Mid Year Update

Half of 2016 has passed and I’m about to start my 2nd week of my second trimester and I think this update is well over due.

This year has been so busy and intense, so far this year I have had a trip to Melbourne which included a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria to see a Andy Warhol & Ai Weiwei exhibition. (Which was amazing!)
I have studied full on and it has been a stress at times but I got through it and passed all my assessments and received a lot of great feedback from my lecturers.
My wife and I spent a week on the Gold Coast with some close friends and their kids, man are kids full on!!
And in my holidays we had a week down near Sydney staying at parents place and then had a couple of days in Sydney having a look around and visiting Taronga Zoo for the Vivid festival which will be a post in itself!

Now I’m back at collage and we are moving into more shooting based subjects I am hoping that I will be able to have some more photos to post on here so any readers will will be able to follow my progress for the rest of the year.

I’m going to end this post like I do with most of my posts, with some photos.
These are photos that I have taken for my assessments in my first trimester.

 

Infamous Skateboards team rider Alex Fataccioli with a nolie tre flip.

Infamous Skateboards owner Mathew Burton holds up a slightly used copy of their latest board design.

The Milkyway shot was for “Camera & Capture” and involved me staying out until 4am on multiple nights as well as braving the rain. The Nikon D750 that I now have is amazing in low light I have tried milky may shots before but my D7000 didn’t hold up noise wise.

The house interior shot was for “Light & Lighting” and was a exercise in balancing flash with the ambient light coming in from outside.

The skateboard photos were part of a photo essay for “Media & Documentary” in which I was trying to tell the story of a new skateboard brand.
Shooting the skate park images was a challenge in itself, getting the shutter speed high enough to freeze the motion while having the aperture closed down enough to ensure a big enough depth of field required shooting at ISO’s that my old camera would not have handled but my new D750 handles high ISO’s with ease, so much so that it is still surprising me!

The last two street photos are something that I would normally take but these were taken for “Visual Communication”.
The first I was using diagonal lines to draw the viewers eye towards the people walking along the path.
The second photo I was using the L shaped lines of the light post and building to draw the viewer to the people who are in conversation on a smoke break.

If you have made it this far thanks for reading & please leave a comment.

Back to school!

So a lot has changed since my end of year (2015) post and even my last post!

I have been given the chance to go back to college and study photography, I am very excited about this development in my life! I have an amazing wife who is supporting me through this year in every way possible.
Even a few months ago I didn’t think I would be able to study in the near future it seemed like a distant dream for me maybe even an unreachable one. But now here I am looking down the barrel of a year of full time study.
I’m as excited as I am nervous but I think its going to be great!

As I am no longer working I’m not going to have the money to shoot as much film as I had hoped and as my course is fully digital I may not have the time to either.
As my study will be taking up a lot of time I have to abandon the idea of a blog post a week how ever I will be trying to make a post every few weeks especially as my course moves into shooting mode I will share what I am working on or have completed.

Since this is a photo blog I think I better add a photo.

This image was taken a few months ago I have wanted to capture something like this for a while and when I saw the clouds on the horizon and the late afternoon sun hitting just the central cloud I knew I might get a chance at capturing it.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Brisbane street.

This is an add on post to last Fridays post. A few more photos that I managed to take. Enjoy.

The streets of Brisbane

Happened to be meeting my wife in Brisbane when she finished work, so I took the chance to do some street photography while I was in the city.
My new camera (Nikon D750) was great to use with my little 50mm f1.8d lens not too heavy or big.
Here is a little randomness from my walk.

This straight from my camera to my phone no pp at all.

Xmas (end of the year)

Well Xmas is upon us again and I haven’t made a post on here since October.
I have still been shooting both film and digital and have a lot of images to post, although I am going to wait until next year as I plan to try my hardest to make sure I post at least once a week, a project 52 if you will.

I have been shooting a fair bit of skateboarding for a friends brand and have also completed a merch/portrait shoot for them also and this is something I am looking forward to continue doing next year.
A lot of this is posted on my Instagram where I make regular posts a few times a week. (www.instagram.com/dan_carr_photo)

This past year I have shot 16 rolls of 35mm film (9 color & 7 b&w)
I am hoping to shoot more film next year (I’m aiming for 2 rolls a month) and I plan to finally try my hand at developing my own b&w film, I have most of what I need I just need to find the time and get some chemicals.

I have a lot of ideas for a few different projects for next year but until then I would like to wish everyone who reads this blog a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

I’ll leave you with a couple of my recent photos.
Dan.

Taken at Cooley Rocks. Nikon FM2 w 50mm f1.8 on Kodak BW400CN

Tyron Wootton, Kickflip

Random Brisbane drain.

Infamous Skateboards merch shoot.

 

Bells Waterfall, Western Australia

I was going back through my photos the other day and found this one sitting in a folder all by itself – unedited.
I had a quick play with it then decided that it would be worth spending some time on as I quite like it – an hour or so later this is what I came up with.

Hope you enjoy seeing it.

One Tree, Three Ways

I have been doing a fair bit of shooting down on the Manly foreshore lately, some of it on film and some on digital.
I am still to get the film developed but I have processed the digital shots. This set was shot a couple of days ago.
Its nice to be able to keep going back to the same spot and get different photos each time.

Fremantle – Street

I had to go back to Perth for a few days a couple of weeks ago, even being such a whirl wind trip I was able to squeeze in some street photography.
Here are a few photos from that walk around.

Nikon FM2 w/50mm f1.8d loaded with Kodak BW400CN

A1 & fiddy 1.4

I picked up this Canon A1 and 50mm f1.4 from a vintage shop a couple of weeks ago.
It was pretty dirty, had a flat battery, I could barely see through the lens and I didn’t realise that it had fungus in the lens until I got it home and gave it a quick clean.

This morning I decided to give it a clean up. First I cleaned the body and got rid of the dirt and dust then I cleaned & removed the old light seals in prep for when the ones turn up.

Once the body was finished it was on to the lens. The outside needed a good scrub but the main job was in getting rid of the dust & fungus from the inside of the lens which required pulling the lens apart to clean it.
Once I got the lens apart it was pleasing to see that the glass elements had not been damaged by the fungus &  cleaned up like new.

I can’t wait to get the light seals fitted so I can shoot it!

Still shooting film! (Been a while between posts)

It has been a while since I posted on here partly because I have been shooting on film and partly because I have been busy.
The more I shoot on film & the more photos I get back from being developed the more I am liking shooting on film so I’m going to leave this post with a shot taken last year but only developed a couple of weeks ago.

My fave film camera, A Nikon FM2 shot on Ilford Pan 100.

I have a fair few rolls of film to go through so I will be making posts on here more regularly now as I have some content to post.