A water lily at the lake at the wedding. I don’t often shoot with longer focal lengths, so when I do, you get interesting landscapes and I’d like to share one of those photos in the next post.

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It’s been a pretty busy week. I’ve been doing the usual house chores, running up and down, meeting up with people but mostly just editing photos. I’ve become quicker at it and a little more disciplined, flagging photos and not trying to edit them individually so I can get a consistent feel throughout the entire series of pictures.

Since I’ve been doing jobs for people, I’ve been trying to standardise my images a little in terms of styling. I’ve also adjusted how I do touch ups just so it doesn’t look too touched up. It’s something I have to learn through trial and error, plus you really need to go through a variety of photos to get a sense of how you’d like the pictures represented.

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I’m starting to also become fascinated with video editing. I’ve been taking video clips but I rarely know what to do with them. Windows Live Movie Maker does allow me some basic edits and hashing together a simple and elegant slideshow, but motion design intrigues me, adding footage to still photography really enhances the overall experience. This is sort of a Heston Blumenthal inspired idea, where you eat not just with taste and smell, but sight and sound as well. I think video complements stills because there are just somethings where the emotion is better conveyed through sound and motion.

I’m currently scouring the Internet for information on my new found interest, and I probably don’t want to dwell too much into it (one less thing to obsess about is a good thing) but a few touches here and there would be helpful to creating more meaningful slideshows down the road.

Heh, the world seems new again with so much to explore.

Shot a wedding over the weekend and this was at the venue, a farmhouse not too far from Lorne. There was a nice lake covered with lily pads. I kind of like shooting abstract shots like these which focuses on form and shapes.

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I now have a second wedding under my belt, and weddings like to throw curve balls at you. Managed to improve from the first wedding in getting extra shots for parts of the preparation, but I’m still learning, so I’m augmenting my approach each time and there’s a definite improvement over the first time I shot it.

Now I’m wondering if I should add to my list of equipment. For starters, I need a bag that can fit 2 bodies and 3 lenses, a 24-70 f2.8, a 70-200mm f2.8 and a 105mm f2.8 macro lens, 2 flash units, batteries, lens cleaners and a couple of filters. My Domke F2 which I bought to transport back all my gear from the US is almost there, except that there isn’t enough space for one extra body. I’m a little hesitant as when you pack the F2 to the brim, it’s already about 7-8kg of equipment. There’s the Domke D1X that seems to fit the bill for me, as it looks like a regular canvas bag (doesn’t scream camera bag and grab attention) and you can definitely fit a couple of bodies in there without lenses attached. For the weekend wedding, I had to carry to separate bags and while it works, the less stuff I have to carry, the less I risk losing things.

Also used my Sigma 70-200mm for the first time at a wedding. I seldom use that lens, but the learning curve is quick and you really want to keep the shutter speeds quick enough to prevent blur at the longer range of the zoom. That meant shooting at ISO1000+ and the detail is still there on my D300, plus Lightroom 4 seems to render the image quite nicely (less magenta colour bias) so I’m quite happy with that. Heh, of course, until I saw what the Nikon 70-200mm VR II could do. Sharpness at 1/30s is to die for. I’ll just need to get a few more gigs before I add this to my collection.

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Will be busy over the next couple of weeks. Need to finish the photos for this wedding before I shoot my cousin’s pre wedding photos next week.

Plus there’s less than a week to the Kids run this Sunday, looking forward to that. Heh, time to go for one last run round the river.