Ben Loveridge | Photographical musings

Klinger Reunion Show

Melbourne-based band Klinger graced the stage once more after a nine-year hiatus on January 27th, 2014 and easily sold-out the Northcote Social Club.

Klinger @ Northcote Social Club

Staying at the back of the room, catching up with old friends and listening to the hits and memories from that late 90′s/early 00′s, it was probably one of the lowest count of photos I’ve taken at a gig with a total of 32 shots captured, mostly during the last few songs. It’s certainly an easier way to capture the whole band in action (although I didn’t quite get all of the drummer) and means shot selection is much quicker when there’s less to choose from. With my total photo archive now at over 120,000 since 2006, I could pretty much not take a single more photo and still find unedited shots to sort through for the next 50 years. That’s a lot of rainy days….

Dave Rogers Double Album Launch

Bali

Real Estate Photography

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be one of those real estate photographers, trying to find the best angles to shoot rooms and make them look bigger than they are. Well, recently I got the chance when one of my graphic designer friends asked if I could take some photos of her apartment she was putting up for rent.

Apartment

Armed with my trusty Canon EOS 5D Mark III and EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens, I spent a few minutes in each room formulating the ideal vantage point before proceeding to shoot. A few minor adjustments to rug and cushion positions helped balance the frame and turning on the lights gave an extra warm glow.

Apartment

I was conscious of keeping the vertical and horizontal lines as straight as possible and crouching down relatively low helped create a feeling of space. Thankfully the owner has very good design sense so very little rearranging or covering up was required.

Apartment

Although difficult getting everything to fit in the frame, I found that even capturing a glimpse of certain items (such as the washing machine above and bathroom stool below) helped create the overall impression.

Apartment

Although I brought a tripod along, I didn’t end up using it as there was enough light (and ISO) to be able to capture the frames handheld. Also the tight positioning required (such as the above bathroom shot) meant that I had to squeeze my body into the corner of the toilet space to get the shot. I purposely kept pipes in shot as it kept with the 20′s feel of the room.

Update: The apartment received two pre-inspection offers based on the advert then was eventually rented out for more than the asking price, much to the owner’s delight.

Tasmania pt.2

Brisbane

Immortality

Was happy to hear that the documentary film ‘Decoding Immortality’ that I worked on a few years ago for @DecemberMedia, recently won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Science and Technology Programming.

The film charts the work of Australian scientist Professor Elizabeth Blackburn who in 2009, discovered an ‘immortalising’ enzyme deep in the DNA of a single-celled pond creature.

The footage was shot on a variety of formats and conditions, making it quite a challenge as the colour grader to make it look seamless. It was a fascinating project to work on and provided a real insight into what is an amazing field of study. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

Emma Heeney Video

I was asked to film a live video for a new tune by Emma Heeney, the brief being to keep it a relatively simple performance piece. Having brought a couple of DSLR’s with the intention of a multi-camera shoot, I ended up opting for a single Canon 5Diii coupled with the 24-70mm f2.8 II for the entire video. I felt the tone of the song lended itself more to a dreamy floating hand-held style rather than a static one. Also the thought of capturing twice the amount of footage didn’t appeal, given I had set myself the challenge of completing the entire video in the one session.

Three full performance takes were completed and a fourth specifically for cut-aways to be edited in later Lighting was all natural through a window facing the performers and the audio was captured via a Zoom H4n placed on a tripod in front of Emma. After deciding on the main master shot to be used, the cutaways were inserted during the editing process using Adobe Premiere CS6.

Thankfully each take was consistant enough so I could use small visual sections from different parts to overly without too many sync issues. All-in-all the whole clip was set-up, shot, edited and uploaded to YouTube in 5hrs.

Portable lightcase photography

Health food brand Mayvers recently rebranded their range of all-natural table spreads, which meant that new photos were required to show off the new labels and website. I have previously written about taking products shots with a DIY lightcase here and here, however since then I have thrown out the custom made cardboard box which was falling apart anyway. For this shoot, I was planning to just buy an inexpensive lightcase but unfortunately couldn’t find any in stock at short notice.

Fortunately Michael’s Camera had a LightPro portable lighting case for hire at a reasonable price which did just the job. I found it quick to set-up and with previous experience under the belt, in under two hours I was able to light, shoot, edit, re-touch and upload the new product shots to a happy client. All product shots were taken on the Canon 5D Mark III and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II lens.

Two layers of baking paper were taped over the fluorescent tubes to soften the reflections in the glass jars. Glass from a photo frame was removed to provide natural reflections underneath and everything was given a good clean to ensure no dust was visible.

The photos were imported into Adobe Lightroom where the auto-mask feature allowed me to blowout the background highlights without affecting the jars. Positioning each jar in exactly the same spot meant I could just copy and paste the adjustment settings, saving lots of time in post-production.