit idea floating around for a month or two now and thought it was time to get it out of the way. To put things simply, vibrating mobile phones sound like cows mooing. Yep. We thought this was also a great chance to use Beau Vine (pronounced bovine), vegan activist and nature enthusiast loosely based around our friend Chalky.

We drove to Margate, my home town, and drove around the back-roads until we found some cows. It really was quite a nice experience. I love cows. I didn't. But now I do. They're great. Like giant cuddly dopey dogs. They also spent about half an talking to each other and talking to us. Calves running free everywhere. This is when Max and I decided we're going to go halves in a cow. One day.

For the first part the shots came out really nicely. The road was in a valley and the sun cast shadow over the road and the fields but it was still high enough to throw some direct light onto Max, who's was dressed as Beau Vine. We got as many shots as we could before the sun went behind the hill. Once it had disappeared we kind of had to shoot a different scene as not to mix lighting environments between them. So I just positioned Max in front of some cows and he rambled on for about 10 minutes about what cows mean to him. You can imagine. You can imagine.

Day Twenty Six - Tyson

I met up with Tys this morning to discuss entering the Utas Big Ad Break Competition. The idea is to make a commercial for Utas Open Day featuring a red key. It's already been running for about a month and entries close on July 10th so we're kind of hopping on to the wagon a little late but good work is often created when the pressure's on.

Nikon D200
My sweet sweet 50mm f1.8 at 1.8
ISO 800 at 1/80 I think.

Same settings for the photo below. I'm really getting into shooting candid photos of people and i'd also like to do a lot more portraits. People are so interesting to photograph.

Day Twenty Five - Ledge Hammers

I'm in the process of shooting a few photos of Nick Hills for his sponsor, Mutiny Bikes. Both Nick and myself had a pretty big night last night so we didn't really leave the house today until about 1pm, which only gave me about 2 hours before i had to work. A bunch of us headed in kingston direction and Nick fired out this high-speed nose wheelie on a previously un-rideable ledge.

Nikon D200
10.5mm f2.8 Fisheye at f8
ISO 100 at 1/250th.

Vivitar 285 hv at 1/2 power to camera left pointing up.
Vivitar 285 at full power to camera right and away from the camera.

A little while afterwards Josh Fuller rode along a rail to 180 as you can probably see right below this. Fuller's a weapon. And I love the guy.
Camera and flash setup was similar to the above photo.

Day Twenty Four - Nick Hills

I need to get a little more creative with my titles. Spent most of today playing my guitar. I also shot a clip with my brother this morning to finish off the bmx dvd.

This was taken tonight at EC skatepark just around the corner from my house. My housemate and good friend Nick Hills. I love this guy. I miss taking bmx photos. Winter blows. That said I need to start riding my bike more.

Nikon D200
50mm f1.8 at f2.8

Vivitar 285hv at 1/4 power to the right facing towards nick
Vivitar 285 hv to the left and away from the camera at 1/2 power for rim.