Always put the sun behind your subject. For one thing, it means they won’t be squinting in the picture. But another reason is to get cool backlight effects. Usually you can get a nice bit of rim lighting or some nice highlights on the hair, but when the sun is very low and you stick it behind your subject, you can get all kinds of crazy light-spill effects going on, which can make for some neat-o looking pictures.

Earlier this evening Brence and I were coming home from a photo session (Brence, as usual, providing essential assistance with lighting gear during the location shoot). We pulled into our driveway around 7:30pm and the sun was just about to go down, and was spilling all kinds of crazy light on the neighbours’ fence.

“Quick! Stand here!” and I grabbed the camera, which happened to have a 50mm prime on it. Whacked it on AV and snapped a shot – too dark. Cranked it to +2 exposure compensation and grabbed this second shot ( Canon 5D, 50mm, f4, 1/80th, ISO 400 for those of you playing at home).

It’s a pity about the parked van in the background, but you get my point – the sun can be a very cool light source if it’s in the right place. Be sure to check out the photos Brence then took of me a moment later – you can find them on his blog.

Last night Brence and I spent some time tidying up the home studio and putting up a new dark background I made of navy blue fabric. I fired off some test shots of Brence to see what it looked like – and it looks pretty good and works well in colour or b&w.

We started out with a basic two-light setup using two softboxes powered by SB-26 flash units. Main (high camera left) on 1/4 and fill (low camera right) on 1/16.  After a few shots we added a third snooted SB-26 as a  kicker behind and to camera left, also on 1/16. You can see here it gives a highlight on Brence’s right-hand side, adding a little more pop and separation.

2-light setup

3-light setup

2-light setup

3-light setup

This is a great example of how to get nice, simple studio shots without having an overly elaborate setup. The 2-light setup is perfectly good for creating nice portraits with highlight and shadow definition. The 3-light setup of main, fill and kicker is simple to set up and adds extra pop, and works especially well when you’re shooting against a dark background like we were here.

Yesterday we had some dramatic clouds over Christchurch. We often get interesting cloud formations here, but these were particularly dramatic and I thought it’d be worth taking a drive up the Port Hills to see what the view was like. When I got up to Summit Road and got out of the car, it was blowing a gale and was almost impossible to hold the camera steady – better whack up the ISO and get a decent shutter speed!

I took a number of frames, mostly in series to stitch together as panoramas. That’s a project for another day, but I also got this quick single frame as I was coming back up the walkway. It’s been tweaked around in Bridge/Photoshop, mainly to even out exposure and adjust contrast and white balance and add a bit of grain. Taken on my Canon 5D, 17-40mm lens at 17mm, 1/200th and f10 at ISO 1000.

Christchurch-based cafe chain Coffee Culture is one of my favourite clients. I’ve photographed six of their cafes over the past few years, as well as producing a custom panoramic image of Lyttelton Harbour for their Lyttelton premises.

This week I shot the interior of the Merivale Coffee Culture, which has just undergone a refurbishment. The place looks fantastic – very light and airy with really nice pistachio green accents.

Here are some of the shots of the interior:

Frederique and Oakley recently got engaged, and they took advantage of my ‘Summer Nights’ portraiture special to have some engagement portraits done.

Fred told me that as well as being engagement portraits, she wanted the pictures to be a snapshot of their lives in Christchurch right now. Fred is originally from Montreal, Oakley is from Germany, and while they’ve been living in Christchurch for some years, Fred now commutes to Wellington by plane for work during the week and, as she pointed out, who knows where they’ll be in a few years’ time.

I spent an hour with this gorgeous young couple as we wandered up and down the banks of the iconic Avon River in Christchurch. In some of the pictures I included little details that are very ‘Christchurch-y’ as a reminder of the city in which they met. My favourite is the local city ducks. I brought some biscuits with me and we stopped to feed them along the riverbank, allowing me to get a shot that is one of Fred’s favourites.

Fred and Oakley were a lot of fun to photograph – and I never had to ask them to smile because they spent the whole time grinning like mad! Ah, young love.

Here’s a selection of some of my favourite images from our session: 

I recently did a lifestyle family portrait photoshoot at the beautiful Riccarton House grounds in Christchurch. Kat and her mum Mandy were over from the UK visiting Kat’s sister Emma, who lives in New Zealand. It’s rare that these three lovely ladies are together, and Kat and Emma bought the photo session package for their mum as a gift. It was a lot of fun to photograph them – here are some highlights…

I went to visit my friend Jos and her wee boy Seb at Hagley Park today. I had my 5D with 70-200mm lens with me and grabbed a few shots of them feeding the ducks. Seb is quite entranced by the ducks and would have liked to have petted one I’m sure!

Brence and I spent a month visiting my folks in Canada over the recent Christmas and New Year’s holidays. We took a ba-zillion photos which I have yet to sort through properly, but I wanted to post a quick pick.

I took this of Brence riding the bus in Vancouver one cold rainy night. It was taken with a Canon IXUS point-and-shoot, on the ‘high’ ISO setting and quite a slow shutter speed – hence the fairly high image grain (let’s just call it an homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson)

I love the image colours and the raindrops on the windows – they evoke such an incredible moodiness.

My previous post was a selection of photos of my brother’s beautiful Cane Corso dog, Buddha. Here’s a selection of photos of his other dog, Bella (also a Cane Corso).

My brother lives in Chilliwack, B.C. Canada, and is going to breed his two dogs – anyone in the greater Vancouver area who would like a gorgeous, unusual, well-tempered yet effective guard dog should investigate this breed – they really are amazing. Check out my brother’s website www.canadiancanecorso.com

I had my assistant/second shooter Brence Coghill with me for this shoot and he took a few of the photos of Bella, including the black & whites and the 3-up layout of me playing with her. Enjoy!

My brother Mike lives in Chilliwack B.C. Canada and has two utterly gorgeous dogs. I was visiting for the holidays and Mike requested some professional portraits of his dogs for his website – www.canadiancanecorso.com – where he intends to promote the breed and his upcoming litters of purebred puppies for sale.

His dogs Buddha and Bella are both Cane Corsos – a unique breed of Italian mastiff.  They’re great with people and are hugely loyal – this was apparent during the photo session as both dogs followed my brother around unwaveringly and were happiest when sitting by his side.

I’m still working through all the photos but wanted to share the first lot with you, all of Buddha. He is absolutely gorgeous and a total sweetie, adoring pats on his head and scratches on his back.